Real World Review: AQUILA PRO AI AX3000 Wi-Fi 6 Smart Mesh System

Before we moved back to civilisation from living down in the deep southwestern forests in WA we relied on the fledgling Skymuster satellite internet service using IPStar as our ISP. In 2 years we never lost the signal although I am the first to admit the latency was less than ordinary.

After deciding to move to Australind, 13km from the major SW city of Bunbury, and knowing this was prior to NBN, around 6 weeks before the actual move (the house was empty) we asked Telstra to organise ADSL at our new home.

When we finally moved in, bummer, no connection and after contacting Telstra / BigPond, was told they couldn’t as the NBNB was imminent – with imminent being 3 months away.

Now dear reader, you’ll know that I run the entirety of Creative Content / Australian Videocamera via the internet, so this was a disaster. Big Pond apologised profusely and offered a complementary wireless internet account of 1 terabyte via a mobile hotspot to tide us over. Except there was no wireless internet signal here either.

In desperation, I rang IPStar and asked them if there was any way we could get a satellite dish on the roof. Their answer?

“Why do that when you have NBN fibre-to-the-node in the street”?

Pardon? I had already double checked with Telstra, Optus and anyone else I could find, and had received a large “nope” from them all.

Three days later, a technician for IPStar turned up and wired us in. Go figure.

A needed a modem so got in touch with D-Link and asked their advice, which weas to use the D-Link DSL-2888A which has since perfectly served our purpose. Mobile phone reception has still been patchy though and made worse – no non-existent – when the 3G was cut off. So here we are in a major regional area – the second largest city in WA, and no mobile phone reception.

And so the story continues…

A few weeks back I found out we were eligible for fibre to the home – for free – and so booked it in and lo and behold, in 10 days we had it. In parallel, I was trying to find ways of somehow getting mobile phone reception, and discovered something I did not know! You can connect your mobile to your Wii-fi setup (thanks Ray Shaw from Cybershack), and although it worked, it was intermittent and so I was advised to upgrade the modem setup to a new mesh system.

Again, D-Link provided the answer with the M30 Aquila system, or to give it its full name, the AQUILA PRO AI AX3000 Wi-Fi 6 Smart Mesh System (3-Pack).

So over this weekend, I have been setting this up, and what an interesting exercise that has been.

I suspect my network needs are a little more complex than the average.

On my side, I have a couple of Windows PCs, a pair of Android tablets and a smartphone, a Blackmagic Design ATEM Mini Pro, RØDECaster Pro II, a pair of 3D printers, Fetch media centre with a pair of smart TVs, a Google Home network Nest Hub system complete with security cameras, power and lighting and finally, all my studio lights from Elgato and Aputure are wireless based.

On my wife Jacqui’s side, she has a recording and music studio with Macs, iPads and printers as well as musical instruments.

On paper, and by that, I mean according to the manual, it seemed a doddle to set up the D-Link M30 system. But by golly, it fought back initially! For some reason still unknown to me, whilst the initial connection to the NBN happened in a few seconds (once I had tracked down all the needed login / password info that is), the base M30 unit refused to reboot. The red light would come on, go off, come on again and then go off. The magic orange flashing light that signified the setup process was ready to go into place just didn’t happen.

I went through 3 resets and re-starts before the M30 decided it had tormented me enough, and gave me the promised orange “breathing” light, and once successfully gaining an internet connection, the long awaited white light.

The computers all connected easily as did all the other gear – bar one.

The intended end result was to remove all of the Ethernet cables I had through the house as the Wi-fi from the previous DSL-2888A just didn’t have the needed grunt. The last device to connect was the Fetch box, and this stubbornly refused to play the game.

It saw the Wi-fi, said the signal strength was “great”, but upon entering the password, tried to connect, but finally gave up, giving the message “no networks available” and proceeded to lock up.

I fired off an email to the excellent Fetch tech support folk and had a reply within the hour. Their advice was to do a Fetch soft reset, do a Wi-fi connect to my smartphone acting as a hotspot, reboot and then change to the Wi-fi setting to the D-Link M30.

And it worked!

The end result of around 6 hours of plugging / unplugging, and Dougie the Doggy hearing words he had never heard before, was a fully working and very fast Wi-fi system that was cable less. The only Ethernet cable runs from the Blackmagic Design ATEM Mini Pro to my main PC.

I have the main M30 station in the kitchen plugged into the NBN box (why they put it in the kitchen is a question no-one seems to have the answer to) and satellite units in each of my studio and Jacqui’s music studio.

As I said, my setup is a bit more complex than most.

But I’d suggest for anyone needing something for a standard domestic setup or a small business, as the 3 station M30 setup covers 600 sq metres, at around $400 it’s a good investment. If you don’t need as broad a coverage, there is a two-station config for around $300.

My advice would be to read all the docs first and gather all the needed info such as logins and passwords for each device / service you are going to connect prior to starting, and you should have a painless install.