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I can't speak to BLE/Mesh, but the Thread protocol (which Nordic also supports) has the concept of a "Border Router". Which is exactly what you're looking for.

Can anyone here comment on espressif's ble mesh implementation?

I saw a few demos d went through their sdk samples a year and a half ago but those were pretty raw then

I'm planning to use a BLE interface plugged into a Linux computer (RPi or something similar).