Hey @BritG1,

I would be more than happy to help provide some insights:

As for your concern for Wi-fi 7 vs Wi-Fi 6E, I would recommend keeping it in consideration for a few reasons:

1 - Your Apple Devices will be able to take advantage of the features of Wi-Fi 7 that were also supported on Wi-Fi 6E.

2 - Since you have a wireless backhaul, you will see a significant increase in performance with Wi-Fi 7 due to the ability of the nodes to communicate with each other using Wi-Fi 7 technology such as 4KQAM and MLO (I have seen 8.9Gbps wireless backhauls from early adopters)

For your switch,

Decos will have no problem working with a switch, especially unmanaged. We even have PoE Decos, which would require their ethernet connection to pass through a switch. Most users place a switch after their main node to give wired connections to their satellite nodes. From there, small switches can also be added to the satellite decos to expand the number of wired connections available.

Finally,

All of our Decos do work together, meaning that you can connect any model of Deco together and they will do their best to create a mesh network based on the technology and features available between the two.

This means that you could consider setting a powerful Deco as your main, and then adding smaller/lesser nodes for satellites since they will only be handling a portion of your network traffic, compared to the main. This is the same technology that allows for the addition of PoE and Outdoor Decos to existing setups.

Let me know if you have any other questions!

Hey @BritG1,

1 - While it is being split, it is not often that you need to take advantage of the entire bandwidth on one device at once. The additional bandwidth will actually help provide stability to your network since the satellites can easily share the total bandwidth. Multiple devices using resources can still technically reach that 2.5Gbps WAN connection limit.

2- All the units in a system are identical, and this is why we try to make it easy to upgrade a single node of your network. For example, some users have looked at adding a single Wi-Fi 7 node so that their main node has additional processing power to handle the 4 multigig connections. 

3 - Your backhaul performance can vary widely, depending on interference, range, and connection type. A wired connection will be able to achieve speeds much closer to the limit of your backhaul connection, meaning ethernet cables can potentially provide up to 1Gbps of throughput when connecting a 1G port to a 2.5G port.

4/5 - The decos backhaul will automatically switch connection methods if something happens to the wired connection. There are a few things that could cause it to switch away from a wired connection, but to troubleshoot we would need to know more about your network configuration/infrastructure. Replugging the ethernet cable or rebooting the Deco should force the device to reconfigure its backhaul.

6- We have seen some devices not report this properly and optimizations are always being made. What devices are showing the behavior? You should also consider running the network optimization tool, as it should help to optimize the wireless connections of your network.

7 - I believe the in-app speeds are calculations based on the network traffic within your mesh. For an accurate speed test, you would need to perform an internet speed test through another provider, while you are using a device wired to your network (preferably directly to the main node).

  @BritG1,

Real Quick, are you using your Decos in AP Mode?

If not, your diagram would indicate that you have two routers on your network. You need to have the traffic for your PC and switch pass through the main network.

Either your Main Deco and Switch are fighting to use the IP address from your ISP, or the devices on the main network will be having to pass through two layers of NAT - which could significantly impact multiple parts of your network, let alone the devices connected through the switch.

Ideally, you will place the Planet Network Gateway in IP Passthrough or Bridge Mode. Then you can pass all traffic through the main Deco node and all devices will be a part of the same network. Typically, you will only want to use one of the ports on your ISP Gateway, even if multiple are available.

Otherwise, you would want to leave your ISP Gateway As-Is, Instead changing the operation mode of your Decos to AP Mode, but you would lose a significant amount of features.

Hey @BritG1,

Glad to hear you have it all connected and working.

Unfortunately, there is no current way to export the IP or Device list from the Deco App. Keep in mind at a per-unit level, that your devices will move between the nodes as the connection quality changes, the device moves, or interference is introduced.

The Decos do have a minimal WebUI, essentially to view network information. It has been a while since I have been in the WebUI, but I believe that there should be a client list there. In the past, users have copied and pasted from the webpage into an Excel sheet to make the process a bit easier.

How to Log into the Web-Based UI on Deco

Multiple Devices—The client list is built using the list of devices' MAC Addresses. Most mobile phones and tablets offer a feature called "Private Addressing" or "Randomized MAC Address" to try to prevent your device's ID from being tracked across public networks. This feature will provide the network with a new MAC address each time it reconnects to the network. These are likely the MAC addresses that you are seeing in the Client List. To prevent this, you will need to disable the setting on the phones and tablets that are connected to the network.

Some devices may also be misclassified, as the device classification is based on general standards used to ID devices through the MAC address. If you have any wireless IoT Devices, SmartTVs, Laptops, or Hubs, the device may simply be misclassified.

Lastly, as long as the devices are connected to the network, it is normally much easier to identify a device first using its current IP address. This is usually more readily available and easier to compare than the MAC Addresses.