Point to Point Bridge

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

Hi guys,

just purchased 2 RB433AH boards and some XR5 cards, and would like to set up a point to point bridge with the 2 radios. what would be the best way to go about it? there are a few option in the firmware that support it, but I am not sure on which would be best. I would like to stay away from AP/WDS as I don’t want the master side to act as an AP while in use.

thanks,

2

goto wiki mikrotik search for wds…

3

You could configure one radio as bridge and the other as station, this is Point to Point. No AP/WDS required.

4

alright, thanks. I’ll give that a try.

regards,

5

I too am trying to build a transparent ethernet point to point bridge with two RB411/level 3 units.

(I’m brand new with RB, but well familiar with Linux and core network theory and practice.)

I believe I have (on each end) correctly set both ethernet1 and wlan1 as ip-less slaves to the bridge1 device which has the IP. (One IP per RB411 unit.)

But I cannot get the two wireless cards to associate.

I set one to bridge and the other to station. The one in bridge says “running ap” (if I recall correctly) and the one in “station” shows the first unit when I do “scan” but clicking “connect” does not connect it. And when I click “status” on the “station” unit, it just shows that it’s scanning different frequencies, but never sticking with one.

The status on the “bridge” end indicates that it’s being an AP like mode.

Is there a how-to that answers the simple question of “How to get the two cards to associate in point to point” that I ought to read?

I don’t want a bunch of IPs and I don’t want to tunnel or do any weird stuff - just a plain ethernet bridge.
The only purpose that the IPs will need to server is so that I can manage the RB411’s - all traffic passed over the bridge will just go as untouched ethernet frames..

(Being trivial in Linux, I’m assuming that this is possible with RB411/Lvl 3)

For now, let’s just ignore the question of whether the packets will be bridged or routed as they come in the ethernet1 and out the wlan1 - my question is “how do I get the wireless cards to connect?”

Am I heading in the correct direction - one unit as station and one unit as bridge?

Thank you very much,

Jesse

6

Update:

I heard back from tech support.

They said:

Hello Jesse,

Simple Wireless link configuration example is here,
http://www.mikrotik.com/testdocs/ros/2.9/interface/wireless_content.php#4.13.21.1

As you need transparent wireless link, you should use WDS together with
bridging,
http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Transparently_Bridge_two_Networks

I tried the settings in both tutorials and could never get the two wireless interfaces to associate.

However, the RB411(AP,LvL3,3.10) does accept one laptop client at a time..
And, the RB411(Client, LvL3, 3.10) does happily log onto a standard SOHO 802.11B/G 2.4Ghz wireless AP.

So each RB411 works fine in its role when associating with a non RB411 client or AP - but the two will not associate with eachother.

What am I doing wrong?

Thank you very much,

-Jesse

7

Update again:

Problem fixed, but no clue how or why:
My employer took a turn fiddling with settings, deleting and re-adding settings, and it just started working..

So, in answer to my own question, here are my notes:

By Jesse.

For two RB411 units running firmware 3.10, license level 3, in a point to point transparent ethernet bridge.
Yes, this works.

The client must be in "station wds" mode, on the "Wireless" tab for the wlan interface.

WDS in the WDS tab does not need to be enabled, nor does the default bridge need to be set in the WDS tab.

The AP must be set to “Bridge” mode in the wireless tab, and WDS (in the WDS tab) must be set to “Dynamic,”
and “Default bridge” must be set to the name of the bridging device (for example, “bridge1”)


Note that with the AP in "Bridge" mode and the WDS disabled, and the client in "Station" mode also with WDS disabled, the cards do
happily associate, but no traffic is passed between them.
\
\
If AP is "Bridge without WDS" and the Client is "station wds" then the client will not associate.
If AP is in "Bridge with WDS=Dynamic," then client can associate either as "station" or "station wds,"
but the bridge only passes traffic if the station is set as "station wds."

It works to have one IP on the bridge interface (which does not have to be named bridge-wds), and no IP on either wlan. or either1.
But an IP on all 3 is fine to have, and the unit can be connected to via any of the IPS except perhaps the one on the wlan1
interface.

In any case, both the wlan and ethernet interfaces must be slaves to (assigned to/claimed by) the bridge.

Also note that the bridging engine sometimes takes up to 30 seconds to learn who's on what port before it begins passing traffic, so
remember to be patient.

Also note that sometimes when changing IPs, the unit becomes unreachable even though all the settings are perfect. A reboot should fix it.

~~~~~~~

So here's the recipe for a ethernet wireless point to point transparent bridge using two RB411 (or probably other) License level 3, OS version 3.10 (and probably others.):

1: Set client AND AP to have wlan and ether to be assigned to their bridge device,which you will have to create.

2: Set the AP to mode=bridge, and turn WDS to Dynamic, and set WDS "Default Bridge" to the bridge device.

3: Set the Client to mode="station wds".

If you want to be able to manage it with IP tools (like telnet, ssh, winbox, webbox) you'll want to add IPs to the bridge interfaces and/or the ether interfaces. You can also add an IP to the wlan interfaces, but I'm not too sure why you'd need to.

Also, of course, the bridge cannot work unless the wireless cards associate. To do that, they must have the same ssid and encryption settings and everything.

Of course my original problem was that the cards would not associate at all, even though the client side could see the AP side in a "SCAN" - but that magically fixed itself.

Sincerely,

Jesse