I had a TP Link main router at one end of the house. Then in the far end of the basement I had another one set up as an access point. They were not mesh capable. This was about a year ago. I started having some issues which I couldn't figure out.
So I bought a Deco 3 unit mesh system. One at the modem, one in basement, one in the living room. Worked ok at first. But again things seemed to get weird from time to time. I disconnected the one in the living room and that seemed to help. But not perfect. After doing some research it appeared it was possible to have too many. So I went down to the one unit. That was better, but not perfect. This was all over a period of several months.
In the Deco unit I had the main WIFI and IOT networks. Although I didn't do a very good job of keeping the devices where they should be. One disadvantage of the Deco is you can't set the WIFI channel. We can see several of the neighbors WIFI's here and I kinda wondered about interference.
Decided to resurrect the original TP Link unit to see what might happen. Went thru the Deco and got everything on the one network as the TP didn't have IOT network. That only took about 4 hours.
Swapped in the Old router, set the channel to 1 to start with. All the devices connected up within a few minutes. I have 62 devices showing up. So far after about 2 weeks I have not had any difficuties. 62 is more than the recommended number but since about half of those are Matter devices they don't put much load on the network.
I Can't say for certain that the channel selection was the issue, but so far all is good. I guess sometimes old is better than new.
Ubiquiti Edgerouter 4, three Unifi AP's, ch 1, 6, 11. Up time 8 months, system is six years old. It has only been shut down because of an extended power outage or a firmware update. Never a reboot for performance issues.
I absolutely set the channel of the wifi. I think that is only available on some models. I am running the BE65Pro and BE65 Outdoor models.
I run 5 Ghz, and 6Ghz on my main network (don't really care about those channels) and 2.4 on my IOT just to keep it on a separate SSID (Most IOT that requires 2.4 really hate mixed networks)
In order to set the channel on the IOT network, you have to temporarily turn on 2.4 on your main network, set the channel, and then turn off the 2.4. Then DO NOT RUN THE NETWORK OPTIMIZATION. I have had it set at channel 1, and it has stayed there since I installed them over a year ago. Zigbee is on 25 on my hub.
Also, I am not using the routing function. Mine are in AP mode with a wired (MOCA 2.5 Gb) backhaul.
Beam Forming, and all those options are off. Absolutely ZERO issues since install and running ~1.5Gb download speeds over Wifi - which blows away my old AX11000 gaming AP (by a factor of 3). Wired, I am getting the same.
