Let me preface this by saying I know a little about networking, but I’m definitely no expert. I’ve attempted to read the wiki manuals, and Googled around a good bit for this. I have this partly working, but I’m going nuts trying to get DHCP fully working.
I have 4 Groove routers, all running 6.11. The goal is to set up a completely standalone RF network to cover a large field where a sporting event takes place. Terrain and such dictate that multiple APs are needed. There will be three SSIDs, one of which is open, and two of which are secured with WPA/WPA2. The DHCP server has a 50-some odd devices that need to be at fixed addresses based on their MAC, and there’s about a 100 free addresses in the pool.
I have all 4 routers configured the same, with the exception that one also has the DHCP address list and the DHCP server enabled. For now, the SSIDs are ‘OPEN’, ‘SECURE1’ and ‘SECURE2’. The Grooves are creatively named ‘AP1’, ‘AP2’, ‘AP3’, and ‘AP4’. AP1 has the DHCP server running on it.
Right now, I can connect to any the three SSIDs on AP1, and it immediately connects and gets an IP addressed assigned. If the device has a MAC-to-IP address entry, it gets the correct IP address, if there’s no entry, it gets an address from the dynamic pool. If I connect to the ‘OPEN’ SSID on any of the other 3 APs, that works, too. The DHCP address is getting forwarded to AP1, which replies, and all is well.
The problem is that trying to connect to ‘SECURE1’ and ‘SECURE2’ from AP2, AP3 or AP4, and no address gets assigned. The device authenticates, but failed to ever get an IP address assigned. This is the part that’s driving me nuts, and it’s probably because I’m not smart enough about networking. (FWIW, I’ve also tried it with no authentication, and it makes no difference).
In the wireless configuration on each device, there is wlan1, wlan2 and wlan3, which correspond to OPEN, SECURE1 and SECURE2. wlan1 is ‘Wireless (Atheros AR92xx)’, and wlan2 and wlan3 are ‘VirtualAP’. Each one has Mode=ap bridge, WDS Mode=dynamic mesh, and WDS Default Bridge=bridge-wlan. The MAC address for wlan1 is the factory wireless MAC of that Groove. For wlan2, it’s the MAC address + 1,and for wlan3, it’s the MAC address + 2. This gives each SSID on each Groove a unique MAC. ‘bridge-wlan’ has the Admin MAC Address set to the wlan1 MAC address of each device. The WLAN IP addresses of the devices are 192.168.17.1/24 for wlan1, 192.168.17.2/24 for wlan2, 192.168.17.3/24 for wlan3, and 192.168.17.4/24 for wlan4.
AP1 has three DHCP servers created on it. dhcp1 is assigned to ‘bridge-local’ (setting it to anything else makes it invalid). dhcp2 is assigned to wlan2, and dhcp3 is assigned to wlan3. All three use the ‘dhcp’ pool, which is defined as 192.168.17.150 to 192.168.17.253. The MAC-to-IP table start at 192.168.17.16 and go up to about 192.168.17.140.
Each of the MAC addresses for wlan1, wlan2 and wlan3 for each device are in the ACL tables for the other devices. In the IP->Addresses table, there is an entry for wlan1, wlan2, and wlan3, which are each defined as 192.168.17.0/24.
In the Wireless->Interfaces menu on each device, all the wlans are shown as running, and each AP has 9 WDSxxx entries running.
I want 192.168.17.0/24 to be the entire address range supported. When I connect to OPEN on AP1, I should be able to talk to all the devices on AP2, AP3 and AP4 that are also on OPEN. The same applies to SECURE1 and SECURE2.
What the heck am I missing/not-understanding where I can’t get the DHCP requests on the wlan2 and wlan3 networks on AP2, AP3 and AP4 to work? I’ve spent literally 30 hours across two days messing with various combinations, researching, and trying to get this to work.