MESH systems

MESH system

— equipment for building wireless networks in MESH format.

The basis of such networks are relatively low-power nodes (nodes) that can interact with each other via a wireless channel in a special way — in the dynamic routing format, with the user automatically connecting to the nearest node and seamless switching between nodes. The meaning of dynamic routing is that there are no fixed routes for traffic in the network: the equipment independently determines the best path from the user device to the main router and directs traffic through selected nodes. Seamless switching, in turn, means that the change of nodes occurs without breaking the connection — thus, neither the user nor his device notice the switching at all; this is especially important for online games, watching videos and some other tasks that are particularly demanding on connection stability.

Seamless mode of operation is one of the key advantages of MESH systems over Wi-Fi amplifiers (see the relevant paragraph) and other devices with repeater mode (see "Software features"). The second advantage lies in maintaining the communication speed: to exchange traffic between themselves, the nodes use a separate channel that is not involved in working with user devices (whereas in repeaters all interactions go through common channels, which leads to a speed loss, sometimes quite significant). On the other hand, MESH equipment is much more expensive than more traditional equipment like the same amplifiers. So it makes sense to pay attention to such solutions in cases where the mentioned advantages are crucial — for example, if you want to cover a vast area with a single wireless network, for which one router is not enough.