WiFi Everywhere, Yay! 

Are you the 1%? Do you have a 6+ bedroom house that needs good Wi-Fi, but you don’t want to run unseemly ethernet or coaxial cables everywhere in your home because you don’t believe in wires? Don't want to deal with Wi-Fi Repeaters because you can't think of enough funny names for the multiple SSIDs you'll have to use? Then you need a Wi-Fi mesh system! Up for review today we have the Rockspace Whole Home Wi-Fi System, a dual-band Wi-Fi mesh system that promises to provide AC1200 Wi-Fi with a coverage of up to 2000sq.ft per module/6000sq.ft total, according to the box!...or rather, up to 5380sq.ft. according to their website, and even that’s a bit of a stretch. But we’ll get there, first we’ll talk about what you get when you buy your own Rockspace Mesh System.

It’s not much. When you open your very own Rockspace Wi-Fi Mesh System, you get three AC1200 modules, three power adapters, one flat ethernet cable, and a quickstart user guide, which has a little bit of Engrish (as Rockspace is a China-based brand), but it’s better than most. In terms of looks, each module is just a little square 4x4in box with a nice cloth finish on the top which looks pretty good. There are no external antennas, so they’ll fit right in tight spaces if you need them to, and the minimalist design won’t be too much of an eyesore if you care about that sort of thing. On the bottom of the device you’ll get your two ethernet ports, one that’s dedicated for WAN and one that’s for ethernet out for any device that needs it, but that’s it. If you happen to have a lot of network devices that need to be wired, you’re definitely going to need to pick up an ethernet switch so you can have more than one port. Price-wise, the RockSpace Home Wi-Fi Mesh System starts at $169.99 for three modules, which is about average for systems with the same specifications from brand names like TP-Link or Linksys. 

Setting up your mesh system is relatively simple: you connect one module to your modem as the primary node, install the RS Wi-Fi app on your mobile device, connect to the SSID that’s listed on the bottom of your module, and then the app will walk you through a quick setup which lets you set your SSID, and connect any other modules up to the primary node. Unfortunately, it seems the only way to setup your Rockspace Mesh is through this mobile app, there appears to be no browser-based configuration page that I can find. Attempting to connect to the default gateway simply results in a “Connection Timed Out” error, which is fairly disappointing, but I suppose in this day and age everyone probably has a mobile device of some sort so it’s not exactly the biggest con in the world. The app itself appears to be pretty well-made, and includes all the usual basic settings you’d expect for a router configuration page: you can set the default DNS, change your SSID or set up a guest network, manage parental controls, setup UPnP or manual port forwarding and other various settings. You can also view your mesh network, including all the nodes that are connected to your main module and how many devices are currently connected to your network, although you can’t see which node you’re actually connected to which is a tad disappointing and could make potentially troubleshooting individual nodes a bit difficult. There’s also a “Remote Management” option, but this requires you to register to their service which I decided to pass on.

Performance-wise, you probably won’t be that impressed for the price you pay, at least compared to a single router at a similar price. As noted above, this is just an AC1200 system, which is certainly a decent enough speed for your average user, but something you need to keep in mind with a mesh system is that, as you go from your wired primary node to your wireless secondary node, you’re going to get some loss of speed, and this is evident when you run benchmarks like Speedtest.net. For example, when (presumably, since I can’t actually tell) connected to the primary node in my living room, my Galaxy S8 is able to push ~225mbps, which is about the same as my AC2400 Asus RT-AC87U...but when I move over to my kitchen where I placed a secondary node (which, while using my AC87U was basically a Wi-Fi deadzone), that speed dropped down to anywhere between 80-100mbps, introduces a bit higher of a ping (from 18ms->22ms) as well as introducing some jitter (just 1-2ms). But, all in all, this is still pretty ok performance, and should be more than enough if you just need something to expand your Wi-Fi so you can stream Netflix or Spotify in the far corner of your house and maybe for a bit of light multiplayer gaming. Just don’t expect to be doing any kind of competitive play the more nodes you use/the further away you go. And speaking of distances, what about that “2000sq.ft-6000/5380sq.ft” claim Rockspace makes on their box/product page? Well...it’s not quite true. My entire property is ~950 sq ft total in size, so according to Rockspace, just one of these little modules should cover my entire property!...except it doesn’t. Just one module placed in my living room (specifically, right next to the exterior wall) loses signal about as soon as I hit the edge of my property (which I’d say is about 30ft away from the module). But I suppose to be utterly fair to Rockspace, your mileage will vary depending on a lot of different factors when it comes to signal coverage; things like number/thickness/composition of walls, interference, and other such factors may change how far exactly the signal is broadcast, so that’s something you should definitely be aware of if you plan on implementing a mesh system in your home.