This is yet another thread on mesh mode for the B1300.
In short, it is getting closer, but in my experience, it is not well enough documentation or logging to give me a lot of confidence. That said, I would say it is working.
Despite advice to the contrary, I got nowhere until I did a full factory reset of both the Master and all of the Clients. I left the Master in its default mode, not changing the password, the SSID, or the subdomain, i.e. left the Master at 192.168.8.1.
I was able to pair the Clients, one at a time. It is important to clarify that one should release the Mesh button once the mesh light starts to go 2x faster. You should have released it well before the mesh light begins flashing rapidly. It took 3-4 minutes for each Client to eventually get a solid Mesh light and show up in the Master’s Mesh tab. (Note, in further testing, discussed in the next post, the Mesh light was not always consistent.)
[As an aside, it might be helpful if there is a bit more user-visible logging to see the progress of setting up the Mesh. Likewise, a key on what the various flashing speeds of the Mesh light would be nice.]
Everything above thus far was with all four of the B1300’s a few feet apart in the same room.
Then I moved each of the clients to their semi-permanent placement around the house. Eventually, I was again able to see all of the clients in the Master’s Mesh tab. At this point, I changed the Master’s password and SSID. After that, things got a bit fishy.
Some clients, the mesh light never went constant again. Instead, they would slowly blink.
Also, I tried plugging other devices into the LAN port of the Clients. I saw inconsistent performance of these devices.
I don’t think I can keep my system in Mesh for much longer before my family members start rioting. I’ll likely switch it back in a few hours, but if you want me to try something first, please let me know ASAP.