I have AT&T 1 gig with their BGW320 Tri-band modem / router. It didn’t have quite enough range for the 2-story house and I didn’t want to rent one of their extenders. I bought an Asus AX-rt86u dual-band wifi 6 router and it has slightly better range stand-alone than the BGW320.
What if I put one unit upstairs with one SSID and the other unit downstairs with a different SSID? Not exactly mesh convenience, but that way I could put unmovable clients on the appropriate SSID but would maybe have to switch SSIDs on the phones or laptop depending on where I’m at in the house or just leave it if the demand for connection / speed isn’t great at the moment.
My question is would having two 5ghz SSIDs in close proximity and probably on the same channel (since the BGW320 has two 5Ghz bands) cause problems? Thanks.
You could put the ATT router into bridge mode and use only the Asus router.
You could run the parallel networks, but ensure they are on different channels to help reduce the interference. The devices may manage their channels automatically, but YMMV
You should not use the same SSID on two different networks. That will be a nightmare.