Which device for mesh functionality?

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

Hi,

i spent some frustrating days trying to get mesh networking running on WRT1200AC devices. But it looks like the Marvell driver just doesn‘t support it.

Now I am searching for another device which can handle it well, has 5GHz and 2.4 GHz, one or more Gigabit ports. I do not intend to run many other services like adblock or openVPN, so the CPU should be able to handle the traffic but doesn‘t need to be a monster. My internet connection is 400MBit, maybe more in the future and I also want some performance when it comes to wireless performance (backups etc).

It‘s for home use, so budget is relevant (I need to buy 3 or 4).

Please let me know if I should consider further requirements or should give more information.

Thanks in advance!
Andre

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2

What is the maximum you are willing to spend per device?

3

Well, I‘d spent what‘s neccesary :slight_smile:
Ideally around 50 EUR per box, but more or less... depends. I‘m really open to all suggestions, the missing mesh is bugging me big.

thanks!

4

you could look at for example

used Cisco Meraki MR24 on Ebay at around $20 each

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5

Hm, I cannot even find it in the hardware database of openwrt, nothing named like mr24.
And, I wouldn‘t want to run anything anything with original Cisco firmware, based on the regular findings of backdoors and vulnerabilities of this brand - but that‘s another topic and a reason I am looking at openWRT.

Thanks anyway of course!

6

There it is:

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7

Thanks, I didn’t find it because was searching for Cisco.

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8

Are there also other recommendations? Looks like I can‘t get my hands on a cheap MR24 in Europe.

9

How about these devices:

They should fit your use case fine. The cheapest one is the RE355 (~30€).

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10

Im running mesh on the Netgear EX6150v2 and EX6100v2 also

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11

Im based in South Africa, used a US forwarding service to get the Cisco Meraki MR24's

12

has anyone tested the Netgear R6220 successfully for mesh functionality?

13

I have a similar Mediatek 7621 device

https://wikidevi.com/wiki/CC%26C_WA9555

but my radios (3000 Mbps) are only supported by the Open Source MT76 driver

which is configured differently and thus could not get mesh functionality on mine

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14

Thanks, I almost bought them.

Looking through the different threads it looks like devices with the Qualcomm Atheros QCA9563/ Qualcomm Atheros QCA9880 chipsets should be working fine with mesh, is this assumption correct?

Then what about the Archer C7 - would this work?

Thanks again

15

Qualcom/Atheros are known to support mesh functionality and is always a good choice

Check out Libremesh web bulder

Choose Libremesh firmware and put in the name of the router

If it show up in the list it should be good

https://chef.libremesh.org/

Broadcom wifi chips im not so sure about as those I have tried did not mesh

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