LinksysWHW0301 Velop Intelligent Mesh WiFi System: AC2200 Tri-Band Wi-Fi Router, Wireless Network for Full-Speed Home Coverage (White, 1-Pack)

The Linksys Velop Tri-band Mesh Network System, P/N AC6600, is a relatively uncomplicated system to set up IF you understand a little about or have previously set up basic home wi-fi networking.I don't know how easy it is for those who have no prior experience setting up a wi-fi. It may be as easy or it may not, depending on your technical acumen and how well you read up beforehand and prepare for the installation. I cannot comment since I've been fooling around with home wi-fi ever since it was mass-marketed in the late 1990s.The packaging is crisp and very well done. You open the Linksys box easily due to a magnetic flap (no tape or seals to cut), and you see three Velop wi-fi routers, and a quick install card on the left, under which are three power supplies, one for each router, and one ethernet cable for the "home" router. Note - any one of the three Velop routers can be chosen and installed as the "home" unit when you begin the installation.NOTE - BEFORE you begin the actual installation, get a notepad and pencil or whatever you want to use to take down some vital information. Turn each of the three Velop routers over and you will find five (5) unique numbers on labels on the bottom. The print (font) is microscopic so if your eyes aren't great, get a magnifying glass and be under a good bright desk lamp. I strongly suggest that at this time you choose which router is going in each of your three home locations. So for mine, I had "Office" (which is in my basement), "Living Room", and "2nd Floor". I stuck a temporary lable on the side of each router. Your names will probably be different. Leave 5 lines under each router designation on your notepad. Under each of your chosen router names, record the following numbers from its bottom labels: Name_____, Password_____, Recovery Key____, Serial No.______, and MAC (address)________.The Name and Password on the labels are from the factory and only temporary and will not be used once you have developed your unique router names (I used the room name), your wi-fi home network name and password during the installation of the first router. But the label names & passwords may be needed in the future so don't lose your notes. You will find the MAC address versus router name handy to know once your system is running so you can tell which router is which and what devices are connected to it.I had read in advance of how to transition from my existing Apple Time Capsule/Airport Wi-Fi network to the new Linksys network. My previous Wi-Fi using the Apple Time Capsule router included a separate Arris cable modem that I was using to connect to my Comcast broadband cable internet service. The modem was not changed for this new system, it works just fine. Just connect the modem ethernet output to the first Velop router (either one of the two bottom ethernet ports on the Velop). But if you're not familiar with your existing network, fear not! Just follow the installation app instructions that you will be using - see my next paragraph. - and you should do fine.Linksys requires you to install their Velop app on your smartphone in order to install the system. You DON'T use your pc. The app is available on Apple's App Store and I assume from elsewhere if you're not an Apple user as I am. The app is free and installs easily. Once it installs, start following it's step-by-step instructions. I found it handy to pre-read the instructions from the Linksys website (using my laptop browser) before downloading the smartphone app and beginning the actual installation. It's just a suggestion. Also, if you've turned off your old wi-fi router, using the smartphone app is handy because that can communicate with Linksys via your cellular connection until your first Velop router (and its wi-fi signal) is up and running.The app requires you to establish a username and password which becomes your Admin credentials for modifying or customizing the Linksys settings if you want to use features other than the standard default settings. I won't go into those details because it's well-covered in many websites online if you search on "how to setup Linksys velop mesh wi-fi system".So once I started the linksys app and connected the first Velop router to my modem, it took about 10-15 minutes for that to recognize the internet signal from my modem and indicate it was ready (a light on the top goes to purple when its ready to install, and when all is done it turns solid blue). I followed the sequential instructions on the smartphone app; at one point I had to register for the Linksys Cloud account (needed for some optional features) and you have to have a home network name (SSID) and a password ready to type in. PS - CREATE YOUR NEW NETWORK NAME (SSID) AND NEW NETWORK PASSWORD BEFORE YOU START** SO YOU DON'T GET CONFUSED DURING THE PROCEDURE - HAVE THEM WRITTEN DOWN IN FRONT OF YOU.**I used a free website called Random Strong Passwords to generate a very strong 16 character password for my network since i live in a neighborhood where houses are on 1/8 acre lots and relatively close to each other. Everyone sees everyone else's SSIDs (I can see about 8 other people's SSID's inside my house) so its best to name my wi-fi network using nothing that gives away that it's my network and a password that no one other than NSA with their supercomputer can crack.After the first router setup was complete, the next two were so easy it was ridiculous. I simply took the second Velop router to the first floor, plugged it, waited until the light on the top turned purple, then followed the prompts on the smartphone app to "Add another node". It went much faster and easier now that the network had been created by the first router. Just had to name it "Living Room". That was easy. The third Velop router went on the second floor, again, setup for the added router was fast. Named that one "2nd Floor". Easy peasy.Coming back down to the basement, I could see that my new Velop mesh network was up and running fine, and we have strong wi-fi (5/5 or 4/5) throughout our house. All that remained was to go around and re-program every device that connects to wi-fi with the new SSID and new password. Two smart TV's, one home stereo, a security camera, one smart thermostat, two Apple TV boxes, 3 laptops, 2 wi-fi printers, four iPads, and two more iPhones. After entering the 16 digit password so many times, I was grateful this only needs doing once or (hopefully) *very* seldom. Whew!Everything works! MUCH better signal & speed than before when I had only a single router. Today is 3 days after installation and the system has remained rock solid with no dropouts. I'm impressed.

We have a somewhat large house. As such, WiFi coverage can be spotty depending on where you are, how many walls the signal has to go thru, what furniture is in the way, and all kinds of things like that. We have a relatively new router, a Linksys AC5400 Linksys AC5400 Tri Band Wireless Router, Works with Amazon Alexa (Max Stream EA9500). It works well and has good coverage as in my iPhone and MacBook Pro both get good signal thruout most of the house.Things had been okay until we got a new DirecTV DVR. Our previous model had worked fine on the LInksys 5 GHz WiFi band but this new model couldn't keep a connection up if its life depended on it. We tried both the 5 GHz as well as the 2.5 GHz bands, changed channels, but no joy. So a conundrum: what to do?The alternatives we came up with included:- Running CAT6 thru the walls for a direct connection- Running Ethernet over our power lines- Setting up a mesh WiFi networkThe first option would have been best. Direct connect to our router; no outside interference; number of walls didn't matter (well, other than running the cable). So good all around. But running wires thru a 2-story house is basically a real pain in the rear. So while we could make this work, we decided not to because of the problems running the signal cables.The second option seemed reasonable. The interface devices were relative cheap. You plug on into a power outlet near your router, run a CAT6 cable to it, plug a second unit into an outlet near where you need your network signal, plug that into your device, and all it good. So we tried a pair of Zyxel AV2000 power line devices Zyxel AV2000 Powerline Kit, Pass-Thru, 2-port Gigabit, Brown Box (PLA5456BBKIT). Initially, this worked well: green connection lights on both units, good signal where we needed it. But it didn't last. We had a storm roll thru with a couple of mild power spikes. That killed one of our units. All our computers and electronics are behinds UPS units; there were unphased. The Zyxel unit, however, had to be plugged into the wall directly as the Ethernet signal wouldn't make it thru UPS filtering. Hmmm...bad luck I suppose. So I bought a pair of additional units, plugged one it, and all was good with the world again. That was, however, until we tried to pull some bigger download thru the unit. Our green lights turned to yellow indicating poor signal quality. Our download speed went to virtually zilch no matter what we do. Bottom line: this did not work for our needs.Our final option was to try a mesh WiFi network. I have done IT work for my entire career. Setting up access points so that you get good WiFi coverage without interference through a structure can be anything from easy peasy to downright impossible. So it was with some degree of apprehension that I decided to give this a go. As it turns out, any misgivings were ill founded as setup was a breeze. The steps were simple:- Load a free app onto your iPhone and Android phone- Wire one unit to your router and power it on- Use the app to setup your new WiFi SSID and password plus configure the device (2-3 min)- Plug a second device into power where you need WiFi coverage then use the app to configure it (again, 2-3 min)- Repeat if you have a 3rd or 4th deviceSo this was cool: I now had another WiFi network running in my house. I joined my iPhone to it then tested it for ping, jitter, download, and upload speeds. These were the same readings I got when I tested via my MacBook Pro directly connected to that same router. Okay, we're good: strong signal, no performance penalty.So I joined my DirecTV DVR to this new network confident that I had solved the problem. Unfortunately, things did not go well. Even though I had a good connection. the DirecTV device couldn't use the signal. It told me this by freezing and becoming unresponsive any time I tried to download something over this new network. It was so hung up that I had to power cycle it to clear the condition. Well, phhhhtttttt (that's a highly technical term we us in IT when something should work but doesn't). Then I remembered: each Velop unit has a pair of RJ-45 connectors on the bottom. I wonder: could I run a short CAT6 cable from the Velop to the DirecTV DVR and use a wired rather than a wireless connection? So I gave it a shot and it worked. Not only did it work but it has stayed working ever since with nary a whimper and zero problems.Pros:- Works well- Reliable- Really easy to setup even for non-IT folksCons:- Somewhat expensiveBottom line:- I would absolutely recommend the Velop to anyone looking for uniform, reliable WiFi coverage throughout their home.