Hacker News Reader

Depends what you mean by mesh. For me, the defining characteristic is better support for roaming/fast handoff, things like 802.11k and 802.11r.

Agreed it's best to connect the access points with Ethernet.

View on HN

Note that 802.11r is only useful if you’re using WPA enterprise authentication (certificates and radius and all). Most home networks use WPA personal pre shared keys (aka here’s my Wi-Fi password).

802.11r accelerates the multi step handshake that you have to perform with WPA enterprise when you roam from one access point to another. There is a much shorter handshake for WPA personal so there is no advantage to enabling 802.11r if you’re not using Enterprise auth.

Not entirely true: for WPA2 it is the case that all APs and clients use the same key, but even in that case, 11r adds mobility domain and FT-PSK and results in more devices having better roaming.

For WPA3-SAE and WPA3-OWE it is required as each client has a different (session) key.

Interesting- thanks for the correction. I’m off to read more!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com