Hi,
I have 411AH and running hotspot on it. I have to run 5 WDS with total 60 users and around 40 users from wlan1. Can I do that? What about performance? Should I create 5 new virtual interfaces and run WDS on them? What would be the best practice. Please advise,
Thanks
Just to clarify
I have to connect 5 other 411 to the main one 411AH and that is why I’m asking if I can run 5 WDS on 411AH and what would be the best approach,
Thanks
Hire someone who understands networks.
Are you trying to be funny because you are not. Do you know why this forum is created? Apparently not so I’ll explain. This forum and mikrotik specialists should and must help other people. So if you can’t help it would be wisely for you to kip your mouth shut.
zeljene, could you perhaps give a simple network diagram of how your routers/access points would be connected to each other? If all the AP’s are sharing a common WAN connection, then please include that in the diagram too.
Like if you have a mesh, where all the MT routers are able to connect to each other, then WDS should be fine. But if you’re going to be chaining all the MT routers, like MT1 ↔ MT2 ↔ MT3 ↔ MT4 ↔ MT5, then MT5 would have 1/16th of its original bandwidth when talking to MT1! Since you’re losing 1/2 of the bandwidth with each hop.
Where as if they can all connect to each other, then MT5 should have about 1/2 of its original bandwidth when connecting to MT1.
First of all thanks for your reply,
Here you go, my diagram:
MT1 RB411AH
wlan1 (Hotspot)
wlan2 virtual AP (WDS) ----------- MT2 RB411
wlan3 virtual AP (WDS) ---------- MT3 RB411
wlan4 virtual AP (WDS) --------- MT4 RB411
wlan5 virtual AP (WDS) -------- MT5 RB411
wlan6 virtual AP(WDS) ------- MT6 RB411
Thanks again
Any suggestions,
Anyone??
MT Support folks??
Any dokumentation about this?
WDS seems like your Friend but might not be.
The Best Practice would be to spend more money and use 433 boards with at least 2 radios.
1 as a Client to connect the main AP, and another radio to act as an AP on the remote HotSpots to connect Customers, and on different frequencies.
With what you already have, there is no point creating 5 Virtual APs. You would actually lose a little more bandwidth that way IMHO, so just set the 5 remote APs to WDS and have 1 WDS interface on your ‘main’ AP.
It has been correctly said that you will loose about 1/2 the speed on the other end of the WDS link, so, as a Client, you will get more potential speed on the main AP HotSpot than on a remote AP hotspot.
The main questions are : how much Speed (up and down) do you have from your Internet Feed, and how much do you want to give to each Client ?
If you have 1.5Mb/s download, and want to give 1Mb/s to a customer on your main AP, then you have more than a fighting chance of delivering it. That would also be true for any client on one of the remote APs, because if they have perfect Radio links @ 54Mb/s half-duplex with no interference, then your WDS radio link can deliver more than enough to support 1Mb/s
If you have 100Mb/s download, then you will never be able to deliver more than about 25Mb/s to a client on a remote AP becuase of WDS and how the radio link works.
So, tell us how much Internet Speed you got at the Main AP, and how much you want to sell the Customers, then we can help more.
As for performance, you will simply have to try it and see.
Thank you for your reply,
On main AP I have around 10MB and would like to deliver from 1MB to 1.5MB max.
Is this what you suggesting?
Take a look diagram below
MT1 433
- radio AP
- radio WDS ---------- remote MT2 411 one card (wds)
and virtual AP (hotspot)
\ - radio WDS ---------- remote MT3 411 one card (wds)
and virtual AP (hotspot)
Is this something that would give me more bandwidth and also is it good way to go?
Thanks in advance.
It all depends on price and what you have as an Internet Supply and what you sell as a a Service.
How you originally posted it will work with 10Mb/s Supply and 1~1.5Mb/s Service.
Personally i would have no WDS at all :-
‘Main’ 433AH (the one with internet)
Radio 1 = AP, HotSpot for local customers, Open
Radio 2 = AP, no HotSpot, WPA2-AES
Remote 433AH
Radio 1 = Station, connects to Radio 2 on the Main node, WPA2-AES
Radio 2 = AP, HotSpot for local clients, Open
Doing it like this will give you more potential throughput, and should make it easier to manage, expand and control.
Thanks I didn’t think about that, excellent suggestion. In another words second MT will be “as a client” to the main one.
- Should (could) radio 2 on ‘Main’ 433AH (the one with internet) be hidden? I do not want other people to even try to connect to radio 2?
- And another question is this possible to do it with 411 (with one card) instead of 433 or that would not be recommended. I’m talking about second MT not the main one with the internet)
You could Hide the SSID if you like, but if you use WPA2-AES security, it’s pretty much un-crackable. I Like to see my own SSIDs, it makes life easier.
The cheapest way to do it with 411 boards is to use WDS, like you suggested in the 1st place, and which will work for what you are trying to deliver.
Alternatively you could use two 411 boards at the second AP sites, linked via a LAN cable, and use #1 for the ‘client’ back to the main AP, and #2 for the Client HotSpot, but that will work out more costly/difficult than just getting a 433 board in there.
Excellent, thank you
I rely appreciate your help
Hava a good day,
c’mon ! slap me some Karma.
it’s like a drug this Karma thing.
So my suggestion is to ditch wds and route your clients, its a huge change but if you dont start now you will be in a position that you wont get out of easilly.
WDS has more overhead which in turn causes your system to work harder and be less effeciant. I use to do wds but once i seen the performance hit, i switched asap
Routing is as easy as using the wlan to hold your dhcp from your ap and then holding a local ip range on either 1 , and running a hotspot on ether 1, make a src nat masqarade rule so that your traffic will go over that adddress on the wlan.
To simplify your hotspot , use radius and buy some radius software so that all the hotspots dont have to hold user info.
Thanks for this suggestion,
This is what I have done so far
‘Main’ 433AH (the one with internet)
Lan 1 address = 192.168.10.1
Radio 1 = AP, HotSpot for local customers, Open
address = 10.5.50.1
Radio 2 = AP, no HotSpot, WPA2-AES
address = 10.5.51.1
Remote 433
Radio 1 = Station, connects to Radio 2 on the Main node, WPA2-AES
address = 10.5.51.2
Radio 2 = AP, HotSpot for local clients, Open
address = 10.5.52.1
What would be the best approach. Should I use only one hotspot or should I go with two hotspots? If I should use one hotspot how can I route clients from second 433 to the ‘Main’ 433AH. Should I setup just bridge on second 433? Any suggestion and/or advise is rely appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Just set default gateway on AP#2 to 10.5.51.1, add a route on AP#1 to network = 10.5.52.0/24 via 10.5.51.2 and the job’s (almost) a good 'un.
As you don’t really know lots about it, and the network is small, you can ‘fudge’ it all by enabling a NAT masquerade rule on both routers.
The danger with that is that you will not learn about routing much, but at least you can get it working for now, and have time to investigate the million other possibilities later.
As a great credit to you, at least it will not just be another Bridged network. They’re bad.
OK, me again,
This is what I have done so far,
On first MT i setup
Bridge
address: 10.5.51.1
I put hotspot on this bridge
I added Wlan1 (2.4), Wlan2 (5 ghz) and LAN1 to it
On Wlan1 is AP CampGround1
On Wlan2 is AP Link1 (security profile “default”)
So, all this is working perfect, user can connect either to Wlan1 or Wlan2 etc. and hotspot is asking for username and the password etc.
Now I would like to expand to cover bigger area so I added second MT
On second MT this is what I done so far
I created bridge
I added Wlan1 (5 ghz) and LAN1 to it (for now)
Wlan1 (5ghz) setup to be station and it is connected to the Wlan2 on MT1
address: 10.5.51.2
On Lan1 I’m getting IP 10.5.51.234 (for example) from DHCP on MT1
gateway is 10.5.51.1 etc.
so I have no problem getting IP but there is no internet,
What is missing here (I know but beside my knowledge LOL what else)
Please help
Wireless clients don’t support bridge mode. Since you put wlan1 (5ghz) in a bridge, you’re going to have to use ‘station pseudobridge’ instead of ‘station’.