Can you ad nodes of different manufacturers to a mesh system

[MarkLondon]

I've bought an Asus Tuf AX5400 because my existing Linksys router MX5300 doesn't allow setting up a vpn on it. I have 3 MX5300 and two other Linksys mesh routers that came from my ISP when they installed fibre to my house 2 years ago (went from 10MBS with BT copper to 600MBS). The modem connects to one of the MX5300's, the others are connected to this one, 3 by wire (Cat 6, 7 and 8) and one wireless. So a significant amount of hardware that gives good coverage over a large house. The plan is to connect the asus to the modem and then the main MX5300 to the asus. The VPN will then be run on the asus. (will move my son's wired gaming connection to the AX5400's game port). The result of all this is that I will have both the Linksys mesh wireless (they call it velop) and the wireless signal from the asus (I tried to find a suitable non-wireless router without success).

My question: is it possible to create a combined mesh network from with the asus and Linksys? So that the linksys routers become nodes of the asus router, creating one network. Or is this impossible? If not, I'll have two network connections at least in the area where the fibre modem is located. Thanks. Asus is arriving this Saturday so will have fun playing around with it.

 

[bbunge]

Mesh is brand specific. However, you can add access points of other brands and achieve almost the same result. One thing lost by this is centralized management. Some, in fact, claim better performance and stability by using access points.

 

[glens]

Yeah. If you can put the Linksys's into AP mode, or even just the one which perhaps can yet feed the others in their mesh system, it'll be seamless-enough either way.

 

[MarkLondon]

Yeah. If you can put the Linksys's into AP mode, or even just the one which perhaps can yet feed the others in their mesh system, it'll be seamless-enough either way.

Thank you Glens. I've just checked on the Linksys router settings app and it can be set to what linksys calls bridge mode and some of their documentation says is the saame as ap mode. I'll try it out tomorrow when I get my asus router and try setting it all up. I don't know if that would change all of the linksys nodes to that setting or only the main one, in which case if need be I could switch them around and make each the main one in turn and then repeat the change. Thank you for again for your help.

 

[glens]

As APs, use the same SSIDs system-wide, same or different channels as testing concludes (you can effectively emulate a full-duplex connection between two wireless clients when they're on different APs on different channels, if that's something you desire and can do in a neighborly way). I'm not sure, but if "WiFi Agile Multiband" is available, as a standards-based mechanism it may help improve (at least some) the multi-manufactured-AP experience.