Mesh network - how to set up?

RouterOS General
1

Hello,

I am using a few mikrotik devices in several places.
In one of locations i need to expand wireless coverage, and here came with idea of setting up a mesh network, trouble is i have no idea how to do it as this feature was always some sort of ‘black magic’ to me.

My current setup is - rb2011 uas-2hnd-in - working as a gateway (connected directly to adsl modem - vigor120).
all nat and routing is happening on this rb (pppoa, advanced traffic priorities…).

now i have another rb (951g-2hnd), which i try to set up as a mesh ‘client’, which will connect to this existing rb2011.
what sort of configuration should i set up on this ‘client’ to get all the settings from my rb2011 working correctly? (dhcp, dns, firewall, queues etc)
or at least just working?
should i leave it on default with just wlan settings adjusted to connect to mesh? or copy all the settings from rb2011 and modify them slightly?
on my first try, after importing backup from rb2011 to rb951, and changing both to wds dynamic-mesh, and adjustments to ip addresses, nothing can connect to rb951 and it doesn’t seem to have internet access, but there is some traffic between both devices.

the location for it is a multi-storey building with 20+ wireless devices connecting to internet. there is no existing cat5 wiring and there is no possibility to connect routers with cable so i rely on wireless retransmision from edge router (2011).

any sort of help will be appreciated, detailed step-by-step walkthrough would be a steal :slight_smile:

2

If you only have 2 devices, why use mesh and not simple WDS?

3

for 2 reasons - i’m not quite sure if only 2 devices will cover whole area, in the worst scenario I will have to use 4 or 5, and unfortunately cannot check it before installing the first two.
second - I have never ever had any experience with mesh networks (but have a lot of experience with wds) and it’s great opportunity to learn something new :smiley: I really like the idea of self-healing network covering massive areas.

after playing around with mesh at home, my current problem is that very often devices can’t obtain ip address from any other ap than actual dhcp server.
anybody with any experience in mesh could give me any tips&tricks?
need to find rock-solid solution before tuesday…