What equipment to choose for a home mesh network?

Question

WiFi

Hello.
I faced such a situation. The two-story house has a home wifi network 2.4 / 5 GHz. The first floor is covered by a router connected to the wan, on the second floor by a repeater. On the router (ASUS), a hard drive with shared network access (smb) is connected, which plays the role of a file server. And on another drive (64 GB flash drive), the transmission service is running. I would like to set up a mesh network instead of a "router+repeater" bundle.
There are many articles on the Internet on this topic, but they mainly contain the principles of operation, and if there are references to specific models, it is difficult to understand what capabilities those routers have in terms of supporting external drives and running applications.
Perhaps someone can suggest, if not specific models, then at least manufacturers that are worth paying attention to. I would then look at the models of these firms myself.
In principle, if there is some alternative solution, for example, a network hard drive with the ability to run applications on board (just not an option, like "an old computer as a file server"), then that would suit me too.
Thank you.

UPD
Maybe I'm a little dumb, but I have an ASUS RT-AC88U with AiMesh support. Does this mean that I can solve the problem of manually switching networks if I use another AiMesh router as a repeater? For example ASUS RT-AC66U or similar.

Answer 1

Install microtc 951 models

Answer 2

Buy two Keenetics, one Extra and the second Air. Connect the Internet to the first one, and switch the second one to the signal repeater mode and that's it.
The mesh is needed when you move a lot around the territory, so that there is a painless switching between points, and if everything is in place for you, why do you need it?

Answer 3

If your wiring on the first and second floors is powered by one phase, I suggest considering PowerLine technology. In particular, the MikroTik PWR-Line AP model as a "repeater". This will allow you to get away from the Wi-Fi bridge and the inconvenience associated with it, as well as eliminate the need to lay new wires.