You are really starting to piss me off.
I'm talking about wifi mesh, nothing else because i know
Sorry but my question is:
Who tried wifi-mesh?
For example, i don't need you to advertise your RT3200 which does not use MESH
Any comments outside of this topic are irrelevant.and so delete them
Dude, settle down. 
@Lynx and I will continue the RT3200 WDS discussion elsewhere, no problem. But @Lynx and @slh have both raised excellent points here that many others in the community will surely find beneficial when considering the mesh vs WDS options.
In the spirit of answering your questions (almost feels like you use bold type to "shout" stuff, which isn't cool):
I have tried wifi mesh, specifically 802.11s with and without batman-adv and found it to be extremely underwhelming on the hardware I tested it on.
So to be completely fair, you asked an extremely generic question to begin with and you're going to get a broad range of answers. If you aren't interested in feedback from RT3200 users, you should update your question to a more specific, "Who tried wifi-mesh on hardware XYZ?" On RT3200 hardware at the time of writing this, I would say "No, it does not work well." An Archer C7 or Netgear R7800 user may have a completely different take on it.
1, 2, 3, 42, 834? How is anyone supposed to answer this because you gave no clue as to how much area you are trying to cover, the type of wall materials in your space, what kind of hardware you're considering, 2.4Ghz vs 5Ghz vs 6Ghz, etc, etc.
Generically speaking a "mesh" would consist of 2...N nodes. The basic concept of mesh technology is that it dynamically configures routes between nodes and recalculates as you add/remove more.
Thanks!
I've also tried mesh on Openwrt with and without batman-adv.
I initially had it set up between two routers using 802.11s, one in a shed/workshop to connect to an outdoor IP camera, because its built in wifi kept dropping out.
Not using mesh currently, but I eventually got it working with Batman-adv and setup for both 2.4ghz and 5ghz, so that the router outdoors could connect to either of the two in the house which both have wired LAN connections. Reason for using this setup was neither 2.4 nor 5ghz were reliable due to multiple neighbour's access points frequently switching to whichever 2.4ghz channel I was using, and the lower range of non-dfs 5ghz channels being swamped too.
here's an iperf3: routers are bthub 5s using 802.11s with batman-adv
Accepted connection from 192.168.1.5, port 54386
[ 5] local 192.168.1.253 port 5201 connected to 192.168.1.5 port 54387
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate
[ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 6.21 MBytes 52.1 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 1.00-2.00 sec 5.59 MBytes 46.8 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 2.00-3.00 sec 5.96 MBytes 50.1 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 3.00-4.00 sec 6.65 MBytes 55.8 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 4.00-5.00 sec 6.68 MBytes 56.0 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 5.00-6.00 sec 6.37 MBytes 53.4 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 6.00-7.00 sec 5.49 MBytes 46.1 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 7.00-8.00 sec 6.08 MBytes 51.0 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 8.00-9.00 sec 6.48 MBytes 54.3 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 9.00-10.00 sec 6.71 MBytes 56.4 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 10.00-10.03 sec 196 KBytes 55.3 Mbits/sec
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate
[ 5] 0.00-10.03 sec 62.4 MBytes 52.2 Mbits/sec receiver
-----------------------------------------------------------
Can you share a link to wherever you continue the RT3200 WDS discussion? you are correct that other users would find this useful!
Well, if you want to talk about your RT3200 in relay or WDS, create your request
I have a mesh network over 802.11s+batman-adv+ospfv3, where ospf protocol announces ipv4 addresses over batman-adv
I've used mesh (with wpad-openssl and mesh11sd) for months.
It works well for roaming between APs
Performance-wise (both latency and bandwidth) it is much worse than e.g. routed AP or WDS.
Hardware is 4x Netgear r6220 (MT7621)
I'm using mesh, with only two static nodes. Not the best option probably, but it works, it's solid stable for me (two Xiami AX3600) and it has not give any problem. I tested WDS too for curiosity, it worked too. In my case the phy rate is between 1400 and 1900 Mbit/s.
I'm curious if someone has done some tests between WDS and MESH, to see the results.
@McGiverGim Curious why you chose 802.11s over WDS? Did you ever give performance between the two options a look?
Looking to make a very similar setup as you.
I'm not an expert, but I tested both and I didn't notice any benefit in WDS. I liked the idea of mesh and it has worked flawlessly without problems since the beginning.
I've recently been testing Mesh/RelayD/WDS
All variants worked. However Mesh seemed on my setup (Dir-882 & Dir-2150) noticable slower compared to WDS/RelayD
WDS & RelayD had similar performance - however RelayD is more 'tricky' to setup since it requires to reinstall some packages on router. WDS works out-of-the-box - but both routers needs to operate in WDS.
My biggest complain against Mesh would be a 'ping' time - which was really very slow compared to WDS performance.
Also for some reason I've been unable to utilize 802.11r protocol widely suggested for fast roaming - but it has caused far to many troubles to my network.
So I've ended with WDS for the best performance - but I've only 2 routers to connected.
Can you detail what ping test did you notice slower? Maybe I can try to repeat my tests WDS vs Mesh.
Can you detail what ping test did you notice slower?
Nothing special - just ping between nodes within the same network - with WDS I've been in the range of tens of milliseconds - while Mesh for unknown reason was pinging in hundreds.
Ok, that not seems to be my case. I only have 1 router and 1 AP. Ping between the AP and the router are as low as 2ms, between two devices in my network, one connected to the AP and the other to the router, both by wifi, usually about 12-15ms maximum.
I've observed that some devices are slower than that, maybe 150ms, but I suppose is some kind of energy saving or similar, because as I say only happens with some devices.
Well I'd been also thinking about some 'energy saving' - but in WDS the ping are considreably faster between same devices with same setting - so unless Mesh is setting wi-fi into some specific modes - I've considerer that WDS is simply faster.
Also the maximal thoughput was about 20-30% higher with WDS compared to Mesh in my case which was a bit disappointing to me.
For node connection was used 5G 80M network - with pretty decent speed.
ive been using 80211S and adhoc mode with batman-adv, babel and wing over the years. both in a home, enterprise and commercial wisp setting. it just works. considering most of the branded routers these days hype easymesh, its not really compatible vendor to vedor as many version and vendors make various changes. that being said 80211S just works between different devices even quite well.
Yep on my testing Mesh looked also stable and usable - it also seemed to much faster restablish connection when any of the router was i.e. restarted. Also for WDS solution I'd to set disassoc_low_ack = 0 on 'extender' to avoid some 'hard to explain' reassocation of phones in the network - I've not seen this issue with Mesh.
So if the goal is the stability it seems the Mesh is way to go - it you hunt for 'latency' (and you can't use 'wires') - WDS looked faster on my testing...
I've been alternating between WDS and 802.11s for about two weeks now. No obvious difference between the two in performance. Both seem to lag heavily in the "overlap zone".