MESH as WAN? 5G routers

Product Discussion
1

Question to see if this is possible.

Say I have 3 BR2 PRO routers, and I want them set up so that 1 router has a WAN connection and the other two BR2 PROs MESH to the main WAN router.

Now, here is my question/issue.

Say one of the BR2 PROs can’t Mesh back to the main router. Can it fail over to 5G?

Basically, I want to use MESH as a WAN, but I’m not sure if the routers support this or not.

2

So I am testing mesh right now with a BR2 PRO, Tranit Duo PRO and AP one AX. I setup mesh in Incontrol and included all 3 devices. I could see the Tranit Duo meshing with the two other radios.

I went into the Transit Duo and disabled both LTE connections, and now the Transit Duo is offline. My thought was to use MESH as a WAN on the Transit Duo, but it’s not working, or I don’t have something set up correctly.

3

The current mesh logic doesn’t support this, It would assume the device with the gateway would be the master. I would think you could trick it by setting up ap’s as a wired link to the wan of your routers. Currently routers don’t support being a mesh slave or getting ap configuration “act as an ap, from other routers”
Can you explain the use case, diagram , how many devices would need to support this?

4

Thinking about outdoor wireless IP camera deployments where we could use MESH for the main network and if the MESH goes down the node could failover to 5G

5

Here is an example I am working on. I would like to have one 5G dome that uses 5G and the others to either MESH or WIFI as WAN for the 5G dome. I would ideally like both 2.4/5Ghz radios to connect to the radio with the 5G WAN

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6

Hi Michael,

Thanks for sharing your deployment idea, it is inspiring! We would like to know more about the network setup between the camera, gateway, Wi-Fi Mesh, and Cellular. Could you tell us how you expect these connecting?

If you prefer to discuss this privately, please feel free to open a support ticket, and we’ll follow up with you.

Thanks,
Lewis

7

Hi Lewis,

Thanks for looking into this. Does this help?

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Is there any Info on the 2.4/5GHz outdoor range of the 5G HD domes?

8

Should Mesh as Wan be implemented as two seperate wans 2.4 / 5ghz , or perhaps an additional check box on the existing wifi wans’s when adding a SSID, mesh profile ?

9

My understanding of MESH is that it is a different protocol and is in layer 2. You could use WIFI as WAN as uplink on a AP so I would recommend it be its option.

10

Hmm, interesting Point!
So then does “MESH as a WAN” even make sense?
I don’t think the concept of the a L2 WAN is present? Only as a speedfusion layer2?
I think then the wireless mesh network (WMN) should be on the LAN side/AP menus?
It’s been a bit of a mystery how the interfaces are present in the APO-AX.
I always requested that the Wired Wan(bridge mode) , and Mesh uplinks be presented as seperate interfaces. I think this would be a time to revisit out the mesh uplinks are shown.

11

Hi Michael,

Thank you for sharing your suggestion. I have a few questions about your setup:

Is there an NVR or Controller for the IP cameras on the local network?
If yes:

  • Do the IP cameras need to be on the same IP subnet as the NVR/Controller?
  • If the Dome failover to 5G cellular, how will the IP cameras communicate with the NVR/Controller?

Thanks,
Lewis

12

For my setup, I would use cloud-based cameras with local storage on the cameras. L2 Would not be required for this setup but yes if you have an NVR/VMS and IP camera setup L2 would be helpful

13

Hi Michael,

In your setup, you can configure a dual-band Wi-Fi AP on the main Dome.
For the other Domes:

  • Set Wi-Fi WAN (5GHz) to connect to the main Dome’s AP as the highest priority.
  • Configure Wi-Fi WAN (2.4GHz) as the second priority and stay connected.
  • Use 5G Cellular as the fallback (third priority).

Please ensure that the LAN IP subnet of the main Dome is different from those of the other Domes.

Thanks,
Lewis

14

It would be nice if we could use both 2.4/5Ghz concurrently, not just failover.

15

When the device connector series was out they had the concept of SpeedFusion over LAN, but that hasn’t seen the light of day since.

Here’s the datasheet, it has diagrams of exactly what you are trying to achieve.

I have need several times in different scenarios a speedfusion over lan solution.

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1 Like
16

You can try this topology using MAX (Main Node, LAN) to MAX (Remote, WiFi-WAN) with L2 SpeedFusion—you might be in for some surprises! :wink:

17

you could create 2x WIFI wan (one on 2.4ghz, one on 5ghz) and then set them both at equal priority in your speedfusion config (and then wan smooth between them, if you wanted)