On a recent Internet of Things Podcast, we took a voicemail from Keith about his smart home router. He’s been adding and removing hubs, switches, bulbs and security devices from his wireless networks over the years. Keith wants to know if he should completely disconnect all of his smart home devices from the network and re-add them to make the system faster. Keith is currently using an older mesh router, likely with Wi-Fi 5, so he’s also considering an upgrade to a Wi-Fi 6 system to improve his smart home.
This is interesting because Keith is probably like many of you: He has removed connected devices mainly by physically taking them off of the network. But he still sees the older devices in his smart home hub app. By that I mean older devices appearing as “offline” in the Amazon Alexa, Apple Home, Google Home or Samsung SmartThings mobile apps.
I admit that I occasionally do the same:
However, this really doesn’t affect your smart home router. The leftover “cruft” of devices are only hanging out in the smart phone apps. While a router will remember approved devices that have previously connected to it, unless you have hundreds of them, the router isn’t spending any resources managing them. So from that perspective, the devices no longer used aren’t impacting network or smart home performance.
In Keith’s case then, replacing the router isn’t something we’d say is necessary. It wouldn’t hurt to completely uninstall all connected devices from the smart home platform and then set them all up again. That would ensure that only the currently used devices would appear in the hub applications.
A quicker way to do this would be to remove the old devices in the hub apps. However, Stacey and I both do a full smart home reset every year or two although that’s partially because we test so many devices.
As far as the smart home router replacement, it’s never a bad thing to have a better network. Keep in mind however that Wi-F 6 and newer Wi-Fi 6E mesh systems won’t directly improve the performance of smart home devices. These standards are meant to boost speeds of larger data activities such as video streaming and general internet use on computers, tablets and phones. However, many of them support the new Matter standard, so you can prepare for that transition with a modern router.
Indirectly, newer routers can remove some network congestion with the addition of 6 GHz wireless bandwidth. That’s the “channel” for larger amounts of data.
So when your TV or computer moves to 6GHz Wi-Fi, it frees up the digital highway for your smart home devices using 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequencies. And fewer devices competing for the network could improve device response times.
Keep in mind that there’s little benefit to upgrading your router if your home broadband is slow. I have a 1 Gbps fiber connection at my house, for example. So the newest Wi-Fi 6 and 6E routers can spread those full speeds throughout my home. If I had a 50 Mbps broadband connection, however, a new router wouldn’t magically boost my internet speeds.
So in Keith’s case, I’d do two things. First, I’d either manually remove the offline smart home devices from the hub software or I’d do a full smart home reset. Second, if my home broadband speeds were faster than my old router could handle, I’d upgrade to a new mesh system with Wi-Fi 6 or 6E. Then I’d be getting full internet speeds throughout the house and the smart home devices wouldn’t be competing with other computers for network time.
We’ve tested quite a few of the newer mesh routers and have had good experiences with the Eero product line. I still use the older Eero Pro 6 as I haven’t upgraded to 6E. A less expensive option would be the Google Nest Wifi Pro product.
To hear Keith’s question in full, as well as our discussion on the topic, tune in to the Internet of Things Podcast below:
One IOT aspect you didn’t mention is knowing the maximum number of Wi-Fi devices you can have on your account. This is usually a combination of a max set by the router manufacturer and a max set by your Internet provider. In many cases, if you have upgraded to higher speed Wi-Fi your Internet provider will also increase the number of simultaneous devices you are allowed to have connected. But the issue of how many the router itself can handle is separate from that.
There are some Wi-Fi routers, for example, which will only handle 32 simultaneous connections. While that used to sound like a really high number, these days if you have a typical three bedroom home with 3 to 5 people living there and Wi-Fi-based home automation, you can hit that max pretty quickly. And we may see even more of that by 2024 as matter gets deployed, and the new Wi-Fi technologies, which allow for better power use, become more popular.
I know you’ve seen me write many times in the past that Zigbee and zwave were often a better choice for simple batterypowered motion and contact sensors because they had much better battery life than Wi-Fi sensors. But just in the last 12 months we are starting to see some truly viable WiFi batterypowered sensors, like the ones from Shelly. And I’m expecting more of those in the future.
And then there’s the issue of cameras, including video doorbells, smart speakers, smart appliances, and other device classes that are becoming more and more popular.
At our house, we have a small galley kitchen, maybe 10 feet long and 6 feet wide, and it has 6 WiFi devices. Other rooms have even more. We would’ve hit the 32 device limit on some of those routers quite some time ago without even allowing for tablets and cell phones.
I’m not saying every home using home automation will need a router that supports 250 simultaneous connections: but I am saying you’ll want to know what your max is, and that can definitely affect the candidate selection when you choose to upgrade both your WiFi router and your Internet account.
Eero, for example has a hard maximum of 128 devices per pod, but they recommend no more than 30 if they are streaming. But it’s pretty easy to add more pods if you need them.
Ubiquiti and Ruckus both have some models which can handle even more, well into the hundreds, but they also cost a lot more and are really configured for commercial use.
With TPLink, you have to look model by model. a lot of the Wi-Fi five models max out in practical use to about 25 connections, with the tri bands going up to 50. However, newer WiFi technologies can handle more.
Of course, you can lighten this load by choosing thread devices instead of Wi-Fi, or Zigbee bridged to Wi-Fi, and a lot of people end up doing that. But the router max is something to be aware of if you’re investigating upgrade candidates.
I’m currently in the process of changing out old hardware for newer hardware. I’m using an old Ubiquiti Security Gateway with the controller software running in a Docker container on my NAS. I have older 2nd generation AC Pro AP’s. I’m replacing the 3 AP’s with the latest generation U6 Enterprise AP’s, and then I’ll do away with the old USG and software controller and slide in the Dream Machine Special Edition. Yes, it’s not cheap. On the other hand, no one will ever complain about dead spots in my house. 3 AP’s have no problem covering my 3,000 sq/ft house. Each Enterprise AP can handle 600 clients and I believe the Dream Machine can handle over 500. What I do is have my normal wifi network, then, a VLAN’d guest network. I’ve also VLAN’d an iot network for devices in my house, like my washer and dryer and fridge, or other connected devices. Again, it’s not exactly cheap, but the lack of dead spots along with the highly granular control of my network make it worth the money for me. Also, running everything through Cat 7 cable allows me to hit 10 gigabit speeds on my internal network for devices like my Synology NAS, which can take advantae of these speeds. In the end, you get what you pay for, I guess. I like having a rock solid network I can count on.
Sounds like a nice setup!
WiFi infrastructure is definitely an area where right now spending more money can often significantly improve reliability and connection options, including the ability to support a bunch of IOT devices. But it’s not yet something that the router manufacturers call out in the product descriptions: you have to dig through the specs to find the information. And many people don’t even realize there are significant differences in different models in this regard.