Objective: provide wired connections to Lenovo and Mac desktops that are remote for direct-wired connection to gateway/router for Wake-on-Lan capability. Solution: set up a WDS or mesh "AP" that will connect wirelessly to the gateway/router and then connect via ethernet to desktops. Hardware: gateway/router is Linksys EA8300, and the WDS or mesh "AP" is either a Raspberry Pi 4 or another purpose-built device (perhaps another Linksys EA8300 as it's Atheros based and well priced).
Given these requirements, would you recommend an OpenWrt WDS or mesh configuration? Thanks!
If the EA8300 are located in a rather fixed place and not moving around much - and assuming you don't want to run more than 2-4 of those (especially if your satellites can connect to the router directly, without needing additional wireless hops inbetween (so no daisy-chaining(), keep it simple with WDS/ 4addr, a mesh wouldn't gain you anything but flexibility (at the expense of additional configuration burdens).
Thanks much for the helpful advice. I have two Linksys EA8300 devices up and running:
The first as a gateway/router with three wireless networks (with only the first configured as Access Point WDS and the remaining two as Access Point) and the second as an AP with one wireless network (Qualcomm Atheros QCA9886 802.11acn Channel:149 (5.745 GHz) configured as Client WDS), and the two other wireless networks as Access Point.
Is this the ideal configuration? Should I also enable the other wireless networks as WDS?