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Mercusys - home network for little money

Mercusys - home network for little money

Great choice, with cheap and eye-catching network devices, with or without wires.

SH109288

Introductory

We have arrived at the third part of our article series on Mercusys devices. In the first two, you could get acquainted with two routers, ones that stopped in more tense situations, even by connecting more wifi devices than average. In our current article, we can get acquainted with three more active network components. These are the company’s simplest, but by no means bad solutions. Their place is clearly in smaller home wired or wireless networks, although they can also loosely serve smaller offices of 3-4 people. So let’s see what the Merkusys Summer Santa sent us for this article!


 

Mercusys MW305R router

I don’t want to extend this article for too long because the previous two writings already cover almost everything about Mercusys routers. Of course, there is a difference because it is one of the smallest tools on offer, so let’s focus more on the differences!

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The MW305R knows almost everything about its larger counterparts in terms of software. This is very welcome as they know quite a lot, there are plenty of abilities at home, but I dare say that the majority of buyers will not take advantage of even half of the available options. Importantly, this router also got all the protection and got all the content filtering options for the more expensive versions. What was very sympathetic to me was that not only could we filter the flow of Internet pollution to our children, but we could also set how long our children's mobile devices - phones, tablets - could receive data from the wifi network. Many of my acquaintances complain that the kids smuggle their cell phones into their room for the night and then chat with buddies until dawn. True, they will meet at school the next day anyway, but the night chat is different… So Mercusys routers offer a very good solution.

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The number of differences between small and larger assets is not much, but there are significant ones. The exterior, for example, is completely different, to be honest, I like this piece in the current test the best. Absolutely clean, frost-free exterior, put together from plastics that give it a real sense of quality. Based on the design, it could have come from the workshop of any major manufacturer, the design reminds me of Apple and Xiaomi products.

There is also a difference in hardware capabilities. There’s no difference on the Ethernet side, as we’ve described in our previous articles on Mercusys, TP-Link’s push-forward garrison in the entry category, so you don’t get everything your parent company does. For example, the wired page cannot be faster than 100 megabytes. Because of this, the capabilities of larger and smaller routers do not differ in this area, at most there may be some variation in the number of ports. In this case, we get one WAN port and four LAN ports, i.e. one goes into the net and the other four comes out.

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The significant difference I mentioned above is in the wifi capabilities. We find two of the antennas, these are 5 decibels, so there is no error with that. However, this device does not support the 5 GHz wifi band, only the 2,4 GHz supported by all Wi-Fi devices, but slightly older, and does not include MIMO, so it is by no means recommended for environments with more than average devices. wants to use wifi. With the baud rate, however, at least in the category in which it plays, there is no problem. It supports the IEEE 802.11n standard, so the transfer rate can reach 300 megabits per second.

So we dare to recommend this router specifically for places where we don’t want to worry about half the apartment. It serves a family of four with honor if they only use a mobile phone, possibly a tablet. However, if you’re already packed with smart home gadgets, your TV is smart too, and everyone has at least two mobile network devices, don’t research this price range because it will end in disappointment. The router presented in the previous article is good for such "extreme" cases: Mercusys AC1200 - wireless racing


 

Mercusys switches

I really can’t write much about the other two tools anymore. These are switches, or network routers, whose role is to multiply the number of available physical network, or Ethernet, ports. Luckily, the days when you had to clown with HUBs were over and the switches only went to the homes of modest families or the offices of well-spinning companies. HUBs are extinct and the price of the switches is below the frog’s bottom, so today everyone can connect to the wired network with these powerful devices, that is, through them.

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Mercusys sent us two of these, one called MS108 and the other MS105. It is easy to guess that the former 8 has the last 5 ports, meaning that so many devices, computers, printers, etc. can be connected with a UTP cable.

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These devices are very small, the 8-port, for example, is only 127 x 60 millimeters, but at the same time they are as beautiful as they can be. With white, slightly rounded edges and corners, they give a trusting impression.

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In terms of physical capabilities, here too we get what we get from other Mercusys devices, i.e. a 10/100 megabit connection in half and full duplex mode. This is enough in a home environment, you go from the TV to the computer, you can serve security cameras, so there will be no problem with it.

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Where would we recommend these tools? Many people say that in today's world, when an apartment is already connected to a 200 megabyte or even gigabit net, you should not buy a 10/100 switch. And we say that there is room for these, because in many cases it is completely unnecessary to spend the extra money on a gigabit network device. I also have a device with this capability at home. It’s glued to the wall with double-sided glue behind the desk, it doesn’t take up space, it doesn’t swallow electricity, but it serves quite a few devices, some that don’t need a gigabit. I have my printer, TV and a camera connected to it, and I have a spare UTP cable on my desktop if I suddenly need to connect some temporary device. Where more bandwidth is needed is my computer and NAS, and these fit ample on the provider-provided router that has gigabyte ports. So the point is to think and starting to have a lot of wired devices, then segment, form a slower and a faster segment, and use each device in the right place. Save and take ice cream for the child with the remaining pocket money, it will be better for everyone!


 

Closing Remarks

Since this is our last Mercusys article for now, we would like to thank TP-Link's domestic representative for trying out their tools. Luckily, they didn't have to ask for much, so they could stay with us, and we'll be raffled off among you soon as part of a sweepstakes. We’ll still dwarf a bit on the tasks, but the game is coming soon!

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Mercusys' assets did not disappoint. TP-Link is one of the world's largest manufacturers of networking devices, so you can put a lot of emphasis on the fact that they, their support, are behind Mercusys. In the event of a mistake, for example, you’re definitely not going to get something corrected, buhered back, which is a pretty compelling argument for choosing them. I won’t describe it several times anymore, but obviously there are some technical limitations between TP-Link and Mercusys devices, but that’s understandable, after all, TP-Link intended this sub-brand as the entry category. So the point is, if we buy Mercusys, we get TP-Link support, but we can save a lot of money. Mercusys devices are perfect for home or smaller offices, and the wifi performance of their AC1200 router can serve even medium-sized offices or homes full of millions of Wi-Fi devices.

 

About the Author

s3nki

Owner of the HOC.hu website. He is the author of hundreds of articles and thousands of news. In addition to various online interfaces, he has written for Chip Magazine and also for the PC Guru. For a time, he ran his own PC shop, working for years as a store manager, service manager, system administrator in addition to journalism.