Question Can I use a custom firmware to convert a normal router to a wired mesh node?

[Parroty69]

I replaced all of my routers with mesh nodes that came free with my internet plan, but then realized that I there was a dead spot in the other room. I was looking to bite the bullet and live with the dead spot but looked at my routers that I replaced and thought that they could have some use as a mesh node with a custom firmware such as Open-WRT or DD-WRT.
I have the Asus RT-AC1200 version 1, is it compatible with operating in any of the firmwares?
AFAIK mesh capability, WPA-3, MU-MIMO, wifi 6, and all of the other stuff are just software based capabilities, albeit limited by the processing power.
Do the firmwares support wifi EasyMesh? It needs it to work with the other nodes and is really convenient since I can use other brands in the mesh too.

 

[helpstar]

chipset of this ASUS is only providing AC wifi 5 and therefore only wpa2

[OpenWrt Wiki] ASUS RT-AC1200

openwrt.org

Mesh most likely won´t work

 

[bill001g]

This is where you need to look at the source code and you will be disappointed. Almost all the really interesting wifi stuff is run inside the wifi chips themselves. These act as completely different cpu and run different firmware. What you will find if you look at source code is the third party firmware loads some binary file they get from the chipset vendor. Now I assume some of the major router manufactures have access to the source code and can write their own but for us normal people all we can do is load the file provided and make no changes. Kinda like the bios file for your computer. You are limited to whatever features the chipset allows you to see. When first looked at third party firmware years ago all I wanted to do was add a display of the number of data packets that were being retransmitted because of errors.

These firmware files for the wifi chipset are locked down mostly so that they can prove they still conform to FCC rules. People used to do simple things like change the country code to say russia which has much less restrictions on the power and channels that can be used. You no longer see that setting.

I also do not think you can use WPA3 with a mesh system. Maybe some vendor has some proprietary way but the common way to run repeaters/mesh is to use a feature called WDS to carry the mac addresses of different devices. By default only a single mac address is allowed over a wifi connection. WPA3 does not support WDS so if mesh works at all on WPA3 they have used a different method. WDS was not actually designed to be used they way they do, it is a unoffical hack that many vendor support but is not part of the standard.

Now all this likely does not matter. If you mesh system supports WDS connections and your asus device can be placed into repeater mode (almost all asus device on current firmware can) it should connect to your mesh system.

Mesh is just a fancy marketing term for "repeater". In many cases they are using the same old WDS trick that has been used for years. Some vendors that have fancy mesh systems also use some proprietary methods but even those also support the old method.

I would still recommend you do not use any form of repeater/mesh system if you have the option to not. If you have coax to the remote rooms use MoCA or maybe even try powerline networks. Everything is still 1 network even if the box does not say "mesh" on the outside.