MR84 Multiple Repeater Setup

[Dizzle]

Hello, I have a couple questions and a general idea of what we are trying to accomplish using 4x MR84's with MA-ANT-21 antennas.

There is one MR84 AP on our roof which is the gateway for the other three MR84 repeaters.
MR84 repeater 1 is about 190m away from the roof AP.
MR84 repeater 2 is about 140m away from the roof AP.
MR84 repeater 3 is about 110m away from the roof AP.

The only MR84 we have that has line of sight with our roof AP is Repeater 1. We were hoping to utilize this repeater as the link back to our roof since it has line of site. Repeaters 2 and 3 only have line of sight with Repeater 1. Repeaters 2 and 3 can see the Roof AP Signal wise only and do connect with the avg metric usually between 1100 and 2100 but the avg mbps between them and the roof is pants between 20Mpbs and 60Mpbs.Which is why we were hoping to utilize Repeater 1 to link them back to the Roof AP. Repeaters 2 and 3 both have Meraki switches providing power to the MR84’s and will eventually be providing power additionally to two license plate reading cameras in the future. Currently we have adjusted the Roof AP and Repeater 1 antennas to be pointed directly at each other which has an avg metric of 1225 and avg’s about 100Mpbs to 140Mbps. We have adjusted both antennas for Repeater 2 to point to Repeater 1’s direction but it still connects to the Roof AP amazingly. We have also seen Repeater 1’s avg Mpbs drop to the Roof AP for what seems no reason and never recover as well without power cycling it.

Question 1
Is it possible to have Repeaters 2 and 3 utilize Repeater 1 to get back to our Roof AP?

Question 2
Are we misunderstanding the capabilities of what these MR84’s and Repeating can do?

Question 3
Are we straight up just missing something to make this work and have stable connections that don’t go from 60Mpbs to 20Mbps and never recover?

Thank you for the help and insight.

[antonis_sp]

Keep in mind that the mesh documentation does not recommend using a chain of repeaters.
https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Deployment_Guides/Mesh_Deployment_Guide#Maximum_mesh_hops

The meshing algorith probably prefers a direct connection to the root AP if possible.

[PhilipDAth]

I'm not sure of the fix.

Have you tried raising the minimum bite rate to encourage it to attach to the nearer APs?

[antonis_sp]

Unless something has changed since this
https://nolanwifi.com/2017/02/06/merakis-mesh-mess/
Mesh beacon and (probably) network, is not affected by minimum bitrates (if you are thinking bitrates set on SSIDs).

[Dizzle]

We are definitely aware that it does not recommend chaining repeaters and we have tried not having them chained adding the hop was done as a last resort for Repeater 2. Repeater 2 that is about 140m away from the roof AP we just cant get a usable link on which is why we are trying to chain that one to Repeater 1. Granted neither Repeater 2 or 3 have line of sight with our Roof AP. However Repeater 3 (110m away from the roof AP) we have seen a usable stable link back to our Roof AP. Outside of being roughly 30 more meters away then Repeater 3 we were just under the impression we would see somewhat similar results from Repeater 2. Anyway that  is the reasoning for trying to add the hop. The more I post and think about it I get the feeling we are just trying to do something outside the scope of best practice for these MR84's may not be possible.

As a side note we have the Mbps set for our outdoor MR84's between 18 to 54.