Home Network Upgrade

I wanted to make a non programming related post and talk about my recent home network upgrade. I have been using a set of Asus routers for almost the past 10 years. One router was chained to the other in a master/slave configuration and were connected by an ethernet cable running across the apartment. There was a number of issues with this method. First, only the master router was capable of a 5G connection. As the 5G bandwidth is very short range, I could not access this from one half of the apartment. Second, there were massive cables running across the hallways ceilings, and around the living room. No matter how I tried to hide it, it looked pretty bad. I decided that it was time for an upgrade. I also want to make it clear that I was not asked to make the review, and that I felt compelled to not only because the product impressed me at first glance, but because I wanted to mix up my post topics a bit as well.

I found a set of routers called TP-Link Deco and specifically purchased the M4 model. This set of routers is advertised as a set of wifi extenders that are very easy to set up, but still offer some advanced setup options. I thought back and realized that I have never had to configure any complicated settings on my home network before, so losing out on anything too far from regular usage was not as painful.

Setup was extremely easy. The box contained three tower routers, and three power adapters.

Each tower was plugged into power and placed across the apartment. One router was plugged into the modem with a regular ethernet cable. Finally, all I had to do was open the Deco app on iOS and connect to the master router. The app asked me to create an accout, which although inconvenient at first, made sense considering you want to lock administrator access like with any other router. Then, it asked me to create an SSID & Password. Once this information was entered, the network was up and running. There was an option to add the remaining routers, which was as simple as entering the last four characters of the SSID printed on each one. After a few minutes, all routers were connected, and the app showed: All Decos are online: Master Bedroom, Bedroom, Livingroom.

As each device connected to the network, a notifacation came on advising that a new device has connected to the network, which was amazing. Living in an apartment building, I have had my suspicions in the past that somebody had connected to the home network from another apartment. Now I could see as soon as an unknown device joined.

The app also allowed for easily updating all the Decos with the latest firmware at the push of a button. I let this process run which took somewhere between 2 and 5 minutes. One additional feature I thought was pretty cool is that if you go into the Deco status, you can click each router and see which devices are connected to which tower. This would probably be helpful for potential troubleshooting some day.

Once the network was up and running, I ran a speed test to compare the difference:

Macbook

Old

New

The macbook results were the least impressive, but still a massive improvement. The speed almost doubled, although there was an additional 2ms of ping. I don’t know if this is a usual fluctuation, or if the routers are actually slower, although I doubt I would notice 2ms.

PC

Old

New

The PC results are a bit quicker with the speed more than doubling to 88Mbps, and the ping remaining at 13ms. This is likely due to the PC being directly beside the router, while the Macbook is not.

So in conclusion, as somebody who does not need to make dramatic configurations to the home network, the Deco M4 routers are pretty awesome for my uses. They look pretty cool, and have eliminated the dead spots in my apartment. Everybody living here has reported improved network speeds, and the app is the best I have seen as far as router configuration goes. What felt like a dubious and risky purchase ended up paying off in my case.

Anyways, thanks for reading my post! I am looking forward to finding new devices that impress me and writing about them. Take care of yourselves!