These antennas are there for a reason, of course, but a lot of that reason has to do with what you are using your wifi for and how much you care about things like throughput and latency over “Is the wifi working out here?” sort of concerns.
As @fuzzyfungus pointed out though, the corporate APs use radiotransparent cases to hide the antennas, and so I’m sure such a thing will become the norm eventually, though it may lead to some weirdly shaped boxes to ensure the required spacing of those antennas apart from one another.
Maybe this is a belated attempt to make up for all the VCRs and DVD players and tuner boxes and related crap-that all look indistinguisable from each other?
I think it is, actually. Make the product look aggressive so that it stands out in online stores, knowing that the moment it gets in most houses, it’s going to end up out of sight.
I bought these, Google’s mesh routers, which work great and aren’t butt-ugly. But now I wish I hadn’t because I’d rather Google weren’t looking at everything I do or save or read on the home network. Also the interface is only available over your phone.
Mesh is the way to go. I went with 1st generation Orbi and honestly, it’s the best money I ever spent on home networking equipment. Far, far better solution than spidery antennas and dumb wifi extenders. They are pretty ugly but not Bauhaus utilitarian ugly. They’re rather inconspicuous on the bookshelf.
Yep, I love my little AmpliFi unit. I opted not to get the mesh extenders unless I needed them, and this little box covers my 1200sqft house just fine by itself. The screen will display a message when the internet connection is out, so I don’t have to wonder if it’s my computer, the connection, or the remote side in those instances.
Mine was being told that my wifi password must have two numbers in it. Not ‘two or more’, but ‘exactly two, no more, no less’.
But we’ve put the (not-so-)Superhub into modem mode, and all the actual routing is done my a mid-range Asus router. Mind you, that might need an upgrade at some point, if someone is downloading from the internet at more than about 50MB/s it sometimes gets a bit stressed and drops the wifi.
Part of the reason why Cisco’s APs are so damned expensive is because they are capable of doing mesh (when teamed up with a Wireless LAN Controller (WLC)), running multiple SSIDs, vLans, and other stupid enterprise tricks (like Network access control when paired with ISE and other cisco products) that justify the cost all at once. And since corporates are spending 6 to 7 digits on this stuff, they usually want it to be as invisible as possible, hence the muted, bland, and inoffensive design for the device. Oh, and they can be toggled into autonomous mode as well, although IIRC that involves uploading a different firmware to them.
:nearly chokes on food from sudden laughter: [RedactedCo] had that problem (an old AP which still worked, but was out of support, no longer supported by the firmware we needed to run, and which no one had any idea where it was), which was hilarious. We also had one that we could not get to outside of demoing a wall, because it was mounted on a 20 foot ceiling and some chucklehead built low walls under it.
Ah, the good old FritzBox modem. It’s the modem/router that most German ISP’s provide, though the bigger ones like to use their own branding. Still, it’s telling when I look at the wi-fi network names that are broadcasting through my flat’s walls.
Yeah, we got ours after I called our ISPs tech support and, when she saw our router model, she exclaimed “Oh wow, that thing’s older than mineral coal!” I did rename it, though, if only to make the wifi easier to find and also because it’s a great opportunity to be a huge dork.
