I’m trying to setup a wireless bridge using OpenWRT (installed on this router), but I can’t figure it out.
The only configuration changes I’ve done to OpenWRT WebGui so far is disable the “Firewall” startup script, as I’m running a pfSense firewall.
I managed to connect my main WAP to OpenWRT (I think OpenWRT is the “Client”? As shown in the above image, pointed at with the green arrow). I tried creating new SSID’s (both as an “Access Point” and “Access Point (WDS)”; both are shown as OpenWrt/OpenWrt2), even on different wireless channels (Radio 0 = 2.4G, Radio 1 = 5G, Radio 2 = 2.4G/5G), but I can’t get things to work.
My laptop and Android phone do see the SSID’s of OpenWrt/OpenWrt2, but they endlessly connect/disconnect. I cannot gain internet access on them. OpenWrt WebGUI does show the devices as briefly connecting and then disconnecting.
Are both routers running OpenWrt and a relatively recent variant? You need the full wpad package to use WDS so building your own firmware is usually the easiest solution. I can you can use the imagebuilder too but I have no experience using it. I always switch SSL lib to OpenSSL for everything due to performance but that’s up to you. I’m pretty sure you need to compile your own firmware if you want to that route.
@TheAlmightyBaconLord I think you are making your neteork to complicated. You have three devices that can act as your everything router. I think what you are trying to do is replace Asus router with OpenWRT because the Asus router is over 9 years old. I am familar with both Asus routers and Phsense. I think I can help you but I need answers to same questions. Who is your Internet provider? Did the internet provider provide any equipment or did you provide the equipment? You could try what @diizzy sudgested. Do any of your non wiress devices get internet? A diagram how all the devices are connected would help give me
ideas.
WDS is usually not compatible between “vanilla” Linux or and vendor firmware, you’re much better off getting another device and using OpenWrt on both otherwise you need to deal with routed and friends. No idea what you need to do using client mode in OpenWrt unfortunately.
You need relayd to make this work. There are articles in the openwrt wiki to make this work. I’ve done it multiple times and it works but you need the required packages. Also it won’t be fast, it will be slow. That’s for sure.
Darn, I guess I will be going the RelayD route. Was really hoping I could do it without installing any additional packages.
I expected that. I’ve setup a wireless bridge before and it only gets 5-10Mb/s but that’s fine as this will simple be a WAP for the outdoors. I’m hoping though that if I setup 5G to the Asus WAP and have the OpenWRT WAP broadcast 2.4G, I may be able to get at least 20Mb/s. I guess I’ll wait and see!
Ok I understand what you are trying to do. You are trying to setup an AP in your yard (meaning outside of your home), am I right? I to have so much trouble using my WiFi devices outside. I tryed installing an old wireless router to the roof of my porch and set up an wireless bridge between my maining router and the old wireless router, it did not work. My wifi device kept droping their connection. I finally gave up and when I use my wireless devices outside I just put my cellphone into hot spot mode. No more problems with wireless devices droping there connection. I hope it goes better for you.
Honestly for $130 you can set up a dedicated PtP bridge that will be dead nuts reliable and push 450Mbps+ and skip all the messing around with openwrt.
Likely inappropriate for the setup as he’s essentially trying to extend his network and why would you lock yourself to a specific vendor? WDS is dead simple, works great and while not guaranteed you’re much likely to get software updates for much longer.
This product is literally for extending your network.
This product is from Ubiquity UISP which is their commercial line of products. They have significantly longer lifecycles than UniFi. I have deployed this product extensively and they are extremely simple to set up and get going. I have several that have been in continuous service for 3+ years with no problems whatsoever. It is a proven solution for what he is trying to do.
That seems to be for long range while he wants to extend to his back/front yard and also a directed beam? Even if it’s commercial I’d would highly advise against getting something that uses MIPS (32-bit) as it’s really a dead platform even commercially (from upstream vendor as it’s based on the old Atheros MIPS 74Kc SoC which they dropped years ago).
Update:
My problem with RelayD is that when utilized, RelayD can’t pass-through DHCP requests to my PFsense box (essentially the OpenWRT WAP will be a DHCP server; I don’t want this). I spent 2hrs today researching + testing, and it does seem possible to run a wireless bridge without RelayD, following this guide.
I partially got WDS mode working. I was able to connect OpenWRT as a “Client (WDS)”, set the bridges, and actually obtain an IP address on my Android phone (from OpenWRT’s DHCP server), however it was not able to communicate with my pfSense DNS Server (192.168.1.1) and it seems and could not access sites on the internet; only the default gateway of OpenWRT. Upon disabling the OpenWRT DHCP server, I could no longer connect to the OpenWRT WAP and it was not forwarding requests to my Asus WAP.
I’m now wanting to configure OpenWRT to do two more things;
My OpenWRT WAP has two dedicated ethernet ports (eth0, eth1; wlan0,1,2 is wireless).
My problem is that one is configured as “LAN” (allowing access to the WEBGUI) and the other as “WAN” (no access to the WEBGUI). I need to configure both to have access to the WEBGUI. It seems possible per this link (without posing any security problems, because the eth-WAN interface will only be used for OpenWRT configuration), but…
I need to isolate the LAN and WAN ports. To setup OpenWRT WDS mode, it will eventually require me to disable the internal DHCP server, breaking access to the OpenWRT WEBGUI. If I enable WebGUI access on both eth-LAN and eth-WAN, then if I misconfigure something, I can utilize the eth-WAN to fix my mistakes.
In case it helps, attached are images of some of the defaults of OpenWRT.
