Submitted via IRC for Fnord666_
Getting WiFi to every corner of your home is made much easier these days with a mesh network, which uses a specialized router and individual nodes that can configure themselves. Companies like Netgear, Samsung and ASUS all have kits of varying price that can help you make one in your own home, but you generally have to purchase a whole new set of devices to make it work. Now, ASUS is offering AiMesh, a system that uses your current ASUS routers to create a mesh network without pricey extra hardware.
Since you're using routers that you already own to create a mesh network, you can decide which one is the primary and which will act as nodes. You simply find the router with the best capabilities, drop it in a central location, then use the built-in software to configure the network.
AiMesh only runs on routers from ASUS, though.
Source: https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/03/asus-mesh-wifi-aimesh/
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @11:13AM (1 child)
I've looked into a few of these technologies in the past years, but most open ones seemed to have some serious drawbacks (limited amount of nodes, changes in network frames to non-standard values, etc).
The only one that seemed usable for me is Babel (routing method that generates meshes independent of network infrastructure): https://www.irif.fr/~jch/software/babel/ [www.irif.fr]
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Thursday January 04 2018, @01:21PM
Seems like a better idea than a proprietary setup that doesn't play well with others. Me, I just use one master router, with a couple of others on different floors that don't run DHCP, firewalls, etc. It generally works quite well, but I switched recently to give each a different name so I could control which was connected more actively.