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Opinion on mesh vs just media bridge

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lepa71

Senior Member
Here is my setup. I have 2 ax3000 running Merlin's fw. My home is a 2000 sq ft 2-story ( no basement) townhome with quite a few neighbors. I have my main router upstairs next to my Verizon 5g cube. Verizon cube is in a pass-through mode hard-wired into the main router. Upstairs I have TV using Google Chromecast wirelessly as well as my son's laptop and his tablet. Also hard-wired into the main router a printer, my work laptop, and home server. On the main floor, I have a Smart TV, Xbox, and my laptop and my wife's laptop. Xbox and Smart TV are hard-wired into 2nd router. Right now I'm running 2nd router in the mesh node. I see that sometimes my laptop is connected to it but sometimes it connects to the upstairs main router. I'm wondering I should just run the 2nd router in media bridge mode and be done with it. I had this setup when I had AC68 in media bridge mode as I couldn't make a mesh node out of it. It wasn't stable.

What do you guys think?

Thanks
 
Locate your main router as close to the center of the main WiFi devices' areas.

Use the second router in Media Bridge mode and place it where it will take the most traffic off your main router. Not just the number of clients you may be able to connect it to, but take into account how low the signal is to them otherwise, and how much throughput they normally require too.

Even though they will still be 'wireless', even with a wired connection to the Media Bridge router, that router will handle their needs much faster than the client devices' wireless connections can, giving you a better, overall, network experience.
 
So what you are saying. Forget about the mesh and just use 2nd router as a bridge. My thought with 2nd router was to minimize the number of devices emitting wifi( Smart TV and Xbox in this case).
 
Not a bridge, but a Media Bridge.

But, yes.

Unless you can put the main and node at exact opposite ends of the house, on different floors, and use a wired backhaul, then it sounds like your home and/or your main wireless fed areas are too small for AiMesh to work effectively.
 
Not a bridge, but a Media Bridge.

But, yes.

Unless you can put the main and node at exact opposite ends of the house, on different floors, and use a wired backhaul, then it sounds like your home and/or your main wireless fed areas are too small for AiMesh to work effectively.
That is what I meant, a media bridge. Yeah, the foundation is about 22ft by 35ft. I don't have really an issue with wifi coverage. I was just playing around with mesh since I got a 2nd AX3000. The main goal was to reduce the number of wifi devices. The Smart TV and Xbox are in kitty-corner from the 2nd-floor main router but not too far. So secondary goal was to use external antennas on 2nd router to make connections better.
 
Then the Media Bridge used for the smart TV and Xbox (and anything else you can wire it to) sounds like a great idea.
 
Fully agree with the above: I have hardwired our TV box through a Media Bridge which has a rock solid wireless connection to the Router (making full use of 3x3 on 5 GHz).
As long as your "remote" connections can be hardwired to the Media Bridge I believe that is the favorite setup.
 

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