I picked up three tp-link archer A7 AC-1750 routers and flashed them with the most recent stable release. I'd like to build a mesh or another solution if it might be a better fit.
Here's my setup:
Today I have a POS Netgear AC1200 box connected to my cable modem, and it serves up wireless throughout the 3k square foot house. Additionally I have an ubiquity wifi box in my outbuilding garage (separate building 30 ft from the house) working as a wireless bridge serving up wifi in the garage. It's a model capable of flashing OpenWRT on but I'm not certain of the supported capabilities at the moment.
The real problem area is the house at the moment as I have some weak areas.
I'd like to trash the Netgear replace it with tp-link 1 (which will become the FW), and then wirelessly connect tp-link 2 and tp-link 3 back to tp-link 1 or possibly mesh them all together.
I haven't done a wireless evaluation (don't know how yet) but I'd like to get it set up and play around.
Does this sounds like a good mesh scenario? If not, what's another good option?
I also have some questions with mesh networking that I didn't figure out while mucking around in the configurations.
Does utilizing 802.11s in OpenWRT require batman to work?
I'm thinking that the mesh must exist on it's own IP network space (assuming I must use IP) so I would create a separate broadcast domain, 'mesh' for example. I picked up on the forums that it needs to use a separate channel. Is that correct?
Any help will be very much appreciated.