Side Effects of Enabling Mesh on a Zone Director (3000)

Piet — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 02:12:32 GMT

I have a zone Director 3000 and it's taken over 5 R700 Access points.

I get the impression that it downloaded new firmware. The AP's can still

be accessed via ssh but the web interface is gone. I expected the r700 web

interface to remain. Anyway, if my Zone Director 3000 goes off line or gets

messed up, will the r700 boot the old standalone firmware? If not does

the hardware reset mechanism still work as documented on the back of the

R700's?

I'm tempted to try enabling mesh on the Zone Director but I'm worried that

the new environemnt will change my current environment a lot. Perhaps new

firmware where the zone can only be managed as a open network and the

users and roles will no longer work. I didn't understand the significance of not

being able to go back to mesh being disabled. I read that each Access Point can

have Mesh disabled and it effectively puts things back to un-messhed.

Thought I'd backup my Zone Director config before trying it. Wish I had backed

up the 5 R700s before allowing the Zone Director to take them over. Would be

nice if it reverting back to the standalone configs if the Zone Director gets whacked.

Thoughts appreciated.

-piet delaney

Re: Side Effects of Enabling Mesh on a Zone Director (3000)

Piet — Sat, 03 Sep 2022 08:27:09 GMT

Mesh is working great. The support of 802.11X was mentioned as being disabled

but the GUI allowed me to configure 802.11X as I recall. Could be polished there.

The Mesh mode is allowing me to provide the internet to the kid next door

with just a pair of old R700s. Would be nice if disabling Mesh mode on an AP

allowed 802.11X to work. Maybe there is some core reason making that impossible.