D-Link's NZ$600 Covr attempts to help home users fill Wi-Fi blackspots. I say attempts because the results are hit and miss. Most of the time it misses.
The kit first arrived at Castle Bennett in May. I tried and failed to make it work at the time. This week I tried it
again and got it to work. Yet, as we shall see, it disappointed.
In the last few days I've been busy revisiting and retesting all the routers and related kit that I have to hand.
Chorus installed my fibre this week. I've a gigabit line. So for the first time Wi-Fi is my speed bottle neck. There's a
slew of products which, on paper, promise Wi-Fi speeds greater than 1 Gbps. None of them come close.
More about that in another post. Let's get back to Covr.
During testing it worked as expected for a fleeting moment. The system was unable to create a stable network for more
than 20 minutes at a time. When it did manage to work, the performance was erratic and poor.
Covr is an unwelcome reminder of the bad old days of home networking.
If you were there you'll know what I mean. In those days a new piece of software could make a network grind to a halt.
At times it felt like a sneeze could put a home network out of action for hours.
Mesh network
D-Link's Covr is an example of something known as a mesh network. This is a way of spreading Wi-Fi signals over a larger area than a single wireless router might cover. In effect you
have three connected wireless routers, but to the user they look and act like a single router.
Mesh networks are common in offices, campuses and large buildings.
You might want a mesh network if you have a large home or the house is laid out in a way that means the Wi-Fi isn't
strong enough in places where you want it. Say you've had fibre installed next to your TV at one end of the house and a
kid's bedroom at the other end gets a poor Wi-Fi signal.
There are other consumer mesh network products on the market. Most seem to suffer from similar flaws. This suggests to
me this is because the technology isn't quite ready for everyday users.
If Apple hadn't lost interest in home networking, mesh technology would be ripe for that company's attention. Apple has
a knack for packaging unpolished technologies in a consumer friendly ready-to-use format.
Not so simple
In the Covr box are three wireless access points. One is the main unit. D-link calls them nodes.
Each node has a power supply. And that means it needs a power socket. The power cables are about a metre long, so you're
restricted to putting nodes near power outlets. There is a rival home network technology that uses power outlets. You
might want to consider that instead of Covr.
The box also holds a single Ethernet cable and, for the aesthetically minded, alternative colour fascia plates for the
access points. Presumably this is to make sure your nodes don't clash with the curtains. I find this silly because even
if you change the cover the nodes still stand out.
There's also a sheet of paper optimistically labelled Simple Setup Guide. You can work through this, or you can download an iOS or Android app that walks you through the process.
As we shall see, the app didn't work for me. Which meant I had to return to the paper instructions.
Covr app
The app tells you to connect the main node to a power supply and to turn off your modem. You then connect the access
point to the modem with the Ethernet cable and switch everything on. Once everything is running, you are then asked to
log into the Covr wireless router from your phone.
In my case this simply did not happen. The iPhone could find the router, but it couldn't log on. Nor could my small iPad
Pro or my other iPad Pro. I then tried to do this all over again with an Android phone. Once more, there was nothing.
Four attempts with four devices didn't work. Not a sausage.
When I first tried Covr I gave up in frustration at this point. This time around I attempted to manually log-in to the
router from a desktop Mac. It worked. I managed to get into the web-based control panel.
Part of the panel shows a map of the network. If one of the connections, and this includes the connection from the main
node to the internet, is broken it shows up in red. At this point things appeared to be running fine. The next task is
to configure the secondary nodes.
Secondary nodes
In some ways configuring secondary nodes is clever. As already mentioned, you have to find an extra power socket to do
this. Given the master node needs to connect to a modem which needs to connect to the fibre ONT and all three need a
power supply, you need four power points to configure Covr. I had to use a distribution board. There are other cables
here, so it is a rats' nest.
Once you have power, you then connect the secondary node to the main one using the Ethernet cable. After a few minutes
the light changes colour. When it turns white, you're configured.
At this point you can unplug, move the secondary node to a Wi-Fi blackspot and connect it by wireless back to the mothership. The light flashes orange then glows white when you can connect. You may need to move it about
for a while until it turns white. Let's hope all your Wi-Fi blackspots are in easy reach of a power socket.
A working wireless mesh?
At this point I had a working wireless mesh. Well almost. None of the mobile devices would connect. But I did have
strong signals around the house and all the PCs in the house were able to connect.
After about 20 minutes of a working mesh network, the main Covr node lost its internet connection. I should point out
that nothing had moved, there were no external events, no visible triggers.
Next the secondary nodes dropped off the mesh network. I spent an hour troubleshooting, but nothing I did changed
things.
Eventually I decided to reboot everything and start once more from scratch. It took about an hour to get back to the
same point with a working mesh. About an hour later it all fell apart again.
This was the pattern all day. Actually I'm not sure about that. I gave up the third time the network collapse. Life is
too short. In the end I packed the Covr bits and pieces back in the box. It's not for me.
Performance issues
During the brief interludes while things were humming, I tested the internet connection speed from the iMac. It was
getting around 150 mbps up and down. This is less than half the usual connection speed through the main UFB modem and
wireless router. Typically the iMac 'sees' 350 to 420 mbps. So the price of filling in Wi-Fi blackspot is a much slower
connection.
It turns out poor performance is by design. Mesh networks in offices and factories have a separate channel to manage
traffic between nodes. Covr uses the same Wi-Fi bandwidth that connects devices to the access points. In other words it shares the connection with your devices. This explains
why we only saw half the usual connection speed.
I can't recommend D-link's Covr. It seems half-finished. There was a firmware update that I installed before testing, so
the software is up-to-date.
Of course, you might have a different experience. The fact that none of the devices, other than the computer, would
connect is a deal-breaker. For me the slow network speed is also a problem. I'd prefer to spend the NZ$600 asking price
on a better quality wireless router and learn to live with any Wi-Fi blackspots.
D-Link Covr review: fails to fix Wi-Fi woes was first posted at billbennett.co.nz.