Choosing correct satellite

Dan,

It's mostly up to the wireless client where it does connect to.

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InfoDan wrote:

The coffe machine connects to the closest satellite (RBS20) and shows signal strength 3 out of three.
The dish washer however connects to a satellite (RBS40) more far away and shows signal strength only 1 out of three.

One possible reason is that the dish washer wireless client is always-on if the machine is connected to the grid.

If the Mesh system is coming up, the router does boot much faster then the satellites. If the client does discover the router WiFi and is able to connect it is happy and won't change anything on it's own.

Probably, the coffee machine WiFi might not be up 24*7 while the machine is connected to the power grid - and the moment it does connect, the satellite is up.

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InfoDan wrote:

Why doesnt both kitchen machines connect to the satellite that gives them the strongest Wifi signal ??

There are different capabilities in a wireless client.

Basic WiFi clients connect to the first best access point, and will stick there forever - many simple IoT are behaving like this.

Advanced clients are able to receive  Better wireless clients can make use of 802.11k radio resource management (RRM) assisted roaming - which makes one of the two key features for so called Mesh systems. A 802.11k capable clients does request a neighbor report from the Mesh system, which will return information about known neighbor AP which are candidates for roaming. This request is sent in the form of an 802.11 management frame, known as an action frame. The AP responds with a list of neighbor APs (correctly the BSSID - each radio MAC address - serving the same SSID) on the same network along with the channel numbers. The response is also an action frame. The client identifies the APs candidates for the next roam from the response frame. The use of 802.11k RRM process allows the client to roam efficiently and quickly. Some WiFi client hardware can be updated by new drivers (typically including microcode or embedded firmware loaded to the radio), but many simple ones will never get this capability.

If you like to have some fun, challenge Bosch and Siemens support for firmware updates for their respective products to be more Mesh WiFi friendly resp. 802.11k RRM compliant.

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InfoDan wrote:

Is there a way to manually choose which way through the mesh-network Wifi-units should choose to reach the the Router ??

No. Despite it's marketing designated "Mesh" name - compare it to the wall power outlet which can't choose if he is connecting to the TV or the coffee maker. This applies to both the satellites and wireless clients in general.

I don't know by how far consumer Orbi are able to force disassociate "dumb" clients when RSSI gets too low in general, or as part of the load balancing, so they can "reorient" themselves from the spectrum and connect to a better suited AP band/radio.

Regards,

-Kurt