If you go shopping online or at your local big-box retailer, you’ll notice that most of the Wi-Fi routers on sale are standalone units. That is, they serve as the one and only access point in your home unless you buy an extender, or set up a second router to mimic an extender. That’s partly because mesh systems are a relatively new phenomenon — they never caught on with consumers until the mid-2010s, when relatively affordable products from companies like Eero and Google began to pop up.
