I would like to enable the hotspot feature on a hEX while the device is not the gateway. The gateway is a special router from Huawei which bonds 4G and ADSL and it can’t be used or configured as a modem. I also want to avoid double NAT by the hEX and huawei router. So I would like to have the following setup:
Is that possible? I guess i have to use a bridge for the ports to the huawei router and the switch? and the hotspot should be enabled for the bridge?
The easiest way to do what you want is to leave the Mikrotik as the gateway, and just disable NAT in the Mikrotik so the Huawei router sees the actual IP addresses of the clients and performs the NAT just once.
You’ll need to log into the Huawei router and create a static route to the Hotspot IP network via the wan IP of the Mikrotik.
e.g. route 192.168.0.0/22 via x.x.x.x (where x.x.x.x is the WAN IP of the Mikrotik)
This way, your network topology stays tidy, your configs stay simple, and you’re not doing any weird stuff with bypass bindings in the Hotspot (which I’ve found to be problematic when using a different IP gateway than the Mikrotik itself)
Unfortunately the hybrid router does not have an option to set routes. The Telekom (mother company of T-Mobile) support just stats: “This feature is not officially supported.”. So I guess there is no other solution to avoid double NAT.