re: Home Mesh Wifi

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Are the fully wireless, or wired backchannel systems better at switching between wifi units than full wired/AP's?

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Dam should take this one but as I understand it, this is just a more robust system. Wired means zero latency to the main router and since traffic has to travel both directions, it means its faster, can transmit larger amounts of data to devices and is overall a more robust solution. Remember you're likely not just connecting a single device to the AP, it could potentially be servicing things like multiple streaming video services, music, downloads, etc....all of which have to be pushed to the satellite AP and then back to the main router itself.

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So I guess I'm looking for a system (imagine a large T shaped home) with a central hub, and 3 wired Access points at the tips of the T, but with zwave/zigbee access across this whole area as well??

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None of the big players (Apple, Google or Amazon) have built a single Zwave hub. both wink and smartthings have issues even though they're the best known solutoins and I dont trust that *EITHER* of them will still be around in 5 years. i'm not about to go on record recommending either because Wink is now owned by a washed up Rapper and ST is basically being ignored by samsung and seems to have regular outages according to the reddit sub.

HAVING SAID ALL THAT; zwave & zigbee 'self mesh' and it doesn't really matter where your hub is; every device you buy that is zwave or zigbee will essentially act as an AP and manage the signal so range and location of your zwave hub is mostly irrelevant. i'm glossing over some technical caveats, but the main takeaway is the more zwave & zigbee devices you have scattered around your house, the more robust your network is.

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should just go with the well reviewed velop system

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for most people i think any of these will do but keep in mind, you're locking yourself into a platform and its only good if its popularity continues and/or the vendor doesnt decide those hardware devices you bought are now obsolete so they only release firmware on velop v2 or whatever comes down the road.

iow 'wifi mesh' is a vendor-proprietary term and there is no such thing as buying a generic 'wifi mesh' product to increase your range. zwave & zigbee truly mesh in a generic way therefore any device you buy from any vendor that uses that technology will make your network more robust.

asus, linksys, netgear are names that are synonymous with router tech so its unlikely any of them are going away anytime soon.

apple and google otoh..well apple seems to be getting out of the wifi business and google doesn't even have a listing for 'google wifi' on their store page despite having 17 other products there..so be careful if you go with one of these.