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RT-BE92U Media bridge with MLO

donzoomik

New Around Here
I need to build a WiFi bridge at home for wired devices and I got myself two RT-BE92U units for all the WiFi 7 goodies. Previously I had G.hn Wave-2 Ethernet over Powerline that was quite slow (~400Mbit) but at least stable.

I first tried the fancy AiMesh and it's quite awful. After hours of tinkering I got MLO backhaul to work (at least it shows enabled and in GUI, with signal strength on all frequencies) but it's quite unstable - speeds over bridge anywhere between 5-150MB/s and frequent dropouts. Often tinkering WiFi parameters broke AiMesh so bad that I needed to factory reset both devices as the second node could not join the network (join "completes" but after node reboot it does not connect). Latest firmware on both (with factory resets after upgrade), also tried Merlin.

As I don't really need the AiMesh mesh-repeater-AP stuff, I resorted to simple media bridge mode. I was surprised that it asks me to select a single frequency with no MLO in sight. At least it's more stable and speed is... okay and relatively stable at ~150MB/s with ~4000Mbit link rate at 6GHz.
This is the same as the best throughput at AiMesh mode that reported MLO so I'm not sure if MLO is working at all in any mode. In MLO mode it reported about the same link rate as simple media bridge, that is quite believable at 6GHz (~5-6m, almost line of sight with one drywall, quite near theoretical max 5764 Mbit). From the same position I get my laptop's Wifi 6E 2x2 to also max out at 2400Mbit link rates (both 5 and 6GHz). However even in Media bridge mode, the primary router unit shows that the bridge is associated in MLO mode in Client list, that confuses me. At the same time. Wireless log shows connection only on 6Ghz.

The speeds are tolerable but I'd like to undertand if MLO is really enabled or if it could be somehow enabled in Media Bridge mode. I suspect that it is in fact not working at all, in any mode. If it (in theory) worked in AiMesh Backhaul, MLO in Media Bridge wouldn't be much of a stretch as AiMesh is in my understanding basically Client+AP mode (plus some extra magic) in one.
While current speeds are tolerable, I'd like to move both AP-s into somewhat more apart (for testing I put them into somewhat awkward but best coverage positions) - this would bring down link speeds but if MLO really worked, it would likely cancel out. Or if I kept the APs in current positions, I'd hope reach my initial objective of saturating a 2.5Gb Ethernet port.

Is MLO even supported (or ever going to be supported) in Media Bridge mode? How can i check if it actually works?
 

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