The spider look comes from multiple antennas. Multiple antennas are needed for beamforming [1]; they represent a minimal phased array.

[1]: https://www.networkworld.com/article/967954/beamforming-expl...

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cduzz a day ago | parent [-]

It is probably a combination of hitting a (low) cost and mimo; cisco makes pretty reasonable looking APs with lots of radios and decent coverage and they look like UFOs not alien spiders.

But it's probably easier / cheaper to get maximum coverage at larger distances from a single AP using a big array of sticking out antennae, and that's what a normal home user is going to want.

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d3Xt3r 20 hours ago | parent [-]

> and they look like UFOs not alien spiders.

I feel like there's an untapped market here. I want them to go with the alien spaceship concept all the way thru; I wanna see mini Death Star mesh nodes, X Wing routers and Millennium Falcon access points, dammit. Or hell, cross the multiverse and give me Borg Cube mesh nodes, complete with green shiny LEDs that actually indiacte network/hardware status.

	▲	nine_k 16 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Ah, these so-called SciFi routers.
	▲	ButlerianJihad 20 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It is rather disturbing to me that WiFi routers already look too much like the Replicators from Stargate SG-1.