Hey Team, I'm planning to enable Mesh at home but I'm not fully convinced if my hardware will allow me to do so and if I understood Mesh concept correctly.
I have 3 routers plus router from ISP. The router from ISP will pass whole traffic (Fiber, 1GBit down/300Mbit up) to [1] Asus TUF AX4200 which will be OpenWRT, DHCP, then I'm planning to connect via ethernet cable to two TP-Link Archer C7 v5/OpenWRT [2].
Is it possible to actually create a Mesh network which will consist of all 3 devices and if this will have a sense?
My goals are:
to have best signal coverage and seamless Wifi AP switching.
to have all devices running under same network
be a bit independent from ISP - in terms of - I will not need to care about IPs and configurations as it will be done all on my 1st router (asus)
TBH, I read those docs, but I still don't know. Especially I dont know if MEP and MPP can utilize ethernet network for Mesh or it will always use "extra channel" and I dont know if Mesh performs better over not Meshed network. I dont know if I will have any benefits from Mesh over Fast Roaming and what are drawbacks of Mesh.
I have seen this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMgs2XFClaM " CHEAP WI-FI MESH ALTERNATIVE with fast roaming OpenWrt Wi-Fi Access points" and "Cheap alternative" for me personally implicit that with Fast Roaming I will not get all possible benefits?
You obviously have not read the links provided by @psherman
Here is an extract that seems to be the most relevant to your question:
What is a Mesh?
A mesh network is a multi point to multi point layer 2 mac-routing backhaul used to interconnect mesh peers. Mesh peers are generally non-user devices, such as routers, access points, CPEs etc..
A normal user device, such as a phone, tablet, laptop etc., cannot connect to a mesh network. Instead, connection is achieved via a mesh gateway, a special type of mesh peer.
It is unfortunate that some manufacturers have used the word “Mesh” for marketing purposes to describe their non-standard, closed source, proprietary “roaming” functionality and this causes great confusion to many people when they enter the world of international standards and open source firmware for their network infrastructure.
The accepted standard for mesh networks is ieee802.11s.
The accepted standard for fast roaming of user devices is ieee802.11r.
I have read it multiple times and it does not answer what are benefits/drawbacks of Mesh, but I my have misunderstood Mesh 802.11s vs what TP Link shows on their "mesh" site as is looks like Fast Roaming with extra features. And I was hoping I would achieve similar features with 802.11s.
You think you want the ability to use the additional complexity of the various protocols that make Fast Roaming happen, but you've got two access points in presumably a relatively small area.
802.11r/k/v are designed and intended for very large sites with very large numbers of access points (thousands) and high volumes of users - like a University campus, or a massive conference centre.
You will likely be far better served by siting your APs carefully, selecting non overlapping channels and tuning their output power, to minimise overlap and maximise coverage. The wired backhaul does the heavy lifting, and the clients themselves can decide what the best signal to use is.
As several other contributors have pointed out, you probably don't need mesh or anything else in your config.
The short of it is this:
a wired backhaul is always better than wireless.
When the option exists to use Ethernet, that will give you better performance and leverages a much simpler configuration.
802.11s is mesh -- a wireless backhaul standard. You do not need it if you have the option to use ethernet.
roaming from AP to AP is a client side process.
Setup your APs to provide the best possible environment for the clients to roam intelligently.
APs can 'assist' clients, but sometimes this adds unnecessary complexity that can actually cause problems.
The method for this is 802.11r (fast roaming) and the k and v standards (extensions to the roaming techniques for large environments). But some clients just don't work well with these methods, and any misconfigurations will absolutely cause problems.
The most important foundational step in setting up your network is to ensure that you've optimized your radios. I really like the way that it is explained in this video (while the video talks about Unifi, the same concepts apply in OpenWrt and all wifi devices). Channels and power levels, as well as mechanical placement of your APs (to the extent possible) are the critical settings. If these are not done properly, the experience will never be great no matter what else you throw at it. When done well, you can have truly excellent results.
For reference, I have wired backhaul (no mesh), and I do not use 802.11k/v/r... my roaming is nearly seamless. Don't even play with 802.11k/v/r unless you have a demonstrated need after you have fully optimized the radios per the video above.
and it does not answer what are benefits/drawbacks of Mesh, but I my have misunderstood Mesh 802.11s vs what TP Link shows on their "mesh" site as is looks like Fast Roaming with extra features. And I was hoping I would achieve similar features with 802.11s.