Routers can block the Danube, but it's hard to get really good for that.

Introductory

Due to a quick apartment remodeling, I had to invest in a router. More precisely, an AP (Access Point) would have been enough, but thinking about the imminent move, I decided to invest in a router that will be the central wifi provider for our new house in the coming years.

I searched a lot, and of course the Xiaomi wasn’t left out of the scatter either because I love it and because I didn’t have to be disappointed in any of their products. Last but not least, I also save some money, and having never got more for the kids has never been a problem.

Fortunately, Xiaomi manufactures quite a few Wi-Fi devices, in several price categories, of which, even the most expensive, the top model does not even reach the price of 15 thousand forints. And I’m like, if I can, I’ll buy the best because why not.

External

That was the one that made me fall in love with this router. True, the shape, that is, this big black cylinder not only has advantages, it also has disadvantages, not to mention anything else, it is difficult to put it down in the apartment so as not to stab your eyes right away. In return, however, we get a device that no one will tell us at first that it is a router. It is more like a modern speaker. Of course, shape is important not only because of the design, but also because, in addition to strong hardware, there is no need to use active cooling. Utilizing the chimney effect, the router is cooled by air flowing from the bottom up. What’s more, the round shape also allows the antenna forest, which is typical of today’s modern rouriers, to be hidden from our sight.

Controls, like other similar network devices, are not found here. In front of two discrete blue LEDs, one indicates that the equipment is powered on, the other that the WAN port is there for the Internet. At the back is a reset button, a power connector, and four Ethernet ports, the bottom of which is the WAN, where the internet string is placed. As it is a state-of-the-art product, it is not surprising that all four wired network connections are gigabit, making the device a great choice even if gigabit internet needs to be distributed or broadcast over wifi.

Commissioning

You must have thought about the title of the article as to what might be what no one has prepared for. It could be a plain clickbait, or click magnet title, but it’s not. The first surprise came in connection with the commissioning. When I bought the router (it was back last fall, right after the release), there wasn’t a test of it on the net yet, but there wasn’t much of a tutorial either. Plus, I’m able to require such a widget so much that I don’t see anything other than the technical specification, like the router only communicates in Chinese.

So what happened was that I got the router powered on, connected to my machine, looked up the IP address, typed it into the browser, and received a completely Chinese interface. I just learned to enter, but after that, science essentially stopped. Fortunately, the solution was at hand and not complicated!

The Router can be set up not only from the desktop computer via a browser, but also from a mobile phone. What’s more, the mobile interface speaks English. So, the commissioning process is as follows:

1. Power on the router and plug the Internet cable into the WAN port.
2. We install an app called Mi Wifi from our Google or Apple online store on our mobile phone and then install it on our phone.
3. After launching the app, it will locate the router, then if you have a Mi account, log in, if not, you must register one first.
4. If you already had Our router, you can now reload its settings, if this is the first one, select this.
5. The router scans our network and proceeds accordingly. For the most common PPPOE connection, it asks for your name and password to the internet and we’re done. We have internet and we also have wifi.

This has not been complicated so far, and it is necessary to remedy the Chinese interface through our machine, the browser. If you already have internet and can access your router from your desktop or notebook, do so through a Chrome browser. Type 192.168.31.1 in the browser address bar, or just miwifi.com, enter the password you entered to access the Internet, and you're in the settings interface. Then comes the “magic”. Right-click on the window and select Translate into Hungarian from the menu that opens. Miracle of miracles, everything will be Hungarian, we can easily set up the router.

I note that by default, the telephone setup is sufficient, but if you used a different IP range, for example, you would need a desktop computer. I’m just adding in parentheses that everything is more transparent on the monitor, so I prefer to fine-tune it on it more than on my phone.

So the point is, while the Chinese interface was pretty bust-proof, the solution to this is simple and obvious, even for those who don’t feel like gurus in the world of networking devices. Moreover, those who think so will not even need to fine-tune, after a few steps of the phone wizard, they are ready for secure, home internet and wifi.

abilities

I have to tell you here why I had to buy this router. What happened was that I was forced from the great room, which also has the internet connection and the service provider’s router, to the back of the house, into a tiny little room with my office, leaving room for the dripping cubs to play. Yes, but behind the many doors, partly made of concrete, partly made of wooden walls, the signal strength has dropped so much that my phone, my tablet, has sometimes lost touch. The solution was to plug the WAN port of the Xiaomi router into the end of the wired, gigabit cable connection to the back room, so I got three gigabit wired ports and wifi at the same time.

Because of what was described, it was also important to get a really strong router, and not just in terms of software services, but also in terms of hardware. Because I am, i.e. a person with up to 10-15 devices hanging on the wifin at the same time. And the Xiaomi Mi AC2100 router provides the right conditions for this. Let’s start there, because of the two-channel mode, the theoretical bandwidth can reach 2033 Mb / s. In addition, the two-channel mode, ie the older 2,4 GHz (300 Mb / s) and the newer 5 GHz connection (1733 Mb / s), can be connected, so our devices only see one wifi network and the router decides which device, on which channel, and at what speed to be served.

The router hardware itself is damn interesting. I have already mentioned that the antennas are hidden inside the housing and, taking advantage of the round shape, they are arranged in a circle inside the box, so they radiate with uniform strength in all directions.

Cheap routers are a big problem with poor hardware. As long as only 3-4 devices are connected to them, there is no problem, but if there are more than this, the wireless connection becomes insecure, we may experience packet loss and even disconnection. The reason for this is to be found in the strength of the iron, quite simply unable to serve many customers.

Nowadays, it is increasingly a basic requirement that many Wi-Fi devices can be served by a router. In a modern household, not only is a mobile phone using wifi, but more and more people are cutting in to smarten their homes, and this means (as with me) that everything from lights through the boiler and micro to the front door lock, everything hangs on the wifi. The Xiaomi router, with a built-in dual-core 880 MHz CPU and 128 MB of memory and storage, as well as Wave2 4 × 4 MU-MIMO technology, connects nearly 130 devices simultaneously, according to factory data. possible. If half of it is true, we are already good - we can say!

The strength of the relationship is also an important thing, and Xiaomi’s engineers thought of that as well. Thanks to the built-in signal amplifiers (iPA effectively increases signal transmission performance, while iLNA improves signal reception sensitivity), the AC2100 router, according to the factory description, can serve a two-story house on its own. Many walls and doors are no problem, and the 2,4 GHz connection can cover a space of up to 100 meters inside a home. In addition to the above, Xiaomi has also incorporated a so-called Beamforming technology, which allows the router to determine the position of wireless devices, thus improving the bandwidth available on the wifi network.

Test

Let’s turn back to the address again, that is, no one has prepared for what the Xiaomi Mi AC2100 router can offer. I also took some measurements for the sake of the article, but really just to be able to prove with pictures and numbers what I experience every day. This is because while the signal from the service router in the living room gets to my small office, it is difficult to get the signal from the Xiaomi router, which lives in the office, to cover the living room with a lot. That is, the situation is that only the devices that are physically there are connected to the wifi in the living room, such as smart lights, TV and Xiaomi TV boxing, everything else is served by a Xiaomi router hidden in the back of the house. Who. If I connect to this with my phone, there is a connection in every corner and corner of the house, and even in the garden, in the back corner.

What I saw at the wifi speed measurement before writing the test really only confirmed what I felt while using it, the Xiaomi router became an awfully powerful device. It’s not accidentally recommended to gamers either, not only because the bandwidth is controllable, but also because it gives you a quality wireless connection that allows for faster gaming, no packets are lost, and response time remains low.

Let's see the pictures!

The first two images show the router speed test you received from your ISP. The first measurement was made standing next to the router, the other at the other end of the house, standing next to the Xiaomi router.

The second two pictures show this, but already connected to the Xiaomi router. Standing next to the router in the first picture, in the living room on the second, next to the service router.

I think the numbers speak for themselves, it is unnecessary to discuss this further!

There will also be two pictures in the next test, these show the wifi devices available in the apartment and their strength. It is important to know that the Xiaomi router, the device called s3nki2, and the HP printer are a few inches apart, while the purple signal (s10nki) is the signal from the device provided by the service provider. The first picture was taken standing next to the Xiaomi router, and the second was taken in the farthest corner of the living room, so not right next to the service provider’s router, but in the same room with it, but still a good 3 meters farther.

This second image clearly shows how much less the signal from the Xiaomi router has decreased than the adjacent HP and s3nki2 (Access Point dual-channel AC standard device). And the first picture shows how rough the signal strength next to the Xiaomi router.

Summary

What can I say? No one really prepared me for what I got. Fortunately, the worse part, i.e. the Chinese-language interface accessible through the browser, can be easily remedied, and the better part, i.e. the roughly good performance, is not to be apologized for.

Knowing the hardware, I knew it would be good, but I didn’t expect how good it would be. I'm not saying that there is no such device or more powerful on the market, especially when it comes to the new wifi6 routers, but they are still over 100 thousand forints, as opposed to the Xiaomi AC2100, which is not 15 thousand forints now. So we don’t have to pay a fortune for it, it won’t cut us to the ground, but it will solve the problem of a home or even small office network for quite a few years, even if we calculate that the number of our wifi devices will grow exponentially.

If you use it at home, you probably won’t need professional solutions like VPN, dynamic DNS, port forwarding, LAN, and Qos settings, but you can even manage these as a corporate router.

A word ends in a hundred, it is worth every forint spent!

Of course, as always, we now know a coupon code so that the one who liked the rotor can be cheaper. If you use the link below to BGN1293ZM1 coupon code, you can add the original HUF 18 to the basket for HUF 394. To use the coupon: Product page Buy Now button, the coupon code on the page that opens is BG discountat the coupon code field and Apply sphere.

Buy here:

Xiaomi Mi Router AC2100 - Coupon code: BGN1293ZM1 - HUF 18 instead of HUF 394

Remember, choose free and duty-free EU Priority Line shipping as your mode of transport!