WiFi channel allocation in mesh (wired or non wired)
Hello folks
Context:
This is for advanced home networking. I run mostly wired networking, my network uses 5 VLANs:
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one for regular LAN
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one for IoT devices
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one for DSL WAN
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one for Starlink WAN
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one for a IPTV set-top box wich is a PITA to configure, and required IPv6 SLAAC. Didn't want that on any of my regular LANs, so now it has its own VLAN.
Routing between VLANs is done by a pfSense box with 4 interfaces. Core switch is a Cisco SG-500 28 port.
WiFi & Zigbee:
All my AP use channels 6 or 11. I never use other channels. Channel 1 is blacklisted, since it would interfere with my ZigBee mesh running on Zigbee channel11.
Considering that each electric radiator is now individually controlled with ZigBee, it is critical that I maintain stable ZigBee performance, or the comfort in the house, as well as the Wife Acceptance Factor are going to drop dramatically.
I used to have "simple" AP for WiFi devices, and used D-Link DAP-2310, because it allows for 2 WiFi SSID. SSID 1 is mapped to LAN VLAN, and SSID 2 is mapped to IoT VLAN
Recently one of the AP died, so I decided to test out "new" WiFi, and got myself a TP-Link EAP610. It works very well. So well that I am now considering adding another one to improve coverage. I configured the Omada controller software in a Linux VM, so I can configure centrally, have roaming between APs and mesh functions.
Question:
Suppose I add 2 more EAP610. I have a couple questions related to design and channel usage:
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if the 2 additional EAP are using wireless only, would they still use channel 11 (same as the current EAP610)? Or would I have to select channels 6 and 11 and distribute between APs?I think I understand that in mesh, they all use the same channel, but am not sure
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if I add them using wireless only, should I buy a bigger central AP for the connection to the wired network? use the current EAP610 as a wireless mesh member, and bump the wired mesh member to a EAP653 or even a EAP670?I noticed that the current EAP610 is already high in CPU and memory usage, with just my laptop using WiFi (OK so I'm using 100Mpbs right now since doing a backup, but still!)
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if I wire the additional AP (should be easy). As far as I understand, it would give me better backhaul bandwith. But in that case, would the AP still use a single channel?
Having a better WiFi would be nice, but I really don't want to install additional APs if any solution will degrade the performance of the ZigBee mesh.