Linksys wants to make extending your WiFi easy
Will Linksys's Velop crack the holy grail of home networking?
If there’s one simple truism surrounding home networking, it’s that nothing is ever easy. The router falls over, or the modem is flaky, or there are corners of the house that may as well be dressing up in sheets to scare away any useful Wi-Fi network coverage. Adding extenders or hubs should be simple, but it so very rarely is. With the rapid expansion of the NBN, the last thing you want is a fast data pipe into your house and no way to share it around.
Linksys’ big news for CES 2017 is the announcement of its Velop system, a mesh Wi-Fi system that, according to Linksys, should make those headaches of Wi-Fi setup a thing of the past. Any Velop node can work as a router, range extender, access point or bridge, with a simple web app to configure them all as they happily chat to each other over Tri-Band AC2200 Wi-Fi.
Velop will use three radios in every device to enable it to optimally configure its packet routing for, Linksys claims, the best possible Wi-Fi coverage in your home. Unlike most routers which tend for flat, square shapes, each Velop node is instead a small white vertical tower, with internal antennae positioned around the top and middle of each node.
Linksys has announced how much we’ll pay for the Velop system when it launches here in Australia in April. A single Velop device will cost $299.95, or $589.95 for a two pack or $749.95 for a three-pack.
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Alex Kidman travelled to Las Vegas for CES 2017 as a guest of Dell.