When I started telecommuting in earnest this past March, I thought my home network was in pretty good shape. But after a few weeks of my wife and I trying to make video conference calls at the same time, I realized that my home Wi-Fi connection needed improvement. And it took three attempts before I arrived at Netgear's Orbi mesh router.

A little background: the attic of my house had been converted into a finished space by the previous owner. Prior to working from home full time, I used it as an entertainment area as well as a place to test smart home devices. I also had my computer set up there for work-from-home days.

On the first floor of the house I had a Linksys EA8300 router that did a great job covering the first and second floors and outside. However, it was not reaching my home office at all, so I needed to do something about it.

I first decided to buy a Linksys RE9000 Wi-Fi extender to give my attic space a little more power. This setup worked pretty well for a while, since most of what is in the attic stays in the attic. The problem was that the extender was powerful enough to reach all the way downstairs, which caused problems with phones and other devices connecting to the extender, but not being able to jump back to the main router once downstairs.

Other times, devices would stay connected to the main router even when in the attic, resulting in really slow loading of web pages, etc. due to the weak connection.

The problem became even worse when my wife started staying in the attic full time, and if there was a Zoom call for both of us at the same time, one of us would have to take the laptop to the dining room or bedroom. It was too unstable and did not work well.

Since we have Comcast's Xfinity Internet service, our next thought was to upgrade our cable modem to an xFi gateway and buy pods (about $120 for a pack of 3) to create a mesh network in the house It seemed like a relatively inexpensive solution; the pods were small, easy to set up, and could cover the entire house, and the Xfinity xFi app is quite well designed, alerting me when a new device is connected, if there is a security threat, and automatically blocking the problem It will automatically block the problem.

And for a while it worked well. But after a few weeks, the Pods, especially the one in the attic, would suddenly go offline, often while one or the other was doing something important. When this happened, we had to unplug and unplug the Pod and wait for it to reconnect to the rest of the network. It was incredibly frustrating, and I even bought two 3-packs of Pods in the hopes that more Pods would spread out the network traffic or at least provide a little more backup.

It didn't work; the Pods still went offline regularly, and our laptops (mine was Mac, hers was PC) did not immediately jump to the new Pods. Often the two Pods closest to us would go offline, which didn't help. It was extremely frustrating.

So I donned a face mask and went to my local Best Buy, where I purchased a Netgear Orbi Mesh Wi-Fi system; I chose the RBK50 (AC3000) model, which was one of the few models the store had in stock.

At $329 for the base station and satellite, it wasn't the cheapest option, but I liked that it had a dedicated backhaul channel and that both the base station and satellite had Ethernet ports to connect other accessories such as a desktop PC

Also, the satellite was not the most inexpensive option.

Also, I wasn't willing to pay $500+ for a Wi-Fi 6 router, but given the number of smart home devices I have (50+), it would be an upgrade I may need in a few years.

I've had the Orbi up and running for about a month now with no problems. We still have Xfinity Pods installed, which also stay online. I guess it just couldn't handle all the traffic from all the work computers as well as the dozens of smart home devices on the network. the Netgear app monitors network traffic and all the machines connected to the network. I also like that it provides Bitdefender Security. It also has parental security controls.

I will be working from home for at least the next 6 months (if not longer), so I am glad to have my networking issues resolved.

Given all that is going on in the world and the fact that many people less fortunate than me have much more to worry about, it is quite trivial that I am having trouble getting a decent Wi-Fi signal to my home office. But at least for my wife and I, having a reliable Wi-Fi connection is essential to getting work done, which is why the Netgear Orbi was the best thing I bought during the pandemic. Well, that and a big hunk of cheese.