2 routers or 1 router and 2 extenders?

I have these as the "backhaul" for my Amplifi HD mesh routers and they have been working really well for about 2-3 years now. Since the Amplifi HD routers have 4 ethernet ports, I can hook my Apple TV, Hubitat etc. and have full ethernet in the house. I have AT&T fiber at home and from my Apple TV connected to Amplify HD to the AT&T fiber modem over coax, I get between 980 down/ 950 up.

NOTE: I don't have any other signals over coax since I ditched cable.

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Bought a Tenda MW6 mesh router. Easy peasy to set up. Disconnected the AC23 router and both A18 extenders. Using a gigabit switch to feed the desktops. Getting at least 300 Mbps on WiFi

Hubitat requires a reserved IP but there is no web interface for the MW6, only an app, and there is no way to reserve an IP. Just got this a few hours ago and am learning.

Technically you can go without a reservation and as long as the router keeps issuing you the same IP you'll be ok. But it certainly is better with a reservation. You could also find a range of IPs that are outside of the DHCP scope and give the hub a static IP in that range, since the DHCP server wouldn't issue an address in that range. Assuming your router can tell you that!

I came to the lounge to give a little review of my new ASUS router, ZenWiFi AX6600, got it to try to improve my AIMesh in my townhouse. I saw this thread and thought may as well drop it here. I had two AC68U units before, my mesh was a bit flaky at times and I was not happy with it. I got one AX6600 and put that in as the main router. So far it has been a huge improvement, my NAS streams 4k perfectly to everything in the house. the dedicated 5G backhaul is great. I have a smaller place and running CAT5 was not an option so AIMesh it was, it has only been a day and will keep an eye on any hiccups. I had the SSID for the three bands all named the same and that caused huge issues with my SONOS play 1 units took forever to get them back in. I had to rename all the different SSIDs to unique names. If I experience anything great or bad I will let you know. If you got the cash and are looking to improve you might want to try the two pack of these Routers, the reviews seem pretty solid.

Cheers
B

Follow up, well the SONOS play 1 units (3 in the house) do not like the new router for some odd reason. I think it will be factory reset time for all of them and then set them up again. Had a RM rule that turned on the radio in the kitchen through SONOS for the spouse, does not work anymore and the SAF is slowly falling. I am not sure how much longer I can hold her off with "I am working on it!" pray for me!!

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Be careful of cancel culture. If you can’t get the SONOS working, she will want it ALL gone down to the last peanut plug. :sunglasses:

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LOL, well she may not be that down on it at this point but damn these Sonos are being a bear to keep connected. Some wifi issues with the new router and once I get it ironed out the SAF will climb again to "Lukewarm" with occasional bursts of "thats cool".

For my clients I generally recommend the use of a Sonos Boost to keep the speakers on a separate network and on their own "mesh". I seem to have a lot less Sonos issues that way....

My unifi system is a couple weeks old and I do have a few roaming devices that don't roam optimally. One is a Nintendo Switch, which is known for this issue. It does not support 802.11r and it hangs on to a weak access point far, far too long. I ended up setting a minimum RSSI for each AP, and that seems to have done the trick. The good news is with Unifi you can actually change parameters like that. With consumer-grade stuff you're usually stuck.