Extending Your Wi-Fi

By BD Bondy

​Over the years I’ve worked on quite a few people’s WiFi. For all that time, the solution was most often to either get a device to go through the house electrical wiring, or to broadcast a signal with Extender devices, and sometimes both. I used this stuff at my own home, and it works okay.
 
There is a newer technology available that I think works better. We switched over to it at our house and we’ve been very pleased. We now have decent WiFi out at our workshops which is way better than what we had before. The system is referred to as a ‘mesh’ system. Basically, the devices talk to each other and keep the broadcast going, keeping the same name and password, and also changing over to the best connection as needed.
 
We bought Amazon’s Eero devices. There are other brands available. An article from PCMag about this type of product, and improving your current Wifi, may be found HERE.
 
The EERO devices are configured from my phone, it was fairly straightforward. They are not technically outdoor devices but I have several outside on a covered porch so they are protected. I had one of these outdoors in Phoenix as well, at my mom’s house, but again, under a pergola so it was protected.
 
For any serious distances you would need something more powerful, like an outdoor AP or a pair of wireless devices to talk to each other, but in a large home, or an adobe home, a mesh system would be perfect. Our workshop and the treehouse aren’t that far so the mesh works great for us.