@Riley_S ,

Thank you for taking the time to reply in such a thoughtful manner. Let me address the various points, but I'll start with the TL;DR:

WiFi is not Ethernet.

1) Lower interference is a great advantage of 6 GHz, but the interference is not 0, as when using Ethernet.

2) I agree again that the 6 GHz being used would not be a security concern if your 2.4 / 5 GHz were unprotected. You might not have mitigation methods in the 6 GHz band. The attack vector is zero when using Ethernet unless someone physically breaks into your network.

3) My preference for a fail-open Ethernet backplane is a guaranteed latency. I work remotely from home, and in the activities I engage with my customers, latency must be kept to a minimum, and, above all, the jitter must be kept to zero. It is less disruptive for an activity to stop and reconnect if there is a failure in the Ethernet backplane than to fail over to the 6GHz backplane because the signal is not strong and stable. Unfortunately, there are thick walls between my office's XE75 Pro and the rest of the 3-node mesh. When using Ethernet, the jitter is effectively zero.

WiFi is not Ethernet... and it will never be.

The only part I'm afraid I have to disagree with is that turning off the 6 GHz wireless backplane is an enterprise feature. I consider it a "Prosumer" feature, applicable to the name and price tag of the XE75 Pro, which I find excellent and very happy with. The entire Deco line is not an entry-level, budget-friendly line of products.

I agree turning off the 6 GHz wireless backplane should not be the default and should be considered an advanced setting or "feature flag."

I would be very interested if I could turn in my 4 XE75 Pro units for credit towards hardware that supports Omada Mesh.

Please don't forget to upvote this post so we can get enough attention from TP-Link.

Thank you,

Carlos Sanabria

IMO, you are asking for Prosumer and even commercial features in a consumer (yes consumer NOT prosumer) product.

Everything you are asking for and even the use cases are things that would call for a true prosumer/commercial Omada system, such as Omada.

"There can be technical (QoS), legal, or compliance reasons to guarantee the data will move through an Ethernet backhaul."
 

If this is the case you should NOT be using Deco in the first place.

I agree with you that the TP-Link Deco line of products is a CONSUMER-level product with all that is involved. Here are my qualms, though:

1. I bought a TP-Link Deco XE75 Pro. "Pro" is right there on the name. I didn't have any expectations of a proper professional device like a Cisco or Ariba. Still, I did expect more than the bare basics that it provides. It's misleading marketing and advertising.

2. Selecting a WiFi channel is not a professional product feature. I have had plenty of consumer-level APs from vendors such as Asus and Netgear that allow the user to select a specific channel.

3. Is turning off the WiFi backhaul a Pro feature? I am not asking to enable any additional functionality that's not there; just allow us to disable it. That should not be a Pro feature; it should be in the Advanced Settings on a consumer product.

4. I'm not asking for LACP, VLAN trunking, BGP support, 802.1X authentication, SNMP support, Netflow support, or anything remotely close to a Pro AP.

Given my experience with the TP-Link Deco XE75 Pro, I am now hesitant to trust any TP-Link Omada device despite not using them. The lack of essential features and the misleading 'Pro' label have left me feeling let down by the brand.

For anyone following the thread, I decided to throw away my Deco XE75 Not-so-Pro APs and replace them with Ubiquiti APs. They are fantastic and provide features that actually deserve the "Pro" moniker, although interestingly, they don't use it.

Lesson learned.