Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are suitable for diverse applications due to their practicality and ease of deployment. However, they face challenges like congestion, interference, reduced data rates, packet loss, and high latency. Optimizing mesh router placement, a known NP-hard problem, is key to deal with these issues. In this paper, we propose an intelligent simulation system based on Aquila Optimizer (AO), called WMN-AO. The system performance is evaluated using network connectivity metric (Size of the Giant Component: SGC), client coverage metric (Number of Covered Mesh Clients: NCMC), and Jain’s Fairness Index (JFI) (for load balancing) under Normal and Uniform client distributions. Simulation results show that WMN-AO effectively can find optimal router placements for improving connectivity, coverage, and load fairness.