I want to start by saying that I am in no way a classically trained network guy. Everything I know has been learned in the School of Hard Knocks, experience or from forums such as this. I say that to say I may not understand some basic principle that many here take for granted. If that is the case, please be patient if I ask for you to explain something to me. I'm not lazy, I just do not know what I do not know.
I am migrating from UTM 9 to XG and I am retooling my entire network in the process. I am using an AMD Mini ITX machine to run XG and the install went fine but I am still getting used to the differences between UTM and XG. On this machine, I have the motherboard network jack as the WAN port and I have a NIC with 4 1gb ports. I am using the 4 ports to segment my network and I am rethinking my current setup.
Today, I have 2 DDWRT routers in AP mode each running only one SSID and each on a different port on the UTM. One router runs my cameras and most of my IoT things like smart light switches and the other is for wireless access to my LAN for phones, tablets, Roku's, etc. I have seen many discussions here about mesh networks, but they all talk about SOPHOS hardware.
Question 1 would be can I use any 3rd party AP in a mesh setup on my XG?
I want to have 2 separate Wi-Fi networks that are separate from each other. Question 2 would be should I use 2 separate mesh systems on different physical ports or use wireless VLANs on the same hardware? I have seen wireless APs that support VLANs both with wired and wireless backhaul. Will I be able to 'mesh' these using the Mesh Networks tab on the XG?
If it seems like I am out in left field, I apologize, but I am doing as much research on this as I can and I feel like I am just not understanding some of the principles of this stuff. Any advice or assistance is greatly appreciated.
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