@SLGTA Yep I literally just ran into this tonight. Let me explain quickly.

 

I have my main node in the main house garage. I have an office space in a separate building without Ethernet wiring to it. So I have an X50-outdoor node on the office building. It does fine to receive data, as I have it going into a switch inside which feeds the wired devices. Works great but the WiFi signal doesn't get into this building good. 
 

So I spent my evening running Ethernet cable in the ceiling that goes from this outdoor AP on the outside and then goes to the inside part where it goes into a new X55 node I just added to make wireless better inside the main space.

 

After all that work the X55 wants to hop on wireless backhaul even though it is directly wired into the outdoor node with Ethernet.

 

Worse, sometimes it even skips the outdoor one and tries to wireless backhaul all the way back to the main node back at the house, which gets WEAK signal. Why??

 

Originally I had the inside X55 going into the SG108 switch that the outdoor one feeds inside but I thought according to the FAQ's/docs that you weren't supposed to do this, the node backhaul was supposed to go directly from deco to deco or else it could or could cause a network loop. 
 

It was doing the same thing in the switch- hopping over to wireless backhaul even though it was hard wires into the same switch. I thought it was looping causing it to drop off the hard wire. 
 

So that's the reason I spent hours pulling hard wire cable and terminating it etc - so I could do it "the right way".

 

Imagine my frustration when I saw it do the same thing with the direct wire! Dropping to wireless backhaul even though it was plugged in- and not even jumping to the closeby one! So internet kept dropping while I was trying to work. 
 

Not only that node kept going offline but it was also taking down 4 other nodes out of like 6 every now and then that aren't even connected to it or near it.

 

So.. who knows. But I do know it shouldn't be dropping to Wi-Fi backhaul when it has a direct line from it to the other node. 
 

Btw the backhaul line is the only cable going into this new X55 so it's not another device plugged to it causing issues.
 

OH! And it does it backwards sometimes!

 

In other words, it goes like this->
 

main node (house)... over wifi to outdoor node...

which then has a wired line to the office space X55. 
 

well instead of the indoor office node showing it was wired backhaul to the outdoor one (which connects to the main) — it showed the OUTDOOR ONE Ethernet back hauled to the office one — which isn't even connected to another node!

 

so in other words the outdoor one which is very near the main house one... shows wired backhaul to the office one...WHICH SHOWS it is wifi backhaul back up to the main house node! It's way further away and has almost no signal to that! Why would the middle node choose to wired backhaul to the one furthest away and then have it wifi back to the main one even though it is way closer to the main!? That makes no sense.

 

And I couldn't force the outdoor one to connect to the main house one because when it's in wired mode there is no option for preference. 
 

Thats like me driving to a different state to borrow someone's car to drive back to my neighbor's house. No, that's stupid. Why wouldn't you just drive right next door?

 

I get with it being mesh it has options for paths to take back to the main router node but it should never opt to take a wireless route around the world and back when it has a wired direct route. As you said unless the node it's wired to is down or something then you can go elsewhere but it was hopping off when I know that node was working fine because I was still using all the wires devices going to it with no problems at all.

 

the way I found to force it to wired again was to

set it to prefer some node wirelessly... then save it then go back in and set it to auto. Then it finally connected via Ethernet again. 

 

And btw preferred node doesn't seem to really work half the time as it is not a FORCE option, it's a SUGGEST and then the deco decides when it wants to listen or not. Often not.

 

The option needs to be - if I tell you to connect via a certain node, you need to DO THAT... with the only exception allowed being if that preferred node is offline or not responding. Thats the only way the option makes

sense. Otherwise why even set which one you prefer it to use if it decides and overrides your setting most of the time? Could save my breath in that case lol.