I have a router from my ISP which is hooked up to the internet, but broadcasts no WLAN. Let’s call it RTX.
I have a MikroTik hAP lite (let’s call it MK0) which is connected to RTX via ethernet. It is set up as a WISP AP and broadcasts a WLAN.
I have another hAP lite (let’s call this one MK1) which is also connected to RTX via ethernet. It is set up identically to MK0 and broadcasts its own WLAN with a unique SSID.
So far, this all works. I can connect a PC via WiFi (or ethernet) to either MK0 or MK1 and get an internet connection that way. Now, I want to replace the ethernet connection between MK1 and RTX with a wireless connection between MK1 and MK0, with MK1 still broadcasting its own SSID rather than being a repeater for MK0.
How do I achieve this? Ideally in WebFig rather than using Winbox or the terminal. I see there’s a “setup repeater” option there but this doesn’t seem to work for what i want to do.
There are basically two ways: the easy way gives separate subnet on MK1 and devices using MK1 wireless are protected from devices hooked off MK0 same as from internet (including firewall, NAT, etc.). The hard way will make devices using MK1 belong to same subnet as devices off MK0.
Rough guide for the easy way: remove wlan1 from bridge1, set wlan to mode “station”, choose MK0 SSID to connect to (with correct password). Start DHCP client on wlan1 interface. Add wlan1 interface interface list “WAN”. Create virtual wlan interface using wlan1 as master interface and set up SSID and the rest of settings for access point with second SSID. Add the virtual wlan interface to bridge1.
At this point ether1 is not usable, it is still set up as wired WAN interface. If you want to use it as LAN interface, you’ll have to remove all configuration targeting it (probably there’s DHCP client bound to it, it’s on the WAN interface list, …) and then add it to bridge1.
The “not easy” way is actually the more interesting one, but needs more description and being a lazy person I might try to roughly describe the steps if somebody was really interested …
Thanks, the “easy” way seems exactly what I need since the devices aren’t supposed to communicate with each other; they just need an internet connection. I’ll see if I can set it up tomorrow with the instructions you gave me.
Alright, it works now. Thanks for your help. Two questions though:
Is the frequency/width of a wireless slave network always the same as that of its master, which is fixed when the master interface is in station mode? I tried a bunch of things but the MK1 WLAN always has the same frequency as the MK0 WLAN.
If an AP broadcasts both a normal WLAN and a virtual WLAN (e.g. a guest network) can you give both the same SSID with different WPA2 keys and devices will automatically connect to the correct WLAN based on their key?
1st question: yes … to have different settings RB would need second radio.
2nd question: probably not. Both wlan APs have indeed different MAC addresses, but that would be all. Clients don’t expect different passwords on different APs that share SSID … or else roaming between APs would not really work. If client would try to connect to AP with “wrong” key, it would get rejected and I guess client woukd not try to reconnect automatically another time. In addition to that, how would you know which key do you have to enter when your device asks for one?
So if you want to have different passkeys, you’ll have to have different SSIDs.