Which Wifi mesh to buy 'this year'

[thiggins]

@Enthusiast @L&LD : Enough with the personal back-and-forth.

@Enthusiast "Tri-band" is a marketing term that has been used to refer to routers and APs that have three radios, 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz ch 36-48 (U-NII-1) and 5 GHz ch 149-161 (U-NII-3).

I don't think (but don't know for sure) whether any of these "Tri-band" products support DFS channels. The reason is that there are filters that prevent the two 5 GHz radios from interfering with each other. DFS channels fall into the band-stop areas of those filters.

When 6E products come out, they will have three radios, covering 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz (all allowed U-NII channels, including DFS) and the new 6 GHz channels. Whether the marketing folks will call these tri-band, quad-band, multi-band or something else is yet to be determined.

So, yes, there are three (or 4, depending on how you count) bands supported in today's Wi-Fi routers (U-NII-1, U-NII-2, U-NII-2e and U-NII-3). But routers/APs supporting DFS are NOT what is inferred when you see a "Tri-band" router advertised today.

 

[Enthusiast]

@Enthusiast @L&LD : Enough with the personal back-and-forth.

@Enthusiast "Tri-band" is a marketing term that has been used to refer to routers and APs that have three radios, 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz ch 36-48 (U-NII-1) and 5 GHz ch 149-161 (U-NII-3).

I don't think (but don't know for sure) whether any of these "Tri-band" products support DFS channels. The reason is that there are filters that prevent the two 5 GHz radios from interfering with each other. DFS channels fall into the band-stop areas of those filters.

When 6E products come out, they will have three radios, covering 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz (all allowed U-NII channels, including DFS) and the new 6 GHz channels. Whether the marketing folks will call these tri-band, quad-band, multi-band or something else is yet to be determined.

So, yes, there are three (or 4, depending on how you count) bands supported in today's Wi-Fi routers (U-NII-1, U-NII-2, U-NII-2e and U-NII-3). But routers/APs supporting DFS are NOT what is inferred when you see a "Tri-band" router advertised today.

???

All router does the 36-48 and 149-161 for regulatory reason. U-NII-1 +U-NII-3.
IT's possible marketer cheat with the term 3bands, but it remain that DFS spectrum is a third band ( channel 52 to 144). Here the resume for Canada, pretty close to us.

The source is an expert:

source: https://www.semfionetworks.com/

I work for a high end integrer by the way.

 

[thiggins]

@Enthusiast As I said, yes DFS is a band (or two). But it is not what is meant by the marketing term "tri-band".

 

[zacster]

I just bought the lower end TP-Link X20 wifi 6 setup and so far so good. I get speeds of 150 on the secondary routers, and I only have 200 on my internet in any case. I'm OK with it. Nothing drops, my daughters can stream music over UPnP in their part of the house now. It wasn't feasible before as it would just keep breaking up. You guys can argue that it isn't as good as a wire but those of us in old houses don't have wires, nor is it easy to install behind plaster and lath walls. As it turns out too my daughters both have iPhone 11s and those support wifi 6. Nothing else here does.

If the higher end X60 system were generally available I'd have gone with that, but it only appears to be sold at Costco at the moment. It doesn't matter though, it still is much faster than I can go out on the net so it doesn't make much difference. Internal traffic is minimal.