Poor WiFi performance and coverage? You need a mesh network

WiFi is used for much more than just web browsing today. Increasingly, it powers the connected home, a business that requires high performance and wide coverage. On average, each US household supported 22 connected devices in 2022, according to Deloitte. This number reflects the evolution of both entertainment and work culture: The number of people who work primarily from home in the US has tripled since 2001, accounting for nearly 1 in 5 workers (17.9%), according to the US Census Bureau. These workers depend on video conferencing and quick access to corporate data to get their jobs done.

With so many connected devices throughout the home, many of which require high-speed, high-throughput connectivity, homeowners are finding that the WiFi router they got from their Internet provider is simply not up to the job. About 1 in 6 (15%) U.S. consumers upgraded their Internet services in 2022 to get faster connectivity, and 44% purchased signal boosters to expand coverage.

Extenders increase the range of your Wi-Fi signal by rebroadcasting your router’s signal over a second Wi-Fi network on each extender. Unfortunately, extenders are unable to deliver the levels of performance needed to power data-intensive work tasks, a connected home, or high-quality video streams. In fact, performance often degrades after the introduction of extenders because they have to receive and send signals to the router.

Even if you have a gigabit connection with your internet service, extenders may not support more than 500MB, so you’re only getting half the performance you’re paying for. Equally problematic, extenders often cause connectivity interruptions as devices disconnect and reconnect from the router and extenders, depending on range. It’s not a seamless experience, resulting in dropped calls, glitchy streaming, and poor performance.

A mesh network is a better option for households that need both consistent extended range and high performance. Unlike an extender, which sets up a secondary WiFi network, a mesh network creates a single network from all your devices. They seamlessly transfer connections to the fastest access point in the house and never have to move from node to router and back again like extenders do. Also, because the devices provide overlapping intelligent coverage, if one node goes down, another can immediately resume the connection, providing a constant signal.

NETGEAR has long been a leading provider of WiFi solutions, and the NETGEAR Orbi 960 series offers best-in-class mesh networking. Want to deliver high-definition video to multiple screens at the same time? The Orbi 960 series delivers. With front-door to backyard coverage and speeds up to 10.8 Gps, the Orbi 960 Series can power even the most demanding smart homes, connecting up to 200 devices without breaking a sweat.

Plus, the NETGEAR Orbi 960 is secure. NEATGEAR Armor, pre-installed on Orbi 960, monitors more than 500 million devices to proactively detect cyber threats. Once a device on the network is targeted by a cyber attack, all others are automatically notified within seconds, and NETGEAR provides instant app notification when someone on the network encounters a malicious link or other threat, making it very less likely a successful attack. But NETGEAR goes beyond reacting to attacks: it proactively searches the web for signatures and patterns that indicate threats so it can block them before they take hold

For the power user of WiFi connectivity, there’s only one choice to deliver the performance and coverage you require: a mesh network. Learn more about how the NETGEAR Orbi 960 Series can boost connectivity in your smart home.

Deloitte. Consumers benefit from virtual experiences, but need help managing screen time, security, and technology overload. August 3, 2022. https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/about-deloitte/articles/press-releases/connectivity-and-mobile-trends.html. Retrieved February 9, 2023.

United States Census Bureau. The number of people who mostly work from home tripled between 2019 and 2021. September 15, 2022. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/people-working-from-home.html. Retrieved February 9, 2023.