Connecting to an existing WLAN (Wireless bridge?)

RouterOS Beginner Basics
1

Hello,

I am a beginner with MicroTik devices and absolutely excited! Just got the hAP lite, and would appreciate your help with setting it up.

I have a D-Link ADSL modem and router, provided by my ISP. This router provides a WLAN for accessing the internet.

Now, I would like the hAP to connect to the WLAN, and then I would like to connect my Raspberry Pi to one of the Ethernet ports in the hAP, so the Pi it will have internet access.

I think my question is really similar to this one and perhaps also this one , but I couldn’t figure up the bottom line in either :frowning:.
Also, In both cases there were some comments regarding problems in scenarios where the primary device is not a MikroTik (as with my D-Link).

I would greatly appreciate a simple explanation.
Thank you!

2

Simple explanation: WiFi standard doesn’t foresee truly transparent wireless bridges, it is meant that station (wireless client) is the end destination of data packets. To overcome this problem, vendors came up with vendor-specific extensions of standard, but those extensions only work when both wireless peers are by same vendor. You can read more in this manual section. There are some hacks (in ROS that’s mode=station-pseudobridge and mode=station-pseudobridge-clone), but there’s no guarantee for those to work.

The bottom line is: you have to use single vendor wireless setup in this case.

3

Thanks for the reply.

But do I really need a transparent bridge?

Is there a safe solution that will surely work in this situation?

Perhaps not using the hAP as a transparent bridge but as a client for the WLAN that will act as a router for the local Ethernet network and connect the two networks (not transparently)? I hope this makes some since. Bottom line, I don’t really care which decide allocates addresses for the RPi, I just want it to have internet access…
Thanks again.

4

Sure, you can always use hAP as router between two subnets … in your case wired ports would be one network and your existing wireless network would be the other network (and hAP would be an ordinary station). As long as it’s only the new subnet that needs connectivity towards the existing network (and internet) you’ll be fine (hAP will perform NAT and everything will appear to originate from hAP itself). If you, however, want devices from existing network to natively (as opposed to NATing on hAP) connect RPi, then you have problem. Which is solvable if you can add a static route on your current router … which quite a few SoHo routers don’t allow.

5

I think this will do just fine for me.
Could you please instruct me on how to this up or point me to a relevant reference?
Thanks again.

6

OK, I have made some progress!
I followed your advice, and specifically followed this post, so I used Quickset CPE mode.
My RPi is now connected to the internet!

A few things I am curious about plus some follow up questions:

  1. I used WinBox and found that the MAC address used to access my hAP is actually not the one printed on my hAP (ETH), but that MAC address + 1… Why is that?

  2. The RPi is successfully assigned an IP address from my hAP only when th Pi is connected to port #1. This port is marked as Internet… When using one of the other 3 LAN ports, the Pi gets some default IP in a different subnet and is not connected to the internet. I also tested this with my PC instead of the P, and again - it only works when using port #1. For now this is not an issue, since I need to connect a single device, but it still seems odd to me.

  3. As mentioned, my RPi can now access the internet. This is awsome! But… the RPi cannot access my PC, which is connected to my home network using the SoHo router. I would like the RPi to access files on my PC using SMB. How can I achieve that goal?

  4. Similarly, I used to control Kodi running on my RPi using a Kodi remote app from my mobile phone. This was possible since the Pi and my phone were both on my home WLAN. This is no longer the case. So, how can I allow my phone access the Pi?

For the last two questions I should note my home network router (D-Link dsl 225) seems to support static routing and some other advanced features.

Thanks again for your support!

7

  1. No idea.

  2. I’m not familiar with how QuickSet configures the unit, but probabky not all ether ports are in same bridge. If you can provide exported config, we can have a look at it. In winbox, open terminal window. The execute this command:

/export file=myexport20191207.rsc

Transfer the file (it should be in Files ) to your PC. Open it using text editor and obfuscate usernames and passwords. Post it here inside [__code] [/code] environment.

  1. It’s different network. Windows share discovery work fine using broadcast packets, but those don’t traverse routers. Probably RPi would be able to use PC’s shared folders if you configured RPi to use IP (of your PC) instead of its name.

  2. It is the same as accessing your PC from internet … you have to configure port-forwarding and then use hAP’s address in Kodi remote app.


    All of the above shows that a truly transparent wireless bridge between two wired network parts is sometimes worth some investment. If you don’t want to (or can not) replace ISP’s router, then you could throw in another Mikrotik AP which would then serve hAP as peer for the bridge. The other possibility is to use power-line (ethernet iver power lines) products.

8
  1. Because the bridge’s MAC address will default to that of ether2, it being the first port therein.
9

Thanks again.
I followed your advice and ordered another hAP. mini. Unfortunately it will arrive late December, so I might ask for some more help later on with my current temporary setup.