For those of us who have lived in a home that has patchy internet, you will know the pain of scrambling around to find better Wi-Fi.
“Turn it off and then on again!” my father would yell to me.
And then when I lived in a shared house it was nigh on impossible to get any signal upstairs in the furthest bedrooms from the staircase. Which made for cozier house viewings of Breaking Bad as a family in the living room, but slightly awkward Skype sessions with the whole gang only a few feet away.
But soon that could all be a thing of the past, thanks to Eero, a new Wi-Fi system that helps avoid no-go spots for broadband in your home. According to the Wall Street Journal, it’s not only great at giving your home greater internet coverage, it’s also incredibly simple to set up.
All you have to do is download the app, plug one Eero into your cable or DSL modem, and the rest is taken care of. Additional Eeros need just the power from a wall outlet, and the app will even guide you where to place them to maximise your connection.
Instead of having a single router that wheezes and puffs away, Eero is a series of strategically coordinated access points you put wherever you need internet, from attic to basement and everything in between
“The one-router model isn’t working” says Eero’s site. Because of bricks, glass and concrete, waves just aren’t always able to go through walls and furniture, and as they get farther from their starting point, they eventually diminish.
It claims that by setting up a set of three Eeros to cover the typical home, the access points can work in perfect unison to deliver hyper-fast, super-stable Wi-Fi to every square foot of your house without the annoying buffering we’re used to.
These then work together to prevent dead zones. As Tech columnist Geoffrey Fowler, says, despite a couple of small glitches, if “Internet access is oxygen, testing Eero has been like getting a new lung.”
Unlike extenders, which don’t often work, Eero will not require you to change networks wherever you are in your home – instead, it will connect to the nearest wireless access point (like in a library, hotel or airport).
Made by a startup in San Francisco, the access points cost $200, or you can buy three in a pack for $500.
Which isn’t cheap. But if it’s as good as Fowler says it is, then with any luck this is the future of Wi-Fi and there could be cheaper alternatives coming soon.
Calling next door, “Do you have any internet in your room?” could soon be as much a thing of the past as the ear piercing-sound of dial-up.
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