Mesh WiFi, Ethernet Switches and STP

I've just installed Mesh WiFi at home to replace a number of individual WiFi access points and I'm very pleased with it. With upgrades to both the WiFi (especially 5G) and the Mesh functionality courtesy of IEEE 802.11k/r our WiFi is much better and we can roam around the house without our smartphones sticking to an access point and not switching to a closer one with a better signal.

One problem I did run into that when our BT Whole Home WiFi units are wired to our NetGear GS716T switch the BT management app could only see the WiFi unit my smartphone was using. The other WiFi units were not visible to the management app.

After a little playing around with a cheap Ethernet Switch I found that everything worked as expected with the cheap switch but not the Netgear. I think this is because the Netgear switch supports STP and there's a loop. The wired Ethernet makes one connection between the WiFi units while their Mesh functionality makes the other and STP disables the Ethernet link!

Something to watch out for...

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