Plume emerged from stealth yesterday with yet another multi access point solution aimed at improving Wi-Fi performance in any sized home. The headline for Plume, however, is its $49 per "pod" price. eero's module costs four times that and Luma's per unit price is 3x.
The catch, however is that the minimum Plume order is 6 pods, which makes your buy-in $234 if you buy now at the pre-order $39/pod price. Normal minimum order total will be $294, which is still more than $100 below Luma's $400 three-pack price.
For that $49, Plume packs simultaneous dual-band AC1200 and Bluetooth Smart radios into its wall-plugged "pod" and includes a single Gigabit Ethernet port, too. Plume's specs even claim DFS channel support, which will a feat in itself given the channel use restrictions and rules that come with DFS.
Plume has dubbed its approach "Adaptive WiFi", an approach they claim "requires a ridiculous amount of software code, novel optimization algorithms, deep data science, and lots of math". While I'm sure it needs all that, another radio or two per pod would certainly help, too.
Those that fear the cloud probably won't be comfortable with Plume being a "cloud coordinated WiFi system", with most of its heavy lifting done in the cloud. But this appears to be the norm for this emerging class of multi AP systems, since competitors eero and Luma take a similar approach.
The differentiation graphic from Plume's How It Works page certainly looks like Plume has more signal routing options than "traditional mesh" systems. But eero also uses both bands to manage its backhaul connections, so this claim seems to be largely marketing FUD.
Plume appears to be applying some significant horsepower to its solution. Founder and CEO Fahri Diner made his bones (and at least some of his fortune) by founding long-haul photonic networking company Qtera and selling it to Nortel for over $3B back in 2000. Co-founders Adam Hotchkiss and Sri Nathan are also Qtera alums. Fourth co-founder Aman Singla is ex Atheros and Qualcomm Atheros where his last job was VP of Software Engineering.
You might want to check the FAQ before you pre-order. Although you can cancel the pre-order at any time, the pre-order ship date of between this September and November may give you pause.
For that $49, Plume packs simultaneous dual-band AC1200 and Bluetooth Smart radios into its wall-plugged "pod" and includes a single Gigabit Ethernet port, too. Plume's specs even claim DFS channel support, which will a feat in itself given the channel use restrictions and rules that come with DFS.
Plume has dubbed its approach "Adaptive WiFi", an approach they claim "requires a ridiculous amount of software code, novel optimization algorithms, deep data science, and lots of math". While I'm sure it needs all that, another radio or two per pod would certainly help, too.
Those that fear the cloud probably won't be comfortable with Plume being a "cloud coordinated WiFi system", with most of its heavy lifting done in the cloud. But this appears to be the norm for this emerging class of multi AP systems, since competitors eero and Luma take a similar approach.
The differentiation graphic from Plume's How It Works page certainly looks like Plume has more signal routing options than "traditional mesh" systems. But eero also uses both bands to manage its backhaul connections, so this claim seems to be largely marketing FUD.
Plume appears to be applying some significant horsepower to its solution. Founder and CEO Fahri Diner made his bones (and at least some of his fortune) by founding long-haul photonic networking company Qtera and selling it to Nortel for over $3B back in 2000. Co-founders Adam Hotchkiss and Sri Nathan are also Qtera alums. Fourth co-founder Aman Singla is ex Atheros and Qualcomm Atheros where his last job was VP of Software Engineering.
You might want to check the FAQ before you pre-order. Although you can cancel the pre-order at any time, the pre-order ship date of between this September and November may give you pause.
