I have used a hAP (RB951Ui-2nD) in station pseudobridge mode for years, never had any problems, it was connected to an old Zyxel’s AP with WPA2 AES.
Now I’m trying in every way to connect it to a hAP ax3, I also tried with hAP ax2 without success, that has default configuration, no VLANs and wireless interface is working as AP with only WPA2 AES.
Is there something I need to enable or disable to make station pseudobridge work between MikroTik?
Both use version 7.11.2 and here’s what happens…
This is the setup that worked for years, I just changed the SSID and password.
wifi1 is connected but there is no traffic and the dhcp client doesn’t get an IP
I’m sure I configured wifi correctly, if I remove wifi interface from the bridge it immediately gets an IP from the hAP ax3
There is something I need to enable in the hAP’s bridge to make station pseudobridge mode work with another MikroTik?
Thanks
You need latest beta 7.12b7.
You need to change mode of wifi interface via CLI to station-bridge.
First set it to station so it connects, then change mode.
And then it works.
I’ve tested it. No changes needed on AP side.
The old hAP already has the station-bridge but doesn’t work with wave2 AP (hAP ax3), this is why I use the station pseudobridge mode to connect hAP to the hAP ax3
OK so is this normal?
Can I connect hAP as a pseudobridge station to all routers of other brands (tested with Zyxel and TP-Link) except Mikrotik models that use wave2?
Wave2 driver just got support for station-bridge in latest beta.
It still doesn’t support station-pseudobridge, which is required to work with incompatible APs. And ROS drvices running legacy wireless driver are incompatible APs in this regard. If you’re using ax3 (or ax2) as AP, then try to upgrade it to 7.12beta … wave2 driver until recently didn’t support any of station *bridge modes, so I’m guessing it also didn’t support AP bridge mode … technically AP doesn’t need bridge support for station-pseudobridge client, but who knows …
I think I explained myself badly… my English is too poor
hAP ax3 is the main router and works as a simple AP, is the hAP (RB951Ui-2nD) that I want to connect as a station pseudobridge to the hAP ax3.
hAP (RB951Ui-2nD) in station pseudobridge mode works perfectly with other brands’ access points, I can’t get it to work always as station pseudobridge with hap ax3 and hap ax2 that are in access point mode.
Not according to my understanding. Station-bridge requires 4-address support over the air.
Station-pseudobridge relies on sort-of MAC NAT and can work with standard 3-address mode (but comes with own bag of problems). Which makes it vendor-neutral … but since wave2 is very much work in progress, I wouldn’t be surprised if some minor detail affecting station-pseudobridge was ironed out only recently.
I don’t think you misunderstood that post. I’m just guessing that MT devs might add 4-address support to ap mode (without renaming it) at the ssme time as they added station-bridge. That post by @guntis simply doesn’t provide any hint about what’s going on behind the scene. None what so ever. But it would be great to know whether any wifiwave2 AP (regardless ROS version) can serve to station-bridge or is some minimum ROS version required also on AP? For the station-bridge device that’s pretty obvious, if there is no such wireless mode available, then it doesn’t work.
I thought of a bridge configuration problem because if I don’t add wlan1 to bridge1 in the hAP I see that data exchange (see first message)
You’re probably right, it could be a compatibility problem with wave2.
We probably will have to sniff the wifi packets to find out what the “new” station-bridge mode is. Is it full 4-address mode coming from the AP, or is it a better “station-pseudobridge” implementation?
There are different implementations of repeaters, but I have no desciptions in my links right now. Just from memory, could be incorrect : Some do a 2.5 bridge mode , replacing the MAC address of the devices with the wifi station MAC address (MT pseudo-bridge) , but others do some kind of proxy ARP approach for the devices behind the repeater. The difference is if a certain combination will work or not.
Reading to do … “wifi bridge with proxy arp” , to be correct in this.
The issue seems to be the DHCP lease cycle DORA, that often fails with the pseudo-bridge (Offer not reaching the device). Very often with a MT AP, less with others. Workaround that mostly works is to add a DHCP proxy on the pseudo-bridge router. The fastest way to test/eliminate this effect is to work without DHCP client on devices behind the repeater.
Thanks for your help…
Unfortunately the DHCP Relay and manual IP in the devices did not work.
I give up…
It’s absurd that it cannot be used as a pseudobridge station of a MikroTik router
If I remove wifi1 from bridge1 and add it as a dhcp client, wifi1 gets an IP from the router, why?
It doesn’t seem like a problem with wifi compatibility…
EDIT: I found where I was wrong! I changed the bridge protocol from rstp (default) to none and now it works
Does happen in some cases, with some AP implementations
My workaround then is use “station” (no station bridge, or station-pseudobridge) The WLAN1 is in the WAN interface list, has DHCP client, and on the hAP have a local LAN (with DHCP server etc), and masquerade the devices on that LAN. This should always work, but is a L3 solution (routed, SRC-natted or masqueraded). It is not the wanted L2.5 MAC-natted solution. Devices are hidden behind the NAT.
A VPN could remove the NAT setup, and make it L2, as @Ca6ko said
“you can try a crutch.
Connect the hub as just a station and establish an EOIP tunnel by adding its bridges to both devices”
@bpwl I solved it by changing the bridge protocol from rstp (default) to “none” and now it works perfectly … even the router’s DHCP server.
There is some incompatibility with rstp and station pseudobridge…
Thx @massinia for the feedback. Very interesting observation, as I had many experiments on this , and some combinations failed, and I never found why.
We expect RSTP to have the same effect as STP.
