Designed for homes of up to 6,000 square feet, the Rock Space AC2100 Mesh System ($249.99) is a tri-band Wi-Fi system based on 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5) technology. It uses three low-profile nodes that are easy to install and manage, and it comes with basic parental controls. It’s an able-enough effort, but you can find better-performing systems out there. You’ll pay a bit more for our Editors’ Choice award winner, the Asus ZenWiFi AC CT8, but in return you get better all-around performance and more features.
No USB or Multi-Gig LAN Ports
The Rock Space AC2100 system uses three identical cube-shaped nodes to provide up to 6,000 square feet of coverage. Included in the box are the nodes, three power adapters, a LAN cable, and a user guide.
The nodes are squares, measuring 3.9 by 3.9 by 3.9 inches (HWD). They’re matte black, with a dark gray fabric covering on top. Poking through the fabric is a small LED indicator that glows green when there’s a good connection, yellow when the connection is fair, and red when the connection is lost.
The base of each node holds a gigabit LAN/WAN port, two gigabit LAN ports, a reset button, and a power jack. You don’t get any USB ports with this system like you do with the Asus ZenWiFi AC CT8, nor do you get multi-gig connectivity for wired clients.
The Rock Space AC2100 is a tri-band system powered by a 900MHz dual-core CPU and 256MB of DDR3 RAM. It is capable of reaching maximum (theoretical) data rates of up to 300Mbps on the 2.4GHz band and up to 867Mbps on each of the 5GHz bands. That’s a total maximum of 2,034Mbps, hence the AC2100 designation.
The system lacks Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) technology, instead using the older Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) protocol. But it does support modern niceties like MU-MIMO (simultaneous data streaming), beamforming (direct to client data transmissions), and band steering (the router decides which bands to use for optimal performance).
The Rock Space system is managed using the RS WiFi mobile app for iOS and Android devices. The app offers basic parental controls that let you pause internet access for specific users and their devices, as well as create access schedules. You don’t get the age-appropriate web filters and usage reports that you get with the Asus ZenWiFi AC CT8 and the Gryphon AX Mesh systems, though. Also missing are security scanning tools that protect your network and all of your connected users from malware and virus attacks.
Wireless settings are also limited. You can change the name and password of your network, but there are no security (encryption) or channel selection settings, nor can you separate the radio bands.
The RS WiFi app opens to a My WiFi screen that contains a network map of all connected nodes. There’s a network speed meter at the top of the screen that displays real-time upload and download speeds and My WiFi, Settings, and Connected Devices buttons at the bottom of the screen. Tap any node icon to view its connection quality, location, IP address, and MAC address.
Tapping the Connected Devices button opens a screen that displays all connected devices by name. Tap a device to see which node it is connected to and its online duration. The My WiFi button takes you back to the main screen from wherever you are in the app, while the Settings button opens a screen where you can access the above-mentioned Wireless settings, create a guest network, assign Port Forwarding rules, and enable Parental Controls.
Enabling the Fast Roaming setting allows the system to hand over clients quickly as they roam throughout the house. Meanwhile, the Capacity-Oriented Mode setting can be used to help boost performance when there are more than 30 clients connected to the network at the same time. The app offers Quality of Service (QoS) settings, but there are no application-based settings. Instead, you are limited to adjusting overall upload and download speed targets.
Easy Installation
Installing and configuring the Rock Space system was easy. I powered down my modem, connected a node to it using the included LAN cable, and powered up the modem and node. I connected my phone to the node using my phone’s Wi-Fi settings, opened the app, and tapped Setup at the bottom of the Welcome screen. The app identified my Internet connection type (dynamic IP) and prompted me to enter a Wi-Fi name and password for the new network. After 30 seconds or so the new network was created. I powered up the two satellite nodes and they were automatically added to the network. To complete the installation, I gave each node a location and updated the firmware.
The Rock Space system had a bit of trouble keeping pace with similarly priced mesh systems on our throughput performance tests, especially when measuring the main router performance. The router node’s score of 358Mbps on the close-proximity (same room) test was 77Mbps slower than what we saw with the Meshforce M7 router and 143Mbps slower than the EnGenius ESR580 router. The Asus ZenWiFi AC CT8 router had a high score of 549Mbps, which was 191Mbps faster than the Rock Space. Similarly, the Rock Space router’s score of 183Mbps at a distance of 30 feet trailed the Meshforce M7 router (205Mbps) and the EnGenius ESR580 router (198Mbps), while the Asus ZenWiFi AC CT8 led with a score of 228Mbps.
The Rock Space did better on our satellite node tests, where speeds are often (though not always) slower than the main router node. It provided 310Mbps on the close-proximity workout, which was faster than the EnGenius ESR580 node (222Mbps), but a tad slower than the Meshforce M7 node (323Mbps). The Asus ZenWiFi AC CT8 node led the pack, with a score of 441Mbps. The Rock Space node also showed good range on our 30-foot test. Its score of 303Mbps beat the Meshforce M7 node (298Mbps) and the EnGenius ESR580 node (178Mbps), but not the Asus ZenWiFi AC CT8 (329Mbps).
In addition to measuring throughput speeds, we test wireless signal strength with an Ekahau Sidekick diagnostic device and Ekahau’s Survey software. (Ekahau is owned by Ziff Davis, PCMag’s parent company). This combo generates a heat map with signal strength represented by colors. Dark green areas on the map indicate the strongest signal measurements, and lighter green and yellow areas show a weaker signal. The circles represent the location of the router and the satellite node.
As shown on the map, the Rock Space system delivered relatively strong Wi-Fi signal throughout most of our test home, but the signal became weaker in the lower left bedroom.
Missing a Few Features
The Rock Space AC2100 Tri-Band Mesh System offers easy installation and a pleasing aesthetic, but its performance is middling, and its features are limited. The system comes with parental controls, but they are very basic and lack the granular controls that you get with other systems.
You’ll spend around $80 more for the Asus ZenWiFi AC CT8 mesh system, but the extra money buys you stronger parental controls, lifetime anti-malware tools, USB connectivity, and superior performance. For those reasons, it remains our Editors’ Choice pick for Wi-Fi 5 mesh systems.
