I'm looking to set up a mesh network with a wireless backhaul. Currently I have Orbi devices but I'm getting tired of them stopping routing and migrating devices with no visibility.
What are the currently recommended devices for setting up this kind of network? I guess I'm looking at 802.11s and multi band support. It's been a few years since I last used OpenWrt so any pointers would be gratefully received.
Thanks!
I'd probably look into the ipq4019 range of devices, e.g. the Linksys ea8300 with three independent radios (two 5 GHz radios covering different ranges of the 5 GHz band), which allows you dedicating one radio exclusively for the backhaul.
If you are only dealing with 2-3 predominantly stationary APs in a star configuration (all wireless-only 'repeaters' having a good wireless connection to the master router), you don't really need a mesh. For these cases a simple WDS/ 4addr setup would be much simpler and more performant and reliable. Real mesh configurations are only becoming important in case of many repeaters, which are often moving around and if you need to deal with multiple/ changing wireless routes and changing hops. The mesh provides you with more flexibility and auto-configuration in changing environments, but are much more complex to set up initially - for no gain, if all your APs are stationary and could be configured once via WDS/ 4addr.
That's extremely useful, thanks. Yes, this will be a static setup with a single router providing internet access so I'll look into WDS. Thank you for the recommendations!
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