Wireless Bridge with OpenWRT?

Hardware Hub Networking
21

The very quick and dirty way to do WDS which works fine out of the box:

Master node/AP

  • Connect device network to any of the LAN ports
  • Install image with wpad-openssl or another “full” wpad package (nano is also nice to have)
  • Disable WAN and WAN6 interfaces in /etc/config/network
  • Adjust IP-address, set gateway and dns for LAN interface in /etc/config/network
  • Setup timezone (optional, needs package) and ntp server in /etc/config/system
  • Setup wireless networks (ssid, keys, wpa2/3 etc)
    Add option wds '1' to the network that’s going to be linked using WDS
  • Reboot, done

Example:

config wifi-device 'radio0'
        option type 'mac80211'
        option path '1a143000.pcie/pci0000:00/0000:00:00.0/0000:01:00.0'
        option channel '52'
        option band '5g'
        option htmode 'VHT80'
        option country 'DE'

config wifi-iface 'default_radio0'
        option device 'radio0'
        option network 'lan'
        option mode 'ap'
        option ssid 'Foonet-LNK'
        option encryption 'sae'
        option key 'MySecretKeyGoesHERE'
        option wds '1'

Client node/AP

  • Connect device network to any of the LAN ports
  • Install image with wpad-openssl or another “full” wpad package (nano is also nice to have)
  • Disable WAN and WAN6 interfaces in /etc/config/network
  • Adjust IP-address, set gateway and dns for LAN interface in /etc/config/network
  • Setup timezone (optional, needs package) and ntp server in /etc/config/system
  • Configure one radio to act as “link” (this will be dedicated), the other as AP as default
    Don’t forget to add option wds '1' to the “client link” radio
  • Reboot, done

Example:

config wifi-device 'radio0'
        option type 'mac80211'
        option path '1a143000.pcie/pci0000:00/0000:00:00.0/0000:01:00.0'
        option channel '52'
        option band '5g'
        option htmode 'VHT80'
        option country 'DE'

config wifi-iface 'default_radio0'
        option device 'radio0'
        option network 'lan'
        option mode 'sta'
        option ssid 'Foonet-LNK'
        option encryption 'sae'
        option key 'MySecretKeyGoesHERE'
        option wds '1'

Now all LAN ports will connect to your network and act as a switch and wireless bridge on your “Client node/AP”

Edit: You can also make WAN port available but that may also render the device unreachable if you’re care so I usually leave it alone as 3-4 ports are usually enough anyway.

Short version of: [OpenWrt Wiki] Wireless Access Point (aka "Dumb" Access Point)

22

How? And why is this needed if WDS appears to already be available?

23

You need it for SAE (WPA3 support)

24

Is WPA3 even readily available? I honestly had no idea it existed?

25

Yes? :slight_smile:

https://source.android.com/docs/core/connect/wifi-wpa3-owe
…and so on