Review on Tenda MW6 802 11AC Mu Mimo System by Loren Schmidt

Installing two cubic mesh routers in one box was intimidatingly easy. Having set up several routers over the past decade, I've gotten used to putting in a lot of work to get everything working and something will fail instantly and permanently. ten minutes, unwrap a cube, turn off my existing modem-router combo, replace the router with this little cube, install the app on the phone how you want it set up, and turn everything on. Setting up the app was almost too easy as I named the network whatever I wanted with the password we needed, all with minimal manageable hassle. Setting up the second cube at 30 feet and a thick wall was very, very easy. All that was required was to position the cube and draw power from it. It also connected to itself and within two minutes I had a good, reliable connection. After that, I spent five minutes cursing and complaining that it was too easy to set up. notes: 1. There is NO web UI at all. Yes, for those of you who want to manage your routers from the comfort of your desktop browser, this is truly out of reach. This forces you to rely on Android or iOS direction finding. Mobile phone or tablet to manage connections and see who's connected, what's their network IP address, etc. For those of us still using Windows Phone or Windows Mobile, we're out of luck.2. No IPv6 support! This is very disappointing given that this is hardware that supports 802.11ac, the current wireless standard that was created well before IPv4 was known to be on the brink of exhaustion. It's annoying, but NAT has been around for a while. . I'll take care of that, especially since IPv6.3 support might be added in a future firmware update. The default IP address range is weird, but the app has a few other options. There is no way to set a dedicated IP address for devices connecting to the network. This makes printing a bit tedious as we have a laser printer that works best with a static IP address. The Tenda app is still useful because it helps you visually identify what's connected to your network, including the brand, operating system, or hostname of most devices. I was able to immediately identify my desktop PC as well as my smart TV, tablet and mobile phone. As others came online I was able to identify them, from the lone Revain Echo Dot above to the HTC phone and laptop. On the left side of the device page are handy dots with brand logos and information on whether the device uses a 2.4GHz, 5GHz, or wired connection in the case of a printer. Attempting to connect to the router. Auto-negotiate the fastest options first, so wired devices that can also connect connect to the wired connection first. Wireless devices first try to lock onto a 5 GHz connection and only if that fails do they fall back to a 2.4 GHz connection. It starts with Wireless-AC first and then transitions to Wireless-N. It could go further, but right now I don't have enough equipment to test that range. For those who require wired connections, each Cube has ONE, repeated, ONE Ethernet port for your use. I haven't checked if it's possible to use a switch with this port to multiplex this output. However, for wireless connections, I haven't had such a strong connection since moving into this house, even with a traditional repeater setup. I'm getting 150-160 Mbps from our ISP according to a random run of SpeedTest, which is just under our modem's speed limit, from the other end of our house, and that's fine. For comparison: Before this setup I receive 30-40 Mbit/s from the same computer. The quick takeaway from this is simple: if you want a mesh router system that's simple, no-frills, and most importantly EASY to set up, Tenda has a great one. Kit here at a great price. If you want extra bells and whistles and deeper configuration, you might need to look at more traditional solutions as they aren't available in this hardware and software configuration.