My brain is kind of full and so I've avoided learning how to do WiFi mesh systems. But with everybody and their brother selling home WiFi systems, and customers wanting WiFi everywhere and too lazy to use a cable even 1 foot away, mesh WiFi now seems impossible to avoid. But many of these systems have limited configuration options, want to be controlled via the cloud from an app on your phone, and don't seem to play nice with a 5 GHz connection from a WISP. Adding in things like FireSticks that use WiFi for the remote seems to aggravate this whole situation.
So looking at roll-your-own-mesh using Mikrotik, I'm reluctant to use WDS. Reading threads on the Mikrotik forums tends to confirm my unease with this approach. My clear preference is a wired mesh, but customers just flat out refuse to have any cables. Everything must be wireless and work automagically, which I assume is why they will pay $300 for a 3-pack of Google WiFi hockey pucks. So here's my question: what's wrong with a main router that uses both 2.4 and 5 GHz, and then satellites with a 2.4 GHz AP bridged to a 5 GHz client that connects to the main router. Is the problem that now you have a hub-and-spoke design not a true mesh? Do people need a system that can hopscotch from A to B to C to D in order to get to the far reaches of their house? Is there a way to run a backbone between nodes that none of the customer devices connect to? I thought I read that Netgear's Orbi worked that way.
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