FrontierSECURE 1600Mbps Smart Mesh Access Point (AirTies Air 4920)

Does anyone have experience with the AirTies Air 4920 1600 Mbps 802.11ac Video Wireless Booster? Frontier came and gave me a white-labeled version of this, but they call it the FrontierSECURE “1600Mbps Smart Mesh Access Point” and while it has the AirTies Air 4920 product number on the bottom, it appears to have a few take-aways (no audio and USB jack). It acts like the wireless equivalent of a hub or a switch, connecting to the main Frontier router via Ethernet. (I disabled the wireless on the Frontier router at their suggestion, as the 4920 had much higher throughput. My initial impression is that when in-range, streaming video inside the house (I have a TiVo Bolt hooked up to a wired Ethernet connection) has been rock-solid with fast start and commercial skip times. I haven’t done enough testing of streaming video services like HBOGo, Netflix, Hulu, etc. At my request, Frontier is sending a second one. (Frontier typically installs one or two depending on the size of the home, but only had one at the time of install.) I’m curious about a few things… Network Configuration -------------------------- There’s very little documentation in the package for this router, but it seems to have only 2 possible configurations: - As standalone access points (shown as one access point) - As part of a wireless mesh network connected to the other access point(s) over WiFi (the installers initially told me this might lower the speed of the overall wireless network). I don’t have the second to confirm or disprove this yet, but presumably when the “mesh” is set up, it appears to devices as a single access point that you can move through seamlessly without having to explicitly disconnect from one access point to switch to the stronger one. However, I was wondering if there was any way to configure these as a “mesh” network by connecting them over hardwired Ethernet to the main router in the basement and get the best of both worlds: not consuming wireless resources to ferry communication from one access point to the next, and yet still having them appear as a single access point. Has anyone tried this? Clearly, most corporate networks are set up in every building like this—the wireless access points are all hardwired to a main Ethernet router, yet appear as one network with single authentication and seamless handoff between APs. But I’m not sure if this is possible in the home or with these access points. Missing Features in Frontier’s Model – USB Media Server & AirPlay target One feature I discovered when reading the very limited info on AirTies’ website is that the two ports that are missing on the Frontier product do really cool things. 1. You can use the USB port with an external HDD to turn the 4920 into a media server. 2. Even more interesting to me is that the OEM version has an audio jack and you can use as an airplay target. I’m guessing that the one I have actually is lacking the appropriate audio and USB output hardware, but it doesn’t hurt to check. I certainly don’t see a new AirPlay target on my phone when I'm connected to the AirTies AP. But, man, that would be nice. I am not going to disassemble the linchpin to my Wi-Fi network. But when I get the second one, I’ll take the cover off and see if I can find anything. My knowledge of hardware is pretty limited, so I’ll probably end up sending pics. If there actually is hardware, I wonder if I can update the firmware with the OEM build and get it to stream audio for me… one of the routers sits right next to my whole-home audio system and having it show up as an AirPlay target would be very convenient. LMK if you’ve already confirmed the Frontier model is lacking the right hardware to do either or both of these tasks and I won't bother.