AT&T has launched the "AT&T Smart Wi-Fi Extender," a device built to enable a stronger and more consistent Wi-Fi signal throughout your home. AT&T's product is one box that keeps devices connected to the internet as you move from one room to another, and customers can purchase additional boxes for bigger homes.
The Smart Wi-Fi Extender is designed for customers with an AT&T internet subscription who have Wi-Fi gateways 5268AC or BGW210, boosting coverage by up to 1,000 square feet and reducing network congestion. The company said that it automatically selects the "best and fastest available connection" for every device that you connect to the internet within your home. AT&T created the extender in partnership with AirTies.
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The company priced the Smart Wi-Fi Extender at $34.99, and said it offers the same Wi-Fi boosting abilities of competitive mesh systems "that cost hundreds of dollars." It appears that the Wi-Fi Extender was available for some AT&T customers to purchase ahead of the wider launch this week.
That’s why we are introducing the new AT&T Smart Wi-Fi Extender – a state-of-the-art device that gives you the strongest Wi-Fi signal throughout your entire home. Its mesh technology keeps your devices connected as you move around, so you experience a seamless connection everywhere. Now you can stream, download, surf, and work on your devices anywhere, worry free. No dropped connection as you step into the backyard. No more interruptions or watching the football freeze in mid-air.
The 4-inch box is a 1600Mbps dual-band concurrent wireless access point and includes a port for 2 Gigabit Ethernet LAN and a power cable. AT&T also noted that it is compliant with 802.11ac and 802.11n standards, as well as being backwards compatible with 802.11a/b/g wireless standards.
The Smart Wi-Fi Extender will connect to an established AT&T Wi-Fi network, which can be managed via the Smart Home Manager iOS app. The company announced the app last summer and refers to it as a customer's "Wi-Fi concierge." With the app, users can change their network name and password, check who is connected to the network, invite guests to join with a text or email, and contact customer service in a chatroom.
Top Rated Comments
(View all)Price seems to be good though.
I have experience with this device and it is absolute crap, goes out all the time and is no better than a poor repeater. Frontier already uses this and the company who makes them just changes the name such as Airties, Frontier Secure etc.
Any extender/mesh point placed to far from the access point or without extenders/mesh point between the extender and the access point most likely will drop the channel.1000 square feet isn't even 100 square meters, my Uniquiti Unifi AC Pro has a lot more coverage and can probably have many more clients on one single device.
AirTies is a mesh device and as such provides a better experience than a classic WiFi router and/or dumb repeater, but will never match up to a properly deployed system based on Ubiquiti's Unifi ('https://unifi-sdn.ubnt.com')line of products.Price seems to be good though.
If you care about consistent performance throughout the house and getting the best performance you can from WiFi, you'll want to do a bit of planning and use an Ethernet backbone, look for .11ac, .11r, pushing devices to wider (80MHz) 5GHz channels, planning out your 2.4GHz channels (1, 6, 11). The future is products like AC SHD that have real-time continuous spectrum monitoring.
So, the current mesh networking fad is an improvement for most people over the single router model, but it still leaves a lot to be desired.