@AvacadoBob,

Unfortunately that is the case when a mesh network goes down. The main node will always be the first node to establish a connection and as soon as it begins broadcasting the SSID, the devices will immediately connect; meanwhile the satellite nodes are still establishing their connections.

Over time, the devices should either roam on their own or be managed by the Deco. For devices that do not roam, the best option is to reboot the device so it will reconnect to the correct node. You may check to see if fast roaming is available as an option for your network, as this will shorten the lease times and potentially allow your device to reconnect to the closest node.

Fortunately, our team has been rolling out Node Preference and Signal Source options to deco models over the last few months, which eases this concern. This is one of the newest features and has only been rolled out to a few models so far.  I do not believe that the XE75 has had its firmware updated to add the feature yet but when it does, the network will try to move the device to the node that you selected as preferable.

Honestly, connecting the devices to an RE is a pretty reliable method of forcing the connection to a specific node. For devices that you actively use, it basically is passing the responsibility of moving between SSIDs from the network to the device itself. So if you have a phone that can connect to both, your phone would actively look for which SSID is providing the strongest connection.