The WiFi at Home

I should have run proper network cabling in the walls while they were exposed, but I did not, for various reasons. Because the ISP ethernet drop is on one end of the flat, a workstation at the opposite side has a hard time getting online. Given the lack of hardwired solutions, a sale from Woot seemed to offer everything we needed.

The Linksys MX4300 has three radios - the usual 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz along with a "6Ghz" radio that is able to utilize channels that seem out of reach for most devices, perfect for a mesh backhaul, but the vendor seems to have left this out of the default firmware, probably to keep a $20 access point from competing with their comparable mesh offerings. This one actually has more RAM and flash (2GB/1GB) than the actual "mesh" access point, theMX4200 (512MB-1GB/512MB), which has an MSRP of $499 for a three-pack that is still sold for around $169 at this time.

Convinced there were already determined people hammering out support, I snapped up five of them and set to work figuring out the rest.