BE9700 EasyMesh is HORRIBLE - is MLO Network the cause?
This has been driving me NUTS.
Frontier first gave me a couple Eero 6E. I did an ethernet backhaul. Eero's firewall functionality sucks if you're a geek, and their mesh was lousy.
Then I'd had a bunch of Asus equipment in their mesh running fine for a couple years. It was running both firewall and access points in a mesh. Firewall, vpn functionality very nice. Worked very well for years. Then suddenly there was trouble. I'm in FL, where the houses are close together and the foundations are cinder block (not good for wireless signals). My neighbor upgraded to Eero 7 - much fatter bandwidth - and I think he was stepping on my signals.
I gave up on Asus and bought the top-of-the-line wifi 7 super duper BE9700. The functionality of TP-Link in terms of the router/firewall is very lacking compared to the Asus. It's just the basics. So I installed a Mikrotik as the firewall (awesome router functionality, OpenVPN... wireguard... 10G ethernet). Now the TP Link was just wireless access points in EasyMesh.
BE9700 on the first floor. Due to cinder block, the signal struggled to get to the driveway camera and the sprinkler system. So I bought an Archer A8 (wifi 5) and added to EasyMesh. Put it in the garage. Ethernet backhaul. 2nd floor signal was weak in my office, so added an AX1800 (wifi 6) to EasyMesh. Ethernet backhaul. Signal in the back yard was lousy due to cinder block Added an RE650 (no easymesh)... then an RE550 (no easymesh)... Finally found an RE450 that DOES do easymesh. But doesn't do ethernet backhaul, so wireless backhaul. But it was working fine.
All was happy for months and then this nonsense started again. I'd walk around the house... I'd be "connected" to the wireless, but no internet connection. EasyMesh wasn't "meshing".
At this point I'm out several hundred dollars on all this stuff. And countless hours of screwing around.
I could connect to the Archer A8 (wifi 5) and get 500Mb, then walk to the BE9700. I could see that I was connected to Wifi6, but no traffic to the internet. Same in reverse. So something wasn't handing off correctly.
I went back to the BE9700. I turned off the 6Ghz radio (don't have anything yet that uses it). No change.
Then I turned off MLO Network. Problem appears to be solved. I can now walk around and watch my connection change from wifi 5 to wifi6 and back, and I am not suffering "zero traffic".
All latest firmware.
This is nuts.
What the heck going on here? What good is 6Ghz and Wifi7 and MLO if it screws up EasyMesh??
