Looking at this I'm very tempted to get two MX56's from eBAY to use as a mesh network at home as it could definitely do with an upgrade, but I have a few questions that I would appreciate answers to:
1. Can one of the Linksys routers work as a main router (handling DHCP, NAT etc)?
2. Are these routers configured using an app, a website or both.
I'm asking since we're with a different FTTP Provider, County Broadband, who only provided us with a WiFi 5 Altice GR241AG router which also connects directly to the fibre and so also acts as the ONT. This router doesn't have very good coverage, has intermitent DHCP Issues and its guest network feature has never worked despite it being an advertised feature. Port forwards on ports 80 and 443 are also entirely broken with a cryptic message saying that "The port is already in use" even when there are no other port forwards set up.
So we are therefore looking to replace our set-up (this router combined with a now 8-year-old TP-Link powerline adaptor maxing out at about 23 MBPS on WiFi 4 2.4 GHz only) and I would like to get something reliable that will improve our experience and work seamlessly with one SSID. Per
https://service.countybroadband.co.uk/index.php?rp=/knowledgebase/47/Full-Fibre-FAQs.html
we should be able to essentially put our router into Bridge mode so it only acts as an ONT, and then plug our own, better router into it. We're thinking about this as CBB's own solution is a WiFi 6 Smart WiFi extender locked to their routers only for £100 paired with this existing router which is not ideal considering this is an old router and the fact that if we do switch to Gigaclear (which is now live here and looking very tempting) once our contract is up (we have 300 MBPS for £48.99 and Gigaclear have some offers that beat that by a long way so if we can't negotiate a deal we'll likely switch) we would have to change our set-up but using our own equipment we could just switch it over.
We're only on CBB as it was the first FTTP provider to go live here and the fact I managed to convince my parents to pre-order it before it went live.