Wi-Fi dead zones. They’re every ISP’s worst nightmare. They’re also becoming more and more of a customer retention problem in the age of the smart home and high-speed internet. With so many connected devices performing critical tasks in the home, dead zones have gone from a pesky nuisance a client complains to a friend about, to the reason they cancel their service and switch to a competitor.

When it comes to eliminating Wi-Fi dead zones, whole home mesh systems check a lot of boxes in the win column for both the client and the technician. Click To Tweet

Still troubleshooting dead zones the old-fashioned way? It might be time to start offering whole home mesh Wi-Fi services and hardware to your customers.

The age-old “Dead Zone” problem

When a client calls and complains that they can’t connect to the Wi-Fi in parts of their home you, the investigating technician, have several options. But they all essentially boil down to a time-consuming process of trial and error.

First things first, you can set aside an hour or two and move the router to different locations in the home to see if coverage improves at all. If that doesn’t work, there’s the fun option of rearranging furniture that may or may not be impacting Wi-Fi signals. On the technical side of things, you might try switching the router to a different frequency or channel, set up a wireless range extender, or abandon the wireless solution altogether and simply run a wired Ethernet connection to the dead zone.

With the exception of the wired Ethernet connection, all that hard work often ends up solving next to nothing or only improving the signal marginally. The dead zone persists, and the client remains frustrated.

Whole home mesh Wi-Fi to the rescue

A whole home mesh Wi-Fi system includes a router that connects to a modem and one or more satellite nodes, which are placed in key areas around the home. The satellite nodes extend the wireless coverage in the home, but unlike range extenders the signal performance remains full. Customers enjoy a seamless roaming experience, with no switching between nodes as they move from room to room.

When it comes to eliminating Wi-Fi dead zones, whole home mesh systems check a lot of boxes in the win column for both the client and the technician. The problem is not only solved quickly but effectively, as bandwidth and speed both remain at peak performance in every room of the house.

Optimizing whole home mesh Wi-Fi for fiber

For clients with high-speed fiber connections and expectations of ultra-fast uninterrupted internet, dead zones are simply unacceptable. So is less-than-ideal performance.

The challenge with fiber smart homes is managing how network performance drops when the wired fiber connection is accessed wirelessly through a router. This is why it’s so critical to ensure routers are placed in a central location with little or no obstructions, such as inside a Wi-Fi-transparent media panel. This ensures the strongest possible signal from the router.

For this same reason, whole home mesh Wi-Fi systems work best in fiber smart homes with wired Ethernet connections in several locations throughout the home. The router and each mesh node can then be connected via wired Ethernet, and the home’s smart devices can connect wirelessly to each node.