Had a chance to work with the xStick and XCTU software a bit and thought I’d report back. First screenshot is my “before” network “mesh”. As you can see, it’s not much of a mesh. Only the coordinator and one router/repeater (both highlighted) actually talking to any of the devices; everybody else is just listening, and in many cases only to one of the two. Not very robust.
Then I added three of those Iris outlets, so I now have 5 total “known” routers. I placed them so that they’re reasonably well distributed through a very long, relatively narrow ranch house. None of them is more than about 25’ apart and they’re generally separated by one room. Big difference. From left to right as you’re looking at the front door; Master Bedroom, network closet near the Den (the hub), Family room, Spare bedroom, Garage. They’re laid out accordingly in the “after” picture below. The green router/repeater is the xStick; it doesn’t count as it’s not always going to be there.
Note that in this second screenshot I’ve grouped and highlighted the lights in the rooms rather than the routers/repeaters, so that I have a better idea of what’s what. You can clearly see the difference in connectivity here; most nodes now have at least two, and in many cases three nodes to listen to. That looks and feels a lot more like a mesh to me!
And, no, I don’t know why some of those leaf nodes didn’t show up in the second scan. I let it run for an hour, but just a few of them showed up.
Anyway, an interesting exercise and I think at this point I’ve done about all I can to ensure that if there’s a command sent, it’ll get to the appropriate device. The huge difference this has made tempts me to pull all of those bulbs that I moved over to the Hue hub last weekend back, if only just to see if they’re improved. But, they seem to be working fine on the Philips hub, and I’ve spent plenty of time futzing with this stuff over the last month, so I’m probably going to leave sleeping dogs lie for a while.
I should also add that I have not done any testing, yet, to see what I can see regarding Cree and GE Link bulbs acting as routers/repeaters.