Hey guys, heres my setup. I have an RV i take to various offices and stay a few days. The RV has several devices in it that need internet. So… Ive installed a HAP in the RV, works great. Currently i have it setup to grab internet on the 2.4 interface, using a connect list, so depending what office i am at, or my verizon portable hotspot if im on the road…it will connect in the order i like. The 5ghz is in ap mode for all my devices in the RV to connect to. Works good…
Heres the issue…i have a few devices in the RV that need 2.4. So i picked up a mikrotik WAP. Now, what i was thinking:
Make the HAP work as it normally work, both 5 and 2.4 available for client devices in the RV.
Use the WAP to connect to the outside world, setup the same as i was doing before with the 2.4 from the HAP.
Tell the WAP to do a transparent bridge to the HAP, so it doesnt get an ip…and its like its not there. Otherwise, imstuck doing tripple NAT (Yes tipple!)
I can get the WAP to connect to an office, no problem there. But when i try to do bridge, pusedo bridge, pusedo bridge clone it seems to connect to the office, but no connectivity to the internet.
To simplify ive conected the WAP via ethernet directly to a laptop. Now, to keep it simple…the WAP should be able to bridge the connection it gets on its wireless over to the ethernet to that laptop and the laptop should get a DHCP address from the office. But thats not happening. Once i get this working i know i can just plug it into the HAP and it will also work…so please, if you reply, focus on this simple WAP bridgeing wireless link to laptop case.
I don’t think that will actually work without any hicups. 802.11 standards don’t allow transparent wireless bridge between two wired islands. Most of vendors came up with their own standard extensions for that (Mikrotik included) but those are mutually incompatible and only work if wireless devices on both bridge ends are by same vendor.
What I’d do is to keep using hAP as it is now and add wAP as 2.4 GHz AP for RV. Or move whole routing stuff over to wAP and use hAP simply as dual-band AP for RV.
So… Ive installed a HAP in the RV, works great. Currently i have it setup to grab internet on the 2.4 interface, using a connect list, so depending what office i am at, or my verizon portable hotspot if im on the road…it will connect in the order i like. The 5ghz is in ap mode for all my devices in the RV to connect to. Works good…
Heres the issue…i have a few devices in the RV that need 2.4. So i picked up a mikrotik WAP. Now, what i was thinking:
Well , hmmm, create a vitrual WLAN on the 2.4GHz interface, and define it as an “AP bridge” like the 5GHz wlan. Don’t forget to add that virtual WLAN to the bridge. It will reduce the throughput as it passes twice through the 2.4 GHz wifi, but should work without the need of a wAP.
If you want to have better throughput, you indeed need an extra wifi radio.
Connect (any MT AP or) the wAP to the hAP via it’s ethernet port, not over wifi because that complicates things. Set the wAP or equivalent with all interfaces bridged, and bridge all client interfaces and the ethernets to the bridge of the hAP. The office connecting WLAN on the hAP keeps it setup. If it worked before with the hAP only, this should work also, as the wAP is in the same L2 network domain. (You can give the wAP bridge an IP address for management comfort, but the IP setting is not used in the client data paths). In this whole setup the hAp and wAP role can be switched. So you can start adding the wAP via ethernet and everything bridged to have 2 extra client radio’s to work with. Then exchange the config of the hAP and the wAP if you prefer it that way.
If that ethernet connection is a problem. Then use an “AP-bridge - station bridge” connection between the hAP and wAP , and add those WLAN interfaces to the local bridges as was done for the ethernet interfaces. To be complete … if you have “AP-bridge” and “station bridge” on the same physical radio, then set the “station bridge” as master because the master defines the used channel, and a station is following the AP’s channel it connects to. As long as the station-bridge is not connected the channel is unknown and the slave “AP-bridge” will not work
Thanks for the ideas guys! For now i setup the WAP as a AP to serve the 2.4 devices. I forgot to mention, the 2.4 devices in the RV do not require any kind of high speed. They are mostly wifi light switches, and other local LAN control devices for various systems in the RV. Defiantly dont need anything more than 100K bandwidth on that radio!
After hours of frustration i setup the WAP as a AP for the 2.4 internal to the RV…temporarily. But would MUCH rather just have the HAP do the inside of the RV and use the WAP to connect to the internet…since then If necessary i can place the WAP outside then on a pole for long range connection if needed.
I really like this idea of a “virtual” access point on the 2.4 network, but this wont workout since it will not function unless the HAP (station) is connected to an office/mifi…which it will not be at times. Would suck to not be able to use the smart devices when its not connected to an office/myfi.
One of you posted this “Set the wAP or equivalent with all interfaces bridged, and bridge all client interfaces and the ethernets to the bridge of the hAP”. Now thats somthing i didnt try…doing a bridge between the 2 units. All i have tried was setting up the interfaces of the WAP itself bridged. So ill give it a try…Humm…now that might work. Ill give it a try tommorow night!
Im taking my time to do this right, its a $300,000 RV, so doing it right is the only way it will get done.
You can do it One device has the router/NAT/DHCPserver role, the other is just a switch. Now you have the hAP as router, but it can be the wAP. Just swap the configuration as needed.
If you use ethernet, you have 3 “AP bridges” for clients
If you use wifi connection, you loose one WLAN interface, as indeed slave WLAN interfaces only work when the master is operating. (But with hAP+wAP connection it probably is operational)
I got it working, not sure totally what i was missing, but i know at least one thing, i had the firewall using the params for LAN and WAN and didnt change what they related to in that one tab. Got that changed and some other small stuff and boom, got the IP from the external network. So the WAP is just bridging, the HAP is getting the IP. So for those that say you cant setup a mikrotik to be a transparent bridge (And i was one of them)…thats incorrect, it works perfectly once you get the config correct.
