Hi folks,
I read many posts in this forum and elsewhere. Some tell me that WDS has throughput issues. Some tell WDS is great.
What is true? Or on what does it depend - number of clients, distance, something else - one should use WDS or not?
Kind regards
You should use WDS when both ends (i.e. both the AP and the WDS bridge) have relatively powerful antennas, as they need to be in range of each other AND each client must be in range of one end.
Yes, the client’s rate would be slightly lower when connected through a WDS bridge then if connected to the AP directly, but that’s normal - one extra device in the chain after all - and besides, isn’t a slower connection better than no connection at all? The main purpose of WDS is to extend the range where the main AP wouldn’t otherwise be able to cover, perhaps not so much because the AP is bad, but because the client’s Wi-Fi is bad.
WDS doesn’t cause any inherent loss in speed on it’s own. WDS repeater halves the bandwidth because the radio has to listen and then retransmit the same data.
WDS is great in certain instances and quite terrible in others.
What do you want to use it for?
If you are planning on a transparent bridge, excellent. You can tune it a bit and get massive speed through the system as you can essentially take the CPU out of the equation.
If you are planning on running a WISP and offering static IP’s to your customers, not the best way to go about that.
WDS can also work as a wireless repeater. Works fine for a small home, that is essentially all that the Linksys/Netgear/etc range extenders do, a WDS repeater function, same SSID, security and channel on multiple devices for 100% coverage.
Pasted from Uldis slide pg 34: http://mum.mikrotik.com/presentations/PL12/workshop-wireless-2012-PL.pdf
802.11n and WDS
• 802.11n frame aggregation can’t be used
together with WDS
• Max transmit speed drops from 220Mbps to
160Mbps using WDS (UDP traffic)
• Station-bridge has the same speed limitations as
Station-wds
• Avoid using WDS or use Nstreme/Nv2 wireless
protocol to overcome this limitation
Here are my thoughts :-
If you are doing a P2P and want a transparent L2 link then use Bridge->station-bridge.
Likewise for MP2P and want a transparent L2 links then use AP/Bridge->station-bridge
If you wish to create a unique interface for each subscriber on an AP (for whatever reason) then station-wds will let you do this but disable AMPDU’s. ( http://forum.mikrotik.com/t/wds-and-n/58583/1 )