So, over Christmas eve and day, I had time to play with my two mesh nodes that I am experimenting with. Both are up and running, I see both on my available networks on my laptop but I do have a few questions that I cant seem to answer. I am an IT guy but certain parts of this mesh network stuff still appears to be wizardry at work. Here are my questions:

1.I was wirelessly connected to "mesh node 1" and then had my printer...oh my word I think it just hit me what I did wrong. Let me play this out and find out for sure from one of you. I had my printer hooked up to "mesh node 2". Both nodes setup as "mesh node" in the firmware. I wanted to try printing through the mesh. I couldn't get the printer to even connect to "mesh node 2". Here is what just hit me:

1a. If I physically hook the printer up to the LAN port, I will need "mesh node 2" to be in a different mode (I forget the name of it atm) that will open those ports up for use don't I?

1b. I can connect to routers wirelessly, which is how I have it now with my home network. So if I didnt use a LAN port, perhaps that would work?

2. Lets pretend I have 5 mesh nodes, if I wirelessly connect to any of the 5 mesh nodes I'm technically connected to all nodes, is that correct since a mesh is one big interconnected network?

3. I noticed the IP addresses for each node are 10.x.x.x (which is a class a) and have a subnet mask of 255.255.255.x (which is a class C subnet) and cant be changed, but with the IP address I can change can I assign any class IP, and does the subnet have to be a class C subnet?

5. When I am browsing through the firmware on one of my nodes and go to the screen that shows other nodes, I am assuming I should see all of my other nodes on the screen right? If I don't what would be some possible reasons for this?

5. Lastly, are there some certain setting I need to make sure of when I configure each node? Like I said, all appears to be working fine, other than what I have mentioned in my comments, so I may already have established those configurations.

Thanks in advance for all the help. I greatly appreciate it.

1) You can't connect wirelessly to a mesh node, only other mesh nodes can connect to each other.

1a) Both nodes need to be mesh nodes (but need to have different call signs)  by default we use a directly reachable IP address so you would not need to open ports unless you change to NAT mode.

1b) See answer to 1.

2) See 1. Once you are hard wired yes you are connected to all the other nodes (note: you need to think of it as a routed network not a single broadcast domain aka you can't do an auto find from most printer drivers)

3) we don't use 255.255.255.0 anywhere on the network in direct mode it is either 255.0.0.0 for the wifi/dtdlink interface or 255.255.255.<matches number of hosts in direct>.  By the mode where you can change up address I assume you mean NAT mode? If so you can set however you want however you should avoid using a 10.x address as it will route your away from the mesh meaning you won't have full mesh access. NAT mode is not recommended if you can avoid needing to use it.

5) yes you should see all other nodes if they are in RF range.

5) See user documentation at left side of screen for some initial guides you should read. Especially the QuickStart and using the user interface guides.

1) I may have misunderstood what I was doing. Thanks for clearing that up. :)

1a) Im not sure that I understand the "different call signs" part of this. Are you referring to the SSID? Is the directly reachable IP address the one that I can configure to whatever I want, or is the that one that cannot be changed?

2) So the only devices that can have access to the mesh (not including the nodes themselves) are devices that are hard wired to the mesh ie computers, printers, VOPI/SIP phones?

3) How would I know if it's in "direct mode"? So NAT should ONLY be used if absolutely needed? I don't foresee any use for it now, but just want to make sure. :)

4) I have both nodes only about 20 feet apart and no obstructions between the

5) I will be sure to look at the other guides. Thanks

1a) The node call field which is next to the password fields.

 The SSID should be the same for the devices to talk across wifi (leave at default unless you have a reason to change it ) Dorectly reachable ip's are auto generated in direct mode.

2) Correct, unless you add an access point and treat it the same as a local wifi access to the Lan port.

3) See Setuo screen and user guides and on node help screens.

Well I decided to reflash both of my routers to see how things work when everything is default, and I am glad I did. I now see some of the errors of my ways in what I was doing. Its starting to make a bit more sense now and I have confirmed that the two nodes are talking to each other, where as they weren't before, but I was not aware of that. I know how to confirm that now. I also got SSH working, which I didn't before, likely because of all my messing around. Now I can start moving to some of the bigger tasks such as transferring files between to computers, setting up teamspeak server/client, web server, etc.

As far as file transfer type stuff, I know I can just share a folder on a system and just deal with files that way, but I think I may try out a cloud solution. I recently installed "owncloud" on my hosted web server and absolutely love it. So much better than dropbox and many other cloud solutions. Anyway, I see no reason that couldn't work. Plus it may be much easier to manage and rather than setting up a bunch of stuff to give someone access to a shared folder, they can just go to http://localhost/owncloud, login and BAM have access to files. I can also set up permissions of sorts if that need arises. Ill have to keep you all posted how that integration goes. :)