flyingwolf
Occasional Visitor
Currently, I have a number of AC68U's running my network. All run the latest version of Merlin.
Router 1 handles the incoming fiber line and does the heavy lifting for the firewall, DHCP, and AiMesh master node. The other 3 act as nodes and do their thing.
I would like to replace Router 1 with a simple managed switch, a Netgear GS108Tv1, old but gig capable and more than enough for my small home network of 10 physically connected devices (with a few of those being connected via dumb switches so there are plenty of ports).
From the managed switch I would have Router one handle the AiMesh network and do the heavy lifting for the way too many wireless devices we have in the house. for instance, all but a few of our lights are smart, as are the plugs, appliances, so many cell phones, and tablets, etc. On average about 70 wireless IOT items at any one time including a few non-essential but nice to have wireless cameras. My essential ones are directly wired.
So is this possible? The managed switch handles all of the main networking and then the Merlin routers just work as a mesh network and occasionally use one of the LAN ports for hooking up a random device for testing or setup etc.
Note that all AiMesh routers will be using a wired backhaul.
I appreciate any advice you can give.
Router 1 handles the incoming fiber line and does the heavy lifting for the firewall, DHCP, and AiMesh master node. The other 3 act as nodes and do their thing.
I would like to replace Router 1 with a simple managed switch, a Netgear GS108Tv1, old but gig capable and more than enough for my small home network of 10 physically connected devices (with a few of those being connected via dumb switches so there are plenty of ports).
From the managed switch I would have Router one handle the AiMesh network and do the heavy lifting for the way too many wireless devices we have in the house. for instance, all but a few of our lights are smart, as are the plugs, appliances, so many cell phones, and tablets, etc. On average about 70 wireless IOT items at any one time including a few non-essential but nice to have wireless cameras. My essential ones are directly wired.
So is this possible? The managed switch handles all of the main networking and then the Merlin routers just work as a mesh network and occasionally use one of the LAN ports for hooking up a random device for testing or setup etc.
Note that all AiMesh routers will be using a wired backhaul.
I appreciate any advice you can give.