First thing first I'm not one of those type of people to moan I even recommend tp link products to family friends and even my neighbours who have gone out and bought tp link products on my reccomendation  as I have multiple different products from multiple cameras, switches , routers. 

 

but this has tipped me over the edge for what was supposed to be a simple process. 

 

 

Yesterday I finally caved in to the temptation of turning on the easy mesh feature on my home network. (3x ax72 v01)

 

 

I followed the instructions that are found on here by factory resetting my satellite unit that I had in AP. 

 

Powered on the satellite and waited for all the lights to come on from the re boot up then Pressed the wps on my main unit then the now factory resetted satellite. 

 

after a good 10-15 mins they both finally synced even though they was 3ft apart from each other and then waited a further 5 mins to make sure All was happy after checking in the tether app. Not sure if this is how long it should take as first time doing it. 

 

 Thinking All good, I turned the unit off and  I toddled to the top floor of my house and re placed my satellite unit plugged it back in and waited for it to reboot then plugged in the ethernet and waited a further 5 mins for the satellite to recognise its connected via ethernet which it did but the wifi speeds was sporadically low from what I'm used to. 

 

I'm used to 900+ down /110 up I was getting anywhere from 2mbps- 250 down to 50-80 up. 

And this was on 5ghz and 160mhz and having a dbm range of -28/-33dbm so I was literally touching the router 

 

 

After a few repeated tests over multiple apps ( analati, wifiman, ookla,)

 

The numbers slowly crept up to 500 down to 90 up and then all of a sudden  went back to normal.  

 

The switching between the main and top floor satellite was working as should and consistently giving the normal high  speeds i was used to. 

 

So i was happy as all was working and had been all day no issues even though it took about 20 mins to set up. 

 

come to just gone 9pm last night i set out to put my final ax72 into the mesh set up  as kids was in bed and the wife had finished streaming her toot and i wish i never even attempted it as all hell broke loose. 

 

firstly the positive. 

 

i got my unit from the bottom of my garden in my man cave brought it into the house and placed it same place as the other unit 3ft from the main unit. 

 

Reset it back to factory settings, waited for it to fully reboot then repeated the process. 

 

Pressed the wps button on the main unit then on the satellite. 

 

Within seconds they had synced and showed up in the tether app.  I waited a further 5 mins watching in tether app for it to say all good ect to make sure no issues. 

 

Turned the unit off and back to my man cave at the bottom of the garden plugged it back in turned it on and waited for it to reboot like top floor unit and then plugged the ethernet in. 

 

This is the part all hell broke loose. 

 

All the Internet in my house had crashed, 

 

Neither the hard wired devices had any Internet access and all the wifi devices has been kicked off the WiFi even though the main unit was still on and showing wifi. 

 

I would try to connect to the WiFi forget the WiFi then reconnect and it would let me join then instantly kick me off. 

 

Amongst all this I had wifi cameras pinging notifications of movements outside then they would stop and disconnect then start again even though I still couldn't get connected to WiFi the whole time. 

 

 

I tried logging into my tether app via mobile data  and all I kept getting was a constant login failure, sometimes I may have got lucky to log in to the main unit but then kicked out instantly to the same picture below. 

 

 

After multiple complete reboots on every unit and waiting at every unit each time to make sure it was rebooting properly and all lights was coming on as should and going green I kept getting the same results of no Internet on hardwired or wifi where it wouldn't allow me or any other device to connect via wifi and I still couldn't get onto the tether app as kept getting the same issue as in the picture above. 

 

At this point after a hour and half of going from one end of my property to the other up and down 2 flights of stairs more than 5 times to hear my missus say 

 

I told you not to touch it, it was working fine before. 

 

That was the final straw. 😤😤😤😤😤😤😤

 

Supposedly this is supposed to be a easy change over. 

 

I Went to each unit  again and just turned them all off and left them for about 10 mins trying to calm down as at this point and alot of choice words was being said and I was getting increasingly annoyed understandably  as I hadn't a clue what was causing this to happen with no way of even getting onto the main unit to see if there was any reported issues. 

 

I then went around each unit again turning them on one by one (main then top floor then man cave) waiting for full reboots and for all lights to turn green before turning the next on unit. I was now getting connected to WiFi on each unit but was still getting the initial slow wifi speeds at each unit as said above then they would go back to full speeds. 

 

Lastly After turning on the mancave satellite and letting it reboot and waiting again for all  the green lights to come on it was all working as it should but I had a random tplink router show up in my tether app 

 

 

Eventually it dissapeared but I could now get into the main unit and see that the network was all up and running like nothing had happened showing both satellite AX72 was in mesh mode and had devices connected and was working. 

 

For the life of me I have no idea what went wrong or caused this complete nightmare 

 

Least to say I was far from impressed and I now wish I had left it how it was. 

 

But ultimately as far as I can tell  at the moment all is now working as should in mesh mode. 

 

I'll be keeping a very close eye in the coming weeks to ultimately decide whether to put my satellites back into AP mode or not. 

 

 

And if anyone is curious to know if mesh mode works by using a switch between your main unit and the satellite it does in my setup

 

my top floor satellite is connected to a tp link 24port gb unmanaged switch