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Wired Backhaul support for WAX610 and WAX214 Access Points
schumaku
Dec 18, 2020Guru - Experienced User
AJBello1437 wrote:WAX610 in Extender mode only works while one of them is connected via wireless.
The WAX610 are plain normal wireless AP usually connected to a wired network, so using that wired backhaul.
AJBello1437 wrote:Which is what MESH needs to function,
The ability to use a WAX610 or e.g. a WAX540 - while operating alone or with many more WAC5xx or WAX6xx on a wired network - as a root access point, allowing to associate one or multiple WAX6xx resp. WAX550/564 as wireless connected "extenders" is (in my opinion misleadingly) designated Mesh.
My practical experience with such a set-up is limited, however we're operating many customer and own sites where many WAX6xx and WAC5xx are on a wired network, Insight managed, this Insight management (in my understanding again) allows a seamless roaming between the BSSIDs serving the same SSID on another radio, on a local or on another access point, making use of 802.11k and 802.11v. In standalone management mode - at least the wired WAC5xx - do not offer seamless roamaing, these are standalone APs with all the disadvantages like sticky clients, no radio ressoure management information RRM between the APs and the connected clients, so the clients don't have a list of alternate BSSIDs.
Enlighten me if a config with one root WAX610 and one or multple WAX610 connected by the wireless backhaul and managed individually does offer the seamless roaming (against my expectations), unless it's Insight managed.
AJBello1437 wrote:What I would like to see is a wired extender mode instead of relying on wireless connection for subsequent WAX610 APs
All WAX6xx and WAC5xx in wired mode and under Insight management offer what marketing does designate as "Mesh" - technically it's 802.11k/v plus some. have ad-hoc bound a WAC540 I had at hand to a base WAC540 on the wied network. The WAC540 does perfectly integrate into the same "Mesh" along with all the wired WAC5xx and WAX6xx.
So either we face some misunderstandings (caused by this marketing "Insight Instant WiFi Mesh" term), or the WAX610 behave effectively different than the WAC5xx.
Taking the WAX214 into the discussion: To my knowledge the WAX21x are pure standalone Wireless Access Points for wired backhaul only. These are not offering any Mesh, any seamless roaming, and can't be used as a wireless extender connected to a WAC5xx or WAX6xx base unit. The WAX21x does allow configuring an SSID for serving both the 2.4 and 5 ghz (by default). This allows e.g some band steering between the radios on the individual WAX21x, but not to combine many waX21x into the same roaming network.
Said all that, I'm still lost what feature or functionality you are behind. It would be much easier to discsuss this in the normal community instead of the idea exchange. Still hope we find something interesting, I'm happy to push such features ahead.