Ethernet bridge and wireless repeater at the same time

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

Hi all,

I need to solve the following situation - in two-floored house I have a wireless network on one floor. I’d like to extend this wireless network to the second floor and also build a wired ethernet network on this floor, but I don’t want to use cables between two floors. So I need to use a device as a repeater and ethernet bridge at the same time. Will I be able to achieve this with using Mikrotik hAP ac²?

Thanks.

2

Sure thing. You’ll have to set the secondary hAP ac2 wireless interface to station-bridge mode. Then you’ll have to disable almost all the configuration (DHCP server, firewall, routes, what not).

According to documentation you can use PTP Bridge CPE mode in Quickset for that … I don’t have any experience with Quickset modes hence I can’t vouch this setting will do …

3

Thanks. The second device (router on the first floor) is not Mikrotik, it’s other brand. Isn’t it a problem?

4

Why cannot you simply drill a hole through a closet floor and run wire.

5

Yes, that’s a problem … good ole 802.11 does not specify bridging networks. WDS extends that but WDS is a mess by its own.

So, either go with @anav’s suggestion about drilling a hole or invest in a pair of Routerboard devices - any would do, but select appropriate ones based on number of wired ethernet ports needed and number of wireless interfaces (2.4GHz only or dual-band). My favourite low-cost candidate is hAP ac lite (comes also in small tower case as well). No need for gigabit ethernet on second floor if those devices won’t primarily interact with each other, you won’t get more than around 100Mbps using wireless through that concrete floor anyway. For the main router on the first floor choose a device with faster CPU and gigabit ethernet (low-cost candidate would be hAP ac2).