As mentioned in this part, Anthony, you will not lose the third band on the satellite. The primary router will have a virtual 3rd band for that.

I have 2 MR2200 meshed together. I’m thinking about the WRX560 as the main with the other 2200s as satellites in a wired backhaul setup. Being that the 560 is dual-band, does that mean I lose one of the 5GHz bands of the 2200 for clients? What would be the advantage of choosing the RT6600 instead for the main?

Thanks for sharing the experience, Robert. Chances are there were some settings conflicts. But generally, if you already have a real NAS server, it’s a bit redundant to get a Synology router.

Per Synology Support Ticket # 3397300 (2023-08-05), 3405499 (2023-08-17) and 3423563 (2023-09-12), the Synology RT6600ax randomly kicked the Synology DS220+ NAS off the LAN. The NAS became inaccessible via http, smb, and ping. Same for the Nvidia Shield. Both the NAS and Shield were connected via ethernet. File transfers between the NAS and a PC was extremely slow (in kilobytes). Via the support tickets, tested multiple configurations. Factory reset the RT6600ax multiple times. The only way to regain access to the NAS was to reboot the router. On November 18, 2023, replaced the Synology units with ASUS ZenWiFi Pro XT12 which works PERFECTLY with all the same devices in the same configuration. File transfers are at hundreds of megabytes. Purchasing Synology routers was a very expensive and HUGE mistake. Thank you, Synology, for leading me to ASUS.

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Ah got it! Thanks for the clarification. I misinterpreted the information on this page as referring to Synology mesh specifically, rather than AP mode in general. That link you listed clarified it all. I was a bit concerned, because there is an Amazon review that suggests the MR2200ac won’t work as both AP and mesh. Hopefully the RT2600ac allows both, but I’ll buy it and test. Thanks again for the great website, and the prompt and informative responses. I’ve made a small donation as thanks.

As mentioned earlier, that varies by “vendors”. That said, no, I won’t mentioned what the AP mode entails in every single router review but you’ll find the information you need in various posts. Or you can just turn one router into the AP mode and you’ll have an idea — this mode is largely the same in all hardware. This post will help.

Thanks Dong,

Sorry, I might have been unclear about my question. On this page, you say that some Synology features are unavailable when the unit is in access-point mode. Are you saying that I should read your review specific to each router to see what these are specifically? I looked through your reviews for the routers I mentioned, and I couldn’t see anything specific to access-point mode and reduced functionality.

Thanks also for the advice about not mixing standards. Given my MR2200ac satellites are Wi-Fi 5, this leaves only the RT2600ac as a possible “main” mesh unit (which you obviously suggest on the RT2600ac review page).

I’d say the Guest network and network ports are part of the “Wi-Fi network,” Chappie. But generally this varies from one vendor to another. For example, some suport the USB port’s function, others don’t. You have to read the review for more. The gist is that the hardware will will as access points and all that implies. Follow the table in this post and you’ll know which main router you should get. Also, it’s best not to mix Wi-Fi standard.

I have my house wired in a star configuration. I’m thinking about buying a “main” ethernet router, e.g. MikroTik RB4011, which would connect our various computers and servers. I would then connect a mesh Wi-Fi system with wired backhaul to the MikroTik. In order for the Wi-Fi clients to access computers connected to the MikroTik, I understand that I have to put the mesh system in access point mode.

I know you say on this page “other than the Wi-Fi network, no additional features or settings of the mesh are available”, but could you please be more specific? It looks like the list of features above are either Wi-Fi related (e.g. guest network) or probably unrelated (e.g. LAN ports). Which specific “additional features” are disabled?

Also, I was considering buying a few MR2200ac units as the satellites. Presumably then I should buy a higher-specced unit as the main unit, and connect each MR2200ac satellite to the LAN port of the main unit? Which main unit would you recommend (i.e. RT2600ac, WRX560, RT660ax)?