D-Link Eagle AI Pro AX3200 Wi-Fi 6 AI Mesh System - M32 product reviews

Mesh networks have been around for many years, but their uptake in the home market has boomed over the last couple of years in particular, and as more devices connect to the internet, bandwidth in the home environment has become a bit more crowded. The newest addition to the Eagle Pro AI range of mesh network hardware from D-Link, the M32, is available in a 2-pack or 3-pack format and more than doubles the bandwidth by bringing a 3200Mbps portal into the range. The features are much as you would expect from D-Link: Wi-Fi 6, MU-MIMO (multi-user, multiple input, multiple output), OFDMA (orthogonal frequency-division multiple access), TWT technology (Target Wake Time), and it even supports the more secure WPA3 encryption. There are Parental Controls of course, which I won't go into since everyone will have their own needs and settings.

Depending on which kit you buy, in the box you will get 2 or 3 nodes and matching power adaptors, plus an ethernet cable to connect the primary node to your router and enough sets of little rubber feet to stick to the bottom of each node in the box. A 'Quick Installation Guide' and the usual warranty information sheet round out the contents of your latest purchase. Setup and installation is remarkably easy, and the setup guide could not have been any simpler to follow along with... showing you setup procedures for connecting to the primary node via ethernet or wireless. Both are very simple, requiring some typing into a browser window but not much else. That said, using the Eagle Pro AI app on my android smartphone makes it a very simple follow-the-steps process, which shaved a lot of frustration over typos in the URL - something I am prone to. Big fingers, small laptop keyboard, bad combination. Setup takes maybe 4 minutes in total, with just over half that time spent waiting for the node to finish auto-setup and reboot. After the primary node is up and running, syncing up the secondary nodes is as simple as powering them up and leaving them to babble technobytes at each other until they fully mesh.

Once the nodes are set up, connected, and placed around your home - using the app to help you find the best locations for maximum, full-speed coverage - sign into the WiFi as normal, using the default password, then immediately go into the control panel and set a new, unique password. While the days of 'default OEM passwords' are long over, thankfully, and devices now come preset with unique 'gibberish' passwords, it's always best to have a password you can actually remember. However, if you do forget and get locked out, the positive side of the setup process D-Link use is that 99% of it never needs adjusting, so if you have to do a factory-reset and reinstall, it's just another 5 minutes spent mostly waiting - not a mega hassle.

To give the bigger bandwidth over its peers in the Eagle Pro AI range, this set of nodes operated multiple 5GHZ and 2.4GHz channels, splitting the data workload across them as needed to ensure priority traffic has a clear path and everything else moves along as fast as possible. The nodes each have 5 aerials in them, which was a surprise until further research explained that 4 of the aerials handle regular data traffic across both bands, and the fifth aerial is dedicated to channel monitoring and infrastructure diagnostics - basically a dedicated phone line for the hardware to chat amongst itself, keeping a quiet overwatch on the data flow. This ties back into the QoS (Quality of Service) system that streams and routes data down the best channels for maximum communication efficiency.

The nodes share the benefits of preceding devices' feature set - Beamforming, wherein the waves of signal are timeshifted slightly so that they are building on each other as they reach the device, rather than having wave cancellation giving you a series of weak-signal zones that move around the house. They will still exist, but the beamformer moves the strong spots to where your devices are, and does its best to keep them in max contact if they are mobile devices. Paired with the Traffic Optimiser and the OFDMA system that batches smaller data packets from different apps together rather than sending multiple incomplete data blocks in series, you not only get max hose, you get the smoothest flow. This combination, along with the multitude of other 'little' tools that chug away in the background fine-tuning performance, has resulted in some super-fast wifi in a test-property plagued with horrible wifi due to the shape of the building and some steel-&-aluminium wall struts and braces that act like a Faraday Wall, shielding about a third of the building from the regular wifi access point.

The primary usage-scenario for this rig is to create a unified field of wifi reception. However, it can also be used to create wireless bridges for hardware that is either older tech that doesn't have wifi, or if you want to remove a device from the common wifi pool and give it the benefits of a hardline connection without the hardline to trip over. Each node has an Internet port on the back - only to be used on the designated primary node to connect to your modem - and two gigabit-ethernet ports. This means you can plug in your gaming console, old laptop, NAS media storage box or security camera smart hub and give them the same functionality as if they were plugging directly into the router. They can also be used as simply extra nodes in an existing Eagle Pro AI mesh setup... however if you plan to do that, it would be advisable to take any M15 units and relegate them to the outer fringes of the node-net, installing the M32's in the heart of your network to increase core speed. Attaching these nodes at the 'outer edge' of your network means they will be trying to shove 3200Mbps through the M15 hardware's smaller bandwidth, creating bottlenecks and wasting the speed boost the M32's offer.

After migrating my M15 hardware out of the core network and replacing it with the M32 nodes, I noticed an immediate boost in performance, with my media box now able to stream shows off my local NAS library server without any lag or buffering, and my VR rig has stopped throwing up warnings about lost internet connections every time I step around a corner in the lounge. Not only has the signal gotten faster, it's also stronger - partly due to repositioning the node that covers that zone. With these new nodes syncing themselves to the primary node automatically upon power-up, it's no hassle at all to try a node in multiple spots to find which one gives the best performance for you.

The test location I used has a lot of IoT devices all wanting to push and pull data - there are close to 20 devices all demanding intermittent or continuous connection: smartphones, laptops, desktop rig, tablets, security cameras, smart lights, media NAS and others. With this in mind, on the performance front, the mesh system did a great job of keeping things running smoothly. D-Link has worked hard to provide a system that, in partnership with a couple of apps, makes set-up, maintenance and expansion of the mesh network a task anyone can tackle with confidence. D-Link paid their big brains to do all the heavy lifting, so that you don't have to.

Overall, this is a great upgrade to the Eagle Pro AI system, any mesh network in fact, and I look forward to seeing more devices arriving with AX3200 or higher capabilities to expand and enhance the Mesh system further. It is a mature technology that has everything you will need, plus the ability to expand enormously to keep pace with your growing digital life. I would basically like, and expect, to see the entire M15 range being phased out and replaced with M32 versions. I'd also like to see more IoT sensors that will plug into this network - time for D-Link to look at putting out a good NAS box designed to "mesh" with the Eagle Pro AI system natively!