New unleashed network topology setup

[joshanon]

Hi,

Forgive me for the naive questions; this is my first time setting up an unleashed network from scratch.

I have Frontier fiber internet, and a funky thing is now they don't give you a router.  Well technically they give you an Eero, but the Frontier box itself just takes fiber in and has ethernet out.  The setup I have is:

Frontier box -> PoE++ switch (in the garage) -> 2 R670 APs in my house via wired ethernet.  I have another cable going from the switch to a drop in a bedroom.  The Wi-Fi signal in part of the house isn't great from the 670s, so I also ordered an H550 to put in the bedroom with a drop.

I have two questions:

1. I'm 99% sure I want to setup the AP to be a gateway so that I can have distinct private IPs for each client and a fixed IP for the primary AP.  However, as far as I can tell, I'd need to change the topology to be Frontier box -> AP -> switch.  Is it correct that I do want to setup the AP to provide NAT/DHCP?  Is my topology change understanding correct?  Is there any way to set up a NAT with the current topology where the switch is before the AP?

2. In another part of the house, the signal is a bit weak.  I might want to get another AP for there, but as I didn't run wire in that area, I'm considering setting it up as a mesh.  As far as I can tell, 1) I don't want to use Zero Touch Mesh as it's possible a 2.4GhZ IoT device will need to connect to it. 2) I can provision this other AP as a mesh by directly connecting it to the switch first, but I can't find a clear help page for that--is there a good link? 3) I can't tell if the mesh will broadcast a different SSID than my primary one?  Any quick tips?

Thanks in advance!