2 RB532 doing mesh in a tower

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

Hi, i am implementing mesh in a tower to do a charge-balance between 2 RB with 1 omni each one, doing dhcp and hotspot with a different subnet each one to 200 clients.

The idea is do mesh to keep the same freq, ssid and encryptation in all the network and balance clients connected to each hotspot… in 2 months i mount a new tower to do separatelly, but now need do in this one.

In the top of the tower i have 2 metal outdoor box with a RB each one with 1 omni pointing to up and the other box a omni pointing to down…

In each RB have create a wds dynamic and bridge(rstp) like the wiki example, but without the ether1, only bridged the wlan1 and the wds1, because the RBs are doing hotspot, and the gateway of the internet is reachable by the ether1 and can´t do run hotspot over the bridge interface with the ether1 interface bridged, all the world may be charged in the hotspot host table.

The wds is working fine at 54mbps, the clients connect to internet perfectly in the RB Root of the Bridge, but in the other RB which is not root of the bridge and have root port wds1 all is very very very slow.

Config tips and helps:

Both RB have Bridge Priority 1 doing rstp and arp enabled like all others cards.

Both wireless cards are configured with disable-running-check=NO to do host at each wireless client(like external fdb) in the bridge host table… with this setting, doing a monitor in the wlan1 i can see notify-external-fdb=YES… otherwise is NO and wireless clients aren´t hosted in the bridge host table.

Each DHCP-Server have a pool assigning subnet like 192.168.10.5 to 250 and the RB with this subnet have the IP .254 and the other RB have the IP .1 of this range, in the other RB have the same but subnet is 192.168.11.x

In each hotspot IP binding have the subnet of the other RB with bypass and in NAT of both RB have masq both networks.

Now both RB are connected by a switch to the router gateway to Internet.

All work very fine, except to the no root bridge RB have performance problems…

I thinking to do a x86 RouterOS machine to concentrate all the connections in the PC, or exist a solution to do both RB work fine like the RB “root bridge” and all work fine with this configuration?

I hope that they understand to me, any doubt consult to me…
Thank you very much!
Alessio

2

I’m a bit confused because you have the same SSID, encryption but 2 different hotspots? That’s strange. Different users too? If it was, I wouldn’t understand how users of hotspot 1 would be able to differentiate between the two and vice versa. But if not and you have the same users to both RB’s then here’s what I think you should do:

Make a RB532 the ONLY hotspot and DHCP (ether1 gateway). Also make it a wireless AP w/ WDS (dynamic connect BUT with WDS bridge=none on the wlan1). Bridge wlan1, and ether2 together.

Make the other RB532 an AP only, and connect its ether1 with the ether2 on the first RB532 using a crossover cable. Set its WLAN same as above and bridged ether1 with wlan1.

This way your AP’s can coordinate clients via roaming and max-station settings (100 at most). But you will be very limited radio-wise because you are on the same channel. Your best bet is to use 2 different channels (2412, 2462, or 2412 and 2437, etc) otherwise you will reach a usability limit of 802.11 at around 50 clients, and expecting 100 to work is a stretch anyone on this board will tell you, and even more of a stretch that they’re not fixed clients.

You will not be able to adequately mesh with that many clients like you want to unless you were using dual radio (2.4 AP, 5ghz-turbo mesh), it’s too much for the protocol to take.

3

Thank you for your reply, i go implement 5ghz when the other towers are ready… now i can do my configuration work well, after i go post the configuration… the configuration you say here is good but 1 RB can´t do hotspot and bandwidth control to all clients, the 2 RB have the same clients and balance charges by connections… now all work very fine!
Thanks and regards!
Alessio :stuck_out_tongue: