Linksys Velop Mesh Home WiFi System, 6,000 Sq. ft Coverage, 60+ Devices, Speeds up to (AC2200) 2.2Gbps - WHW0303

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 network The 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 device So 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 folks Cons: - Somewhat expensive Bottom line: - I would absolutely recommend the Velop to anyone looking for uniform, reliable WiFi coverage throughout their home.

Okay, so there are a mixed bag of reviews on the Linksys Velop. I was a pretty early adopter of the technology. My Apple Time Capsule (which was great in that it just plain worked and NEVER needed maintenance) had just died and I was hard pressed to find a solution that would replace it since Apple had long ago declared the death of the Time Capsule anyway. I had just moved into a larger house too, which meant whatever solution I chose had to have great wireless distance. I settled on the Linksys Velop Tri-Band and bought a three unit set. Setup was SO EASY. Then I hooked up all my wireless devices (I have a few...AKA 30+ devices). This is where the Linksys fails to impress. Speeds are average but far from great and when you have a lot of wireless devices attached, all hogging the 2.4 and 5 GHz wireless, things slow down or stop working altogether. I finally figured out that where I had my Linksys Velop devices (one in my office, one in the living room and one in the Master Bedroom) and they provided excellent wireless coverage, if too many wireless devices are attached, they slow to a crawl. I was rebooting the Linksys Velops constantly and it only temporarily fixed the problems. It was like all wireless routers I had used in the past (except for that Apple Time Capsule!). Then I wised up and purchased switches for each of my Linksys Velop. I know what many of you are probably thinking at this point. Wait a second...he bought a fancy wireless mesh solution and then added on wired switches?!?! Why yes...that is exactly what I did. The office has a larger switch attached since there are more devices in the office. And the living room and master bedroom have a smaller, 8 port switch, which only manages connectivity for my TV, Tivo and any miscellaneous devices. If you take some of the wireless load off your network (even if they are still running through the shared wireless band that the Linksys Velop uses to establish the wireless mesh) the Linksys Velop performs very well. It never needs a reboot anymore and much like my old Apple Time Capsule it just plain works. Maybe asking you to spend money on a fancy wireless mesh solution AND physical switches to offload some of your traffic is asking a lot, and you would be right...it is...but if you do, the Linksys Velop is a pretty decent solution to cover a lot of square footage. Love: Reliability, ease of setup and ZERO maintenance (other the occassional firmware upgrade) Don't Love: You can't attach a lot of high traffic wireless to the Velop without it locking up. Don't even THINK about wirelessly backing up a machine over a home network using the Linksys Velop (a feature that my Apple Time Capsule never even blinked at). If you're going to send a constant string of a large amount of data over the Linksys Velop, it will lock up.

I have been an IT Systems Engineer for over 14 years and have dealt with technology for quite some time longer, particularly in the areas of networking and gadget. I am going to write this review as non-technical as possible, then dive deeper into the more technical aspects later. Like many of you, you probably considered buying something like this Linksys Velop (or Eero Pro, Google WiFi, Orb, etc) because you have dead spots in your house where WiFi signal is either weak or non-existent. I have had that problem at my house where my outdoor security cameras would often freeze due to loss of signal, requiring a manual reboot every other week, and most importantly: I did NOT get enough WiFi in my bathroom to read my news! Nearly every man here reading this probably agrees that this is IMPORTANT! PREVIOUS SOLUTIONS So, I tried improving coverage by setting up an additional WiFi router on the other side of the house, but that would require us to manually switch to the appropriate WiFi name (SSID) that gives us the best signal wherever we are. This worked well for years, but for some reason I had to often reboot my router/modem from time to time when the internet connection broke. I had also tried a WiFi Extender, but that only worked well for a month or so before I gave up on it entirely. Next, I bought one of the "Editor's Choice" Asus routers -- it was quite expensive, but it was very powerful. It has advanced firewall/protection capabilities, parental controls, antivirus filtering, and what not. It really has a LOT of advanced options that I was looking for. But, it still could not cover the whole house. WHAT'S A MESH WIFI? In comes the Mesh WiFi system that popped up in recent years. The enterprise/business world has had this technology in use for a very long time that allowed employees to roam between floors and buildings seamlessly. However, they were quite expensive. Eero was the first company I heard of that tried to bring this technology to the average consumer in a friendly, easy-to-use way. What is a Mesh WiFi system? First, a mesh network requires 2 or more devices to talk to one another. These devices are in constant communication with one another, relaying information from one to the other and vice versa. You can add more devices to that system, and each one of them can pass information to the nearest device. So, what does that mean? Imagine you're standing in your living room and you are trying to tell your children upstairs to come down for dinner -- no matter how loud you shout, they can't hear you. (That's a dead WiFi spot -- the signal can't reach them or it's too low to be heard.) Now, what if you could have your husband (or wife) be standing at the stairs? Now you tell your husband to tell the kids that dinner is ready. The husband tells the kids to come down. The kids tell your husband that they heard it and are coming. Your husband now tells you that the kids are joining soon. That's a mesh... kind of. Let's take this example further. You're in a big park. You are trying to tell your children to come join for the birthday cake cutting, but no matter how hard you shout, they can't hear you. So, you ask every parent near you if they can tell the other parents that you're looking for your children. From parent to parent to parent, your word travels until it reaches the children. They have received your message and are now telling parents nearest them that they are coming, and those parents now pass the message on to their nearest parent until it reaches you. That's a mesh network. It's a spiderweb where the WiFi signal travels freely from neighbor to neighbor to the farthest reach of your house. Each parent in the spiderweb is represented by one of these Linksys nodes. The more you have, the larger area it can cover. In my home of 4 bedrooms and 2 stories, I have 3 nodes set up -- one in the family room, one near my stairs, and another upstairs. I now have a strong WiFi signal throughout my entire house AND I can stream videos and read my news perfectly well in my bathroom! Miracles do exist! A Mesh network also is designed to provide you with just a single WiFi name (SSID) so you don't have to keep switching between different WiFi as you travel through the house. All the major mesh systems also promise automated updates/upgrades of your system to add functionality and reliability. EERO PRO or LINKSYS VELOP? I started my research by reading reviews on Google WiFi, Orbi, Linksys Velop, and the Eero Pro. I had certain criteria in mind: 1. Great performance 2. Great reliability 3. Advanced configuration settings (DHCP, DNS, Separate SSIDs - more on that later, Guest WiFi network, parental controls, Firewall/Port forwarding) 4. Price 5. Ease of use and at-a-glance monitoring (via an Android/iOS Apple app) After reading a lot of reviews, it ultimately came down to the Linksys Velop and the Eero Pro. Eero was praised for its performance and ease-of-use, and Velop was regarded as the best bang for your buck. I chose the Eero Pro. Then I ran into issues with my Yi/Kuna security cameras AND my Honeywell thermostat would not connect to the Eero. This issue is due to the compatibility issues between the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radio frequencies, but I'll write more about those technical details later. I ended up returning the Eero Pro. I now have the Linksys Velop (3 nodes), and it resolved the issues I had with the Eero Pro after doing some advanced configuration. To summarize in layman's terms, both the Eero Pro and Linksys Velop are designed to be simple to use and set up. They both are here to help you strengthen your WiFi signal throughout your whole house and beyond. However, compatibility issues with the Eero Pro made me decide to keep the Velop instead. WHY VELOP OVER EERO? To understand why I chose the Velop, I have to dive into the technical details. WiFi today operates on 2 major radio frequencies: 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. The 2.4 GHz gives you the largest coverage in terms of distance AND gives you the best compatibility because it's an older standard. The 5 GHz gives you the best WiFi speed BUT at the expense of distance -- your WiFi signal gets weaker faster than 2.4 GHz. Most newer devices, especially computers, phones, and tablets support the 5 GHz standard just fine. Both the Eero and the Velop combine the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radios into a single WiFi name (SSID) to simplify things for the user -- to allow you to move around the house freely without having to worry about which node you are connected to. The mesh system would automatically choose the best node for you to connect to at either the 2.4 or 5 GHz frequencies. At least that's in theory. None of the systems will choose the "best" (closest) node at this time, but that will surely improve over time as the manufacturer fleshes out the calculations/programming to give you the most optimized connection. So, with both radio frequencies now presented to WiFi devices via a single SSID, it is now up to the device to choose the appropriate radio frequency to connect to. With laptops, phones, and tablets, that is not a problem. Where the problem lies is with devices designed to ONLY work with the 2.4 GHz frequency, such as my Yi and Kuna security cameras and the Honeywell thermostat. The Yi and Kuna cameras both had difficulty staying reliably connected to the Eero Pro, and the Honeywell thermostat flat out refused to connect at all. A search on the internet revealed that many others had the same problem. One workaround would be to separate the SSID into two: one for the 2.4 and another for the 5 GHz bands, such as "HomeWifi" and "HomeWifi-5G" where the latter indicates it's the 5 GHz frequency. Then you would assign the problem device to connect to the "HomeWifi" SSID (running the 2.4 GHz frequency), and the rest of the house could run on the "HomeWifi-5G" for the best speeds. The Linksys Velop allows you to set up separate SSIDs for the 2.4 and 5 GHz via a hidden method that I will detail later. The Linksys Velop app does not provide that option. Once I separated my networks into two SSIDs, all the compatibility issues I had with the Honeywell thermostat went away (as I forced it to connect to the 2.4 GHz SSID). The Eero system does NOT allow you to separate the SSID -- in fact, their customer support forum questions why there's a need for it, cites that the Eero is not designed for it, and said to buy another system if you want to have separate SSIDs. That is exactly why I decided to go with the Velop. It works exactly how I want. ISSUES - Once in a while, I see one of my nodes show as being Disconnected. I then go to the Devices view to see if there are any devices connected to that specific node (and there are), and when I go back to Velop Administration, that node shows as Connected again. It's an odd behavior. - When I connect a network cable to the remote Velop nodes (not the parent one), that node stops working until I disconnect the cable. I have absolutely no idea why. The way my network is set up is as follows: Internet <-> Modem <-> Asus Router with Wifi disabled <-> Velop 1 (Parent in Router mode + DHCP server) <-> Netgear ProSafe GSS108E 8-port switch <-> Netgear ProSafe GSS116E 16-port switch <-> Wired devices that are throughout the house. If I connect the remote Velops to any of the Netgear switches, that Velop no longer works and blinks a red light until the cable is disconnected. I haven't engaged Linksys tech support for it yet. [EDIT 8/4/2018: I have been in touch with Support to diagnose this issue. It is being escalated all the way up to their Engineering team. Support has also been very proactive in reaching out to me. This assures me I have made the right decision to go with Linksys. UPDATE 10/10/18: Escalation support has determined that my Netgear switches are Managed ones. As such, I'd have to disable Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) and, if possible, enable LLDP on the Netgears. Velop may work without LLDP, but Linksys can't guarantee that. I have not yet found out how to disable STP/enable LLDP on the Netgears, and so the Wired option won't be available to me with the Velops at this time. Support has found that turning off STP and enabling LLDP with switches they had tested, including their own Linksys ones, would fix the issue with Velop.] VELOP TIPS - Each Velop node supposedly can cover up to 2,000 sq ft. Of course, the further out you are from the node, the weaker the signal. The closer the Velop nodes are to one another, the stronger it is able to amplify the signal to the other nodes throughout the house. So, if you have a two-story house with 4+ bedrooms, Linksys suggests having 3 nodes: one for downstairs, upstairs, and another somewhere in-between. Place it like a Zig-zag pattern (Z) or a sideways V (>) - I set up a Guest WiFi network to put all my smart home devices on (Yi and Kuna security cameras and electrical outlets). What is a Guest WiFi? It's a separate network that's isolated from your main one to prevent unauthorized access to your home/main network. That way, if the security cameras get hacked, the hackers won't easily be able to enter my main network where all my laptops, computers, and so on are connected to. - The Guest network cannot have its 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands separate into two SSIDs. There's a single SSID for both. Oddly, the Yi, Kuna, and Honeywell devices are able to connect to this Guest network fine (whereas the Honeywell completely failed to connect with the Eero) - Advanced: To create a separate SSID, you will have to use a computer browser (like Internet Explorer or Google Chrome) (or request the "Desktop site" option on your mobile browser) and go to https (colon slash slash) 192 (dot) 168 (dot) 1.1 (the IP address of the parent node -- you can find it in the Velop app under "Velop Administration". I can't post the link since Amazon blocks it). From there, go to Router Settings > Wifi Settings > "Separate Wifi Settings" > "Show more". Provide a name for the 2.4 GHz and another for the 5 GHz (such as "HomeWifi" and "HomeWifi-5G"). You will be warned about setting up different Wifi names. Click on "Use different names". The Velop will restart, and you will now have two SSIDs - In the Advanced configuration specified above, you can also modify the DHCP and Firewall settings - Diagnostic page: you can enter that section via your web browser by going to http (colon slash slash) ip address of the node (slash) ca - Systems Logs page: you can enter that section via your web browser by going to http (colon slash slash) ip address of the node (slash) sysinfo (dot) cgi. Username is "admin" I am very happy with the performance, advanced configuration option, and price of the Velop and recommend this system a lot. Coverage is so strong, I'm able to walk 3 homes away and still have signal (although a very weak one). It has also been very reliable and hasn't needed a reboot. Hope you found this Helpful!

I’m a technology nut with a bachelors and masters degree in comp sci, and work in the software industry. It is with that background that I can tell you, these nodes are a pain in the butt. I was very excited to finally get WiFi mesh networking technology into my home. My house is large and meanders with lots of nooks and hidden areas, and from my professional life I knew mesh networking was the way to go. I was happy to see that Linksys had a system available for the home. Unfortunately, that’s where my enthusiasm began to end. I bought my first 3-pack six months ago. It was very easy to set up. I was disappointed to find there was no apparent way to measure signal strength and help provide an educated guess on where to place the nodes. So I positioned them to, as best as I could guess, cover my home. The three nodes said they were happy with their placement (again, you only get a happy message, no data on signal strength). But then within a day or two, nodes started losing connection. When this happens, you take your cell phone to the node. The app asks if the light is red, which it normally is not. You then have to remove and reinstall the power for the node and wait several minutes for a reset. You then have about a 50/50 shot of it coming up red, in which you press that button on the app and wait several more minutes, or it will reconnect. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to doing this step every other day… After dropping nodes all the time, I decided I would add another 2-pack of nodes to try to get better line of sight between nodes. Again, there is no signal strength or placement guidance, so you guess. Now with five nodes, it again kept dropping nodes every couple of days. So, being a stubborn technologist, I bought another 1-pack of nodes to try to cover what I thought might be a blind spot due to heavy appliances in the kitchen. But within two days I found we’re still on the reset-a-node every two days. Except now I have a total of SIX NODES, so one, two, or three are dropping every other day. So take that slow process described above, and multiply that by every down node to see what I have to do to restore the network. Ok, at this point I feel I’m committed. (Truly, I am ready to be committed over this purchase.) I have worked with mesh networking professionally, and I know it can work and can be awesome. So what do I do? I BOUGHT ANOTHER 3-pack of nodes, for now a total of NINE NODES in my home. Oh, and yes, I’m up to over $1,100 dollars in failing Linksys nodes in every corner of my home… Guess what happened with NINE nodes in a normal to slightly large home? That just means the nodes start dropping off 2, 3, and 4 at a time! Yep, you go around every other night resetting multiple nodes with the stupid app that won’t give you ANY data on how to fix the problem. Fortunately, there is a button on the app to report problems. I have now used that dozens of times. What it doesn’t tell you is that you never hear back from Linksys. I’ve stopped using that button and I just yell at the dog. It does just as much good… In summary, don’t do it! My wife thinks I’m crazy; she wants me to stop spending 30 minutes every night “babysitting my nodes” as she calls it. My son, who is also a technologist, laughs and wonders why I can’t keep reliable wifi in my home… And I am really pissed at my stubbornness that has kept me trying to make this system work for 6 months now. Please look for my auction on eBay. I’ll sell you all NINE NODES in barter for a good bottle of wine. Ops, hang on, I have to go reset a couple of nodes so I can get back online and post this review…. DON’T BUY THIS PRODUCT!

So I want to start this review off by saying that I has an asus rt66u and it was a great router but the range was very limited for the size of my home (2200 square feet). So I decided to research mesh units for over 2 months. I researched the Orbi, Eero, Luma, Google and Velop. I decided on the Orbi. That experience did not go well so I replaced it with another Orbi and had a similar experience. This isnt to say the Orbi was bad, but I had dropped wifi over and over. After my last return I decided to take a flyer on the Velop. The reason I did not purchase the Velop originally is because of the limited number of ethernet ports. I prefer my FireTV and Xbox One hard wired so my original choice was not this. After I received the Velop i was curious about the setup time, so I purposely waited until I had a two hour block of time in case I experienced issues. I remembered my last experiences. I unboxed it, and downloaded the linksys app on my android phone. After following the instructions, it did not find my modem right away. So I just reset my modem and tried again. Boom! Found the modem. Then I placed the other node (I bought the two node system) upstairs. It found that node within minutes. So the total setup time....15 MINUTES! Ok so now i had to test the range. I went in the far corners of my house and it was getting top speeds throughout. I even went into my basement in the far corner and was getting terrific speed. I would like to say that my basement is finished and I have steel studs in the walls. This was always an issue. Not with the Velop! My ISP speeds that I purchase is 25 mps down. I was getting 17 in the far corner of my home surrounded by steel studs. Anywhere upstairs on either floor I was getting 20+. Outside 50 feet in my backyard I was getting 15. I also got 15 by my front mailbox which is 50 feet the other way. Now the consistency test. The Orbi never went more than 3 hours without 1 drop. This product I have had for about a week and NO drops! We had a quick power outage/power surge in our neighborhood where my lights went on and off and so did my modem. My Velop dropped at that point (obviously) but then picked right back up without even touching it! Blazing speeds! I was convinced I was going to take this back but how can I? I think people want consistency and speed out of router more than advanced settings. Well that is precisely what you get with this. The app is limited with no real bells and whistles. I had that before and really dont need that out of a router. Oh by the way....My Xbox one...it is wireless now because this mesh unit is so good you dont need ethernet cables! I know. I was tough to convince but this did it for me. We have 2 fire TVs which are wireless, xbox 360, xbox one which are wireless and we have 3 laptops, 3 tablets and 5 smartphones. The Velop handles them all with NO ISSUES! I dont need a DMZ, dont need port forwarding, blah blah blah. I just needed this beast the whole time. THANKS LINKSYS. I dont mind shelling out the bucks for this one. Peace of mind is valuable!

My setup is in the country. Our internet comes wirelessly from a tower so we were having major issues with consistency. I also wanted a setup that I can move to a pole barn that is 50 feet away from my home. Home to Barn: We were able to get a clear signal about 75% strength (as the pole barn has metal siding that caused some issues). I was able to place the Velop in a good position that got a great signal. We used this on New Years Day to stream the college football playoff for a party. No issues. Great connection. Between games I was able to pass out guest access (using the app) and play Quiplash on the Amazon Fire TV. Super simple - We had guest access turned off during the football games - but then could turn it on when we played games so everyones phones could get connected (as we were in a pole barn and no one got bars). Cable vs Wireless I did debate on running a cable to the barn - but the connivence of moving a velop - no wires no setup. It just made more sense to use this setup. I then took the velop back to the home and use it to get a better connection throughout my home. Keep in mind I did need to position the velop so the connection could be strong - so testing and just being smart with keeping them closer than convenient in this situation. At the end of the day - its the signal strength that mattered. Consistency: The original reason I purchased. I needed a better connection throughout my home. I purchased the home recently and it was setup with ethernet cables in every room. Now the home was built in 2003 - I purchased 4 months ago... Today in 2018 everything is on the go. Some devices (apple) only connect wirelessly so having a strong connection in every room of my house is a must. This fixed my dropped signals and have not had 1 issue. Work I work from home as a web developer and having a connection drop for months was driving me insane. This only added to the reason to purchase the velop system. Video calls - while 3 kids stream on 3 other devices - no lag - no connection loss. Connection Currently using a Mac Airpot 3TB Time Capsule as my router. I had a 6 year old linksys router that was under performing so i setup the airport and was having less issues but still issues. Adding velop again resolved drop or low connections. I highly recommend this product. It's packaging was amazing, its insanely beautiful in the home. Easy user friendly app. Simple color coded connection. I have owned other linksys products in the past - this is above anything else I have used with them.

My primary reason for choosing the Linksys Velop mesh system over competing wireless systems was the dedicated tri-band performance for client device connections. Most "Tri-Band" mesh systems reserve one of the bands as dedicated wireless backhaul, even when a wired backhaul is in use, but this system was the only one I found that made the third band available to clients when a wired backhaul was detected. I wanted to come as close as possible to the AC2300 performance of my previous TP-Link router, and the AC2200 on Velop system seemed to fit the bill, considering all of the other issues I've had I'm not sure it was worth the trade-off. First the good stuff. Setup was simple and straightforward, and I was up and running in minutes using the mobile app. The design is sleek, and lack of exterior antennas is a definite plus on the unit that is within reach of my toddlers, as they really mangled my previous router. When the system is up and running properly and I'm not messing with it, performance is solid with generally acceptable speeds, and very reliable device availability for my horde of smart home equipment and streaming devices. Both the mobile app and the web interface are simple, sleek and easy to use if a little bare-bones in terms of features and configuration options. The problems start when you start trying to configure anything non-standard: -- Every change to network setting requires a reboot. Any change, even something as simple as a DHCP reservation, will temporarily kick all of my devices off the network and reconnect all of them, if not require a complete system reboot. This is a problem for households with online gamers (like mine), but otherwise wouldn't be a big deal for most people if not for the... --Slow bootup and bulk device connections I was worried when I saw that I was going from a 1.8GHz processor in my TP-Link router, to a 700MHz processor in the Velop system, and those concerns were wholly justified. System reboots, which as I mentioned above are fairly common, can take several minutes. Once the system is running, it can take up to half an hour for the network to stabilize and connect all ~35 of my devices. Tasks that don't require a full reboot, but still disconnect all of my devices, tend to bring the system to it's knees and crash the DHCP server as everything tries to reconnect at once, necessitating a system reboot anyways. I wound up switching my DHCP server to another device (a PC running Pi-Hole) and that has largely resolved this issue and significantly improved the speed with which devices connect to the network, but that is not a terribly user-friendly solution. --Poor load-balancing for stationary devices While mobile devices like smart phones and laptops seem to transition seamlessly from node to node, stationary devices like streaming dongles and WiFi light switches seem to connect to the first node available and just stay there. This means that when I reboot the Velop system (again, happens ALL THE TIME) my devices will connect to the first node to come back online, even if that node is on the opposite side of the house and the device is mere inches away from a better node. The only way I've found to move these devices to the proper node is to restart or otherwise reconnect each client device individually. --Throttled WiFi connections While the Velop system on paper supports 867 + 867 + 400 Mbps connectivity over WiFi, and most devices detect speeds in the range of 500-600 MHz over the 5GHz band, in practice I have never seen a single WiFi device on my network get better than ~135 Mbps up or down. This is fine for connections over the internet, since I only have 150 Mbps download from my ISP, but since I also run an in-home Media/Backup server on my local network I as a bit disappointed that my WiFi devices could only transfer at a fraction of speeds I'm seeing from my wired devices, especially when my previous, much less expensive TP-Link router could easily achieve its advertised speeds over WiFi. --5GHz Dropouts I've also had issues with nodes randomly dropping one or both 5GHz bands. This usually manifests as one or two of my devices failing to connect to the network because the band they are trying to connect to is unavailable. I have a 2-unit system, so pulling up a WiFi utility like WIFIMAN usually detects 6 available APs for my network, 1 x 2.4GHz and 2x 5GHz per node times 2 nodes. the 2.4GHz bands are stable, but I routinely find only 2-3 of the 5GHz bands are available and have to do a system reboot to get all of the connections back online. The dropouts seem to happen more often with my secondary node, but I have seen regular dropouts from both nodes. While none of these issues are big enough deal-breakers to make me return the system, since my wife might murder me if I do, I am more than a little disappointed in my experience so far and will likely be going back to TP-Link products again when it comes time to replace these units in a few years.