Thinking about home networks

Since moving into my new place I’ve noticed something that has changed since the first time I installed WiFi in any home I’ve lived in.

My local network speed via WiFi (802.11n) is slower than my connectivity to the internet (thanks to Verizon FIOS). And setting up these networks still feels hard and fragile.

My home office and a few other rooms have ethernet in the new house but I dont’ like being tethered down to one spot in the house. That’s why we use laptops in the house instead of desktop machines for the most part.

The home network at home needs to improve. We’ve been living with the same set of technologies for the most part for about 10 years. Maybe more. We’ve been getting more speed but the ease of use leaves a lot to be desired. Installation remains complicated & challenging. And now the even the speed improvements isn’t keeping up with the last mile.

Our Sonos system uses their own networking scheme to mesh together. It’s quite clever. Once one node is active is a button click to activate new nodes.

I want all my the devices on my home network to work just like that. And I need it to get faster. Downstream and upstream.