Find out how to install Mesh if you are using a driver router

All WiFi Mesh systems come with several pieces of equipment that act as the main router of the network, and later the various nodes that act as WiFi extenders. The main router will act as a router, i.e. we will have NAT, QoS, DHCP server, parental control and the rest of the related services, since we will have a router with all the usual options. If we connect this device in router mode to our operator router, we will get dual NAT and two separate networks, the network created by the operator router and the network created by the router Wi-Fi Mesh system. In these cases, the best thing that you can do is to configure the WiFi Mesh system in AP mode and disable the WiFi of the operator’s router.

Configure the WiFi Mesh system in AP mode

All manufacturers such as ASUS, D-Link or AVM, among others, allow us to configure their routers in a “transparent” way, that is, in WiFi access point mode. In this configuration mode, we will not have a NAT, QoS or DHCP server, we will have at our disposal only all the Ethernet ports of the equipment as well as a high-performance WiFi network. In this mode, the Mesh router will simply act as a WiFi access point, where we can connect the rest of the Mesh nodes to form the mesh network without having problems with dual NAT. Depending on the manufacturer of the router, we have it under different names, for example, ASUS calls it WiFi access point mode, and the manufacturer D-Link calls it “bridge mode”. Below, you can see a screenshot of the configuration menu for WiFi from the manufacturer:

This is the best way to configure a Mesh network if you want to keep the operator router, plus activating AP mode will automatically deactivate the DHCP server and the rest of the unnecessary services. What we will get in this configuration mode is the following:

• Simultaneous dual band WiFi, with the possibility to configure SSID, password, channels, etc. This means that we can configure everything wirelessly without problems.
• we can adjust Ethernet connectionIn this way, we can connect the different nodes via an Ethernet network cable and get the maximum performance possible.
• Web access to the Mesh network configuration At all times, the private IP address will be the address provided by the main router to the operator.

Our recommendation is that before configuring AP mode or bridge mode on the router, you can configure the rest of the Mesh nodes with the main Mesh router, i.e. make sure that they form the mesh correctly. In addition, we will also receive a firmware update notification for all nodes. Once configured and updated to the latest version, you can now change the operating mode without problems.

Settings in the player prompt

The operator router also needs a very important configuration: disable the router’s WiFi network. To do this, we have to access the operator’s router and proceed to turn off the wireless network, from the two frequency bands, 2.4GHz and 5GHz. We must bear in mind that the wireless network created by the operator router does not have Mesh functions, i.e. we do not have WiFi roaming between nodes or band routing to move from one band to another dynamically.

There is another aspect that you can look at in the player router in the DHCP server clients, to quickly determine the IP address of the connected Mesh router, it will surely appear several IP addresses, one IP address for each network node connected to the mesh network. But only one of these IP addresses is the node that acts as the master node and the one that allows access to the equipment firmware to make the configurations we want.