I use ap-bridge and station-wds modes on my bridges. It is a little tricky at first, but once you get it figured out, it is easy to set up. Very reliable. Very dynamic. Handles failures and recovers well.
If you read the post, and still have questions, I understand the guys at MikroTik are willing to lend a hand. So am I. PM me if you need help on your specific setup. But a warning: I use CLI, not Winbox.
had a look at the post but i have a question , why use wds? These bridges will be entirely independent of each other and i do not in fact want any form of a wds.
I’ve used WDS a bit as well. It serves its purpose and works transparently. My big thing with WDS is playing LAN games with family that live nearby. Works fine, never had any problems.
mmmmmmm, i cannot use WDS as there are different towers for different people and means with different intentions.
I don’t understand what WDS has to do with it.
As for the EOIP thats really a work around that im not willing to employ on every customer over above everything.
Why is it so difficult to do a simple bridge with an interface in station mode?
Even two senaos back to back will accomplish what im trying to do here.
Ive done this myself in linux even.
Must be a way to set this up.
Someone mentioned to me that thats what the station pseudo-bridge mode is for, but i don’t have any info on that.
I have found the dynamic WDS setup very reliable. I mentioned in another post that I really torture my setups. Datasheets and manuals are great, but I need to know how it works out here in the real world. I kill power to each unit in the bridge. If the bridge does not reconnect after the simulated “power fail”, then my setup is faulty. They always reconnect, no matter what order they fail or come back in.
I can not recall the exact details but I think 802.11 does not support bridged networking only routed networking. That is why WDS was created, to allow bridged networks like you wanted.
V3 added support for bridge without wds(station-pseudobridge). I have not tested this yet but plan to in the near future.
I did try this mode yet didn’t work, although ill admit i did test it half-hartedly.
For those interested:
station-pseudobridge - wireless station that can be put in bridge. MAC NAT is performed on all traffic sent over the wireless interface, so that it look like coming from the station’s MAC address regardless of the actual sender (the standard does not allow station to send packets with different MAC address from its own). Reverse translation (when replies arrive from the AP to the pseudobridge station) is based on the ARP table. Non-IP protocols are being sent to the default MAC address (the last MAC address, which the station has received a non-IP packet from). That means that if there is more than one client that uses non-IP protocols (for example, PPPoE) behind the station, none of them will be able to work correctly
station-pseudobridge-clone - similar to the station-pseudobridge, but the station will clone MAC address of a particular device (set in the station-bridge-clone-mac property), i.e. it will change itsown address to the one of a different device. In case no address is set in the station-bridge-clone-mac property, the station postpones connecting to an AP until some packet, with the source MAC address different from any of the router itself, needs to be transmitted over that interface. It then connects to an AP with the MAC address of the device that have sent that packet
Will test this once again as this seems to be wan’t i want to do.
Above is correct, Mikrotik followed strict 802.11 which does not provide for station bridging. If you upgrade to 3.x there is a pseudo-bridge for stations there. That works, I have some running. No wds or anything else. Just select pseudo-bridge and set it up like you would a bridge. Also this works with a 3.x client and a 2.9.x ap. as well.
Does it work without the pppoe?
If so then probably in the pppoe setup. Which interface is the pppoe setup to use?
EDIT: Ok I am a bit slow. Just noticed the above is on the same Tik box. Was thinking regular ap - client setup. So I am not sure the way you have it will pass traffic. Try it without the pppoe if possible.
Ok and for the new findings.
Seems to now be working perfectly!?!
No idea why i had the issues.
Using v3.4.
First all versions pre 3.x do not have the “station-pseudo bridge” , so it would be impossible to do it on those versions.
I have just confirmed that.
Versions 3.x to current seems to be working, will test it’s reliablilty and post results.
This is magic! No more needing rb600’s everywhere!
Thats literally what this forced us to do is use a min spec of a 532 or higher even for the simplest repeater.
