@The.racking.monkey wrote:
I have mesh APs deployed doing just this and it works fine. There's no LOS between some of the portals and points, however the concerns about link integrity are totally valid.
My view would be that if it's not expensive to try it, and not embarressing if it doesn't work, why not try it and see?
As long as the mesh link quality shows up as 30 or more, you should be fine. That's as long as the mesh point only needs to serve small densities of lightweight data clients?
In my example, I dedicate the 5ghz of the portals and points to the mesh link, and provide all client services only on the 2.4ghz band. This helps keep the mesh link stable.
I fully agree with your approach, as long as you are realistic about the bandwidth, signal strength, signal quality and possible disruption if any of those factors are out of specification.
Why I said I would not try it is that wireless always starts out as something that is not used a great deal and then when everyone discovers it is available, they use it a great deal. It never seems to go down, and as a shared medium, performance will suffer more greatly on a mesh link that in regular wifi.
Your mileage may vary.