Huawei AX3 mesh setup

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14 Jan 2010
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I have been using a Tenda Mw6 plus 3 MW3 WiFi mesh network to provide wireless to my 3 bed house and external garage for over a year.
This works fine but since I've upgraded my Sky to KCOM 200Mbps I wanted to replace the mesh with something faster.

Having read some threads on here recommending the Huawei AX3 3 node mesh kit, I ordered and had it delivered yesterday.

The problem I have is I want to retain my Acer VR900 router as my main router as it has OpenVPN server built-in, and only need the WiFi mesh to exist on the same subnet providing just the wireless network. It seems you can set them up as AP mode but with no mesh, set up as a main router and replace the Acer, or set them up as a separate subnet and enjoy the fun of double-NATing.

I want to recreate the WiFi mesh Tenda offered on the same subnet so I tried setting the primary AX3 router up as a Static IP allocating a non-used subnet address to the WAN port and leaving the WAN port unused. I then set the AX3 LAN IP to one on my main Acer subnet. e.g. Acer is on 192.168.1.1 and primary AX3 is on 192.168.1.2 with default gateway 192.168.1.1. I disabled DHCP on the AX3 as this is provided by the Acer router.

This worked fine for wireless devices which could connect to the AX3 and get allocated IPs from the Acer. I then wanted to connect a second AX3 in a mesh but am struggling to connect to the primary. The secondary goes solid green after linking but still broadcasts its factory setup SSID so I am not convinced it has linked.

Has anyone managed to set the AX3 mesh up on the same subnet as their existing routers LAN or am I fighting a losing battle and should kick it back to Huawei ?

Thanks
 
So I managed to link a secondary AX3 then moved it to another part of the house, powered it up and connected my iPhone to it.
Though I was connected to WiFi I could get no internet traffic whatsoever from the secondary node.
I think unless you are happy using the WAN port as an uplink to your internet, be it directly to a modem or NATing to you main LAN, mesh simply does not work.
Ethernet Bridged mode is not real transparent bridging and mesh is not supported with that mode either.

If you want to retain the one subnet for all devices you either use the AX3 as a dumb access point (extender) or replace your own router with one of these as the primary. Neither is an option for me as I want mesh and I want to use OpenVPN server on my current router.

Kicking it back to Huawei.

Has anyone a suggestion for a new mesh network to replace my slower MW6-MW3 setup please ? ( sub £200 for 4 nodes)
 
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