Task today:
My hAP AC³ is providing WLAN with “SSID1” with WifiWave2. It is not able to reach all of our house.
I’d like to extend 1st floor with my hAP LITE wirelessly (no LAN available there sadly) providing ANOTHER SSID (“Floor1”).
It should NOT NAT, NOT provide DHCP but Proxy it to hAP AC³.
Configuration of “Repeater” (guided with “Setup Repeater” in WinBox or manually and bridging everything) and changing the SSID for the Slave WIFI on hAP LITE works for me. hAP AC³ provides SSID1 - basement, hAP LITE provides SSID2 - floor 1. Task could be considered “done” but:
I feel the throughput of the hAP LITE is a little low (it’s a budget-device so this might be okay)
In the FAQs I read about setting the Master-WIFI in “station-pseudobridge” should be avoided if possible. That’s what it does, though.
Setting the Device in “station-bridge” does not work, it’s not connecting to my main SSID provided by hAP AC³.
I could go with “station-pseudobridge” since it is doing what I wanted - any of you guys have an idea how to setup this in a better way, maybe?
Thank you for your kind help and best regards,
Martin.
Wifiwave2 does not support “MT bridge” mode as the traditional MT wifi drivers.
With the traditional drivers you have a transparant “AP bridge” ↔ “Station bridge” connection.
“Station pseudobridge” will present all client devices with the same MAC address (MAC address of the repeater). DHCP may have problems with that. Also identification based on MAC address will be confusing (Hotspot login etc). The client device has to be in the ‘map IP to client’ table of the pseudobridge to be reachable.
hAP Lite is only 2.4GHz. Fast repeaters use cross-band connections (uplink is different radio from client connection). With same-radio setup (as with the “Repeater Setup” button) the throughput is halved. And hAP Lite has a lower performance, which is also ROS version sensitive. (at least in some experiments) http://forum.mikrotik.com/t/hap-lite-as-an-access-point/155253/1
Thanks for your reply. I once saw this massive thread you referenced, whenever tried to read from the beginning, someone always interrupted me… and I really like to follow those threads uninterruped.
Understood so far that the ROS-Version and corresponding fixes might be responsible for slowing the device down / interrupting traffic and pings.
The hAP Lite may not be the best device to enhance WIFI in our house - it has been my entry to RouterOS and the reason for hAP AC³ - I’m a fan now!
With the current setup, Clients are getting an IP-Address on the Main-Router, all further Traffic on the main only sees the hAP-Lite MAC-Address, which is ok for working.
If it comes to WDS I’d prefer using a more professional devices, also having an eye on the “Audience” or a mesh-setup, maybe.
Do you think, the hAP Lite would be able to solve this with WDS? The main hAP AC³ would need a Slave WIFI for this approach, right?
Thanks to all of you answering to those probably “noob-ish”-questions !
AFAIK bridge and WDS functions in wave2 drivers are in the same boat (possibly because they tend to provide similar service). So using hAP ac3 with wave2 driver installed as main AP combined with your requirements (that hAP lite is a very simple wireless-to-wireless bridge) means it’s a no-go.
As you’re configuring different SSID on hAP lite, you can however go with routing config on hAP lite. This way hAP lite will be simple client to hAP ac3, but will run DHCP server for its clients. As to NAT, it doesn’t have to be, you can route between main LAN and hAP lite LAN … some additional configuration is needed on main router (hAP ac3) to make it as seamless as possible.
Possibly the best solution I draw from this thread seems to use the hAP Lite as a development-board and acquire useful WIFI-Hardware
So - yes, with DHCP and another subnet, this should work - is it reliable and powerful? Probably not worth the effort going away from current status.
Thanks for your answers! As an upgrade I think I will go ahead and invest a little more and make this a “good” WDS- or mesh-solution.
Anyway - the hAP Lite was a good starter to RouterOS to get the knowledge and I will keep it honored that way.
If you take any other device (either Mikrotik or another vendor) in stead of hAP lite, you’ll have the same problem: no transparent wireless bridge between repeater and main AP.
Because it’s not a problem with hAP lite … the problem is with current state of wave2 drivers run on hAP ac3, which don’t support WDS/bridge. If you’d be running legacy wireless driver on your hAP ac3, then hAP Lite would make a nice WiFi repeater.
We all hope that wave2 drivers will be improved in future ROS versions so that they’ll support WDS/bridge … MT didn’t announce any EAT about that.
Oh… that point I didn’t get at first - so since WifiWave2 is the challenge at the moment… another subnet on hAP Lite might sound a “reasonable” approach then.
Thanks for the follow-up, I missed this before.
It should NOT NAT, NOT provide DHCP but Proxy it to hAP AC³.
Because of this, I did not mention the (@MKX) solution of just being a “Home AP” : wireless client (as WAN port), and starting it’s own network.
By using NAT then nothing extra is needed in the hAP ac3. Clients behind the hAP Lite will reach all in the hAP ac3 network, but the reverse is hitting the NAT masquerading.
Extra wifi radio or not is all about performance. Using 2 MT AP’s, ethernet connected, can be cheaper than the Audience. (The 2 separate 5GHz radio’s of the Audience each have a different part of the spectrum. Just FYI only. )
…I so much kick myself for not providing more CAT.6 in our house when it was built.
Electrician said: “Everything will be on WiFi soon…so why?” in 2004… and I believed.
The rooms with LAN-access are now for the kids and I do not want them to sleep near Wifi-APs.
Wireless-to-wireless is all I can do in this configuration.
So given the fact that it is now running (although in a not-optimal way), I will leave it this way and hope for even better Wave2 in future updates.
MikroTik’s implemention of Wave2 is quite fresh and as I took away from your statements there’s still a lot of work to do and everybody is looking forward to updates.
Have an older house (1980) and had to use Powerline. Even added MoCA adaptors on the TV coax cable, those get almost 1Gbps.
But ended by pulling extra UTP cables in the tubes for telephone wiring now.
The PoF (Plastic optic fibre) is nice and easy to handle, but never was very common as solution.
How cool is this? So tunneling might be an option to combine these otherwise separate networks…
That’s why I already like this community after a few weeks - you guys are thinking borderless and use what the hardware offers, awesome!
Had a look to the EoIP-Manual ( linking it for reference ),
I would need to document that well, just in case I get lost in future, but it sounds like a way to do it!
