WDS Questions

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

OK Where to start …

picture

AP1 AP3 AP4
MAIN
AP2 AP5 AP6 AP7 AP8

I have to work on a system comprising 9 aps with only 1 wired to adsl (4mb) as coverage for holiday park clients.

I did not install this system so i’m not sure if its even going to work properly or ever has worked properly.

The hardware is alix3c boards with ros 3.6 installed. (Tried to upgrade licenses/firmware to latest version but it says the key is invaild ?) All running 1 radio card 2.4ghz on channel 1. Same SSID etc. Wireless mode b/g. Speeds etc set to default rates.

The system has one main unit connected to router setup with dynamic wds and ap bridge mode. Nothing setup in the connect lists or access lists.
In the registration there are 2 aps connecting with wds .

The other units are all wds slaves and are all within about 150m of each other. The furthest from the main unit would be about 1km and this obviously does not appear on the registration for the main unit.


The wds does work ??? but not sure how well it works. Speeds seem to be very slow although the wireless signal is excellent.
Ping times to gateway are erratic and vary from 100ms up to 1500ms on the units at the end. Clients connecting to the main ap have no problems.

What i can see…
Uptimes of all the ap’s are the same so i dont think they are losing signal. Got this from the registration page for each access point.
One thing i noticed is that some of the access points have more wds connections than others.
eg
main unit registers 2 nearest units.
unit near to middle (AP5)registers 6 units nearby including main
Last unit registers only 1 unit nearby.

I know each wds hop decreases speed by half (something like that) but if the middle ap has 6 registrations would this
be dividing the speed by 6 ?

and the others with 2 registrations divide by 2 based on what they get (if they already get 10mbs then divide this by 2 also)

Is it better to have wds units talking only to nearest each time so each unit only has 2 registrations. Is that even possible ?

Would this explain long ping times ? I also get page cannot be displayed etc

DHCP is from main server and all client pc’s get ip address ok

No security is currently setup so this wont be causing slowdowns.

So what speed would be expected for clients connected to the last ap ?
Any pointers to the slow ping times ?

Any ideas would be helpful…
Any more info needed let me know … i feel like i have wrote a book .

Thanks

2

I had the same problem long before I got to 8 remote routers. Last year galaxynet would have answered, but I guess it is my turn. Take a look at this thread. It describes how to change your bridged net to a natted net. Maybe you will get some ideas there. It really helped me. No delays now. No way my old WDS network setup could handle the traffic it has now.
http://forum.mikrotik.com/t/nating-a-bridged-network/19971/1
If you have any questions after reading that, please ask!

P.S. I like your username. Some of the locals still call me “Shark Boy” after my close encounter with one.

3

Hi Surfer,
Thanks for the reply … at least i got 1 out of 26 views !!!
I read the info you suggested and it is all good info.
My probelm is different in that each ap only has one radio card ?
I do think there is a bridge to ether in each ap so after reading the other page I will remove as all clients will be wireless and the only bridge i would need would be at the main to bridge wlan1 to ether. Not sure if the bridge in each ap is causing any problems ?

I’m not sure that routing/nat would help here as all the ap’s connect to each other and at the main they connect to adsl.
Please correct me if i’m wrong. I would love a simple fix.

But i’m still not clear

From what i read you still use wds to connect your backhaul ? then you bridge/nat the bachaul to the wlan ?

So how can i not use wds with only 1 radio ?

If i did add a second radio card and used it for 5ghz backhaul would I not end up with the same problem only on 5ghz (access points registering 6 wds ap’s)

Maybe if i ask a question like " What is the best way to extend my wireless network which requires 9 Ap’s to cover the area ? "

Any help would be appreciated …

4

Surfer !!!
What happened to galaxynet ? ? ?
cheers

5

I hope he is just busy. I see him respond infrequently, but not like a couple years ago.

I don’t use any wds anywhere now. Only routed ip subnets. The single radio does cut speed in half. And if you have a bunch connected (8?), and the wds must propagate over that also, whew! Too much talk for me.

6

Hi Tim
So tell me how do you not use wds any more ? How do the ap’s actually talk to each other ?
What configuration have you got for a main radio and a 2nd radio ?
Is it just the same channel and ssid ? (wds disabled)
Thanks

7

Because a couple of my properties are large, I use 2.4GHz-b mode (better range) on most aps and 5.8GHz on my backhauls. My aps have the hotspots on them. The major advantage I discovered with this was it keeps most unauthorized traffic off the backhauls. Some aps have a “in-backhaul” radio and a “out-backhaul” radio to forward remote ip subnets on to their final destinations farther out. I allow some access to my site and Authorize.Net so I can collect their money and activate their account. Then they won’t be unauthorized.

All my aps issue 192.168.x.x/24 ip sets. The backhauls are all 10.x.x.x/24. Then I route everything as galaxynet suggested. The only srcnat/masquerade is in the router that connects to the internet (public ip).

8

Hi
All these ap’s do not have hotspot installed.
The system was setup to use antamedia hotspot on a controller pc. Dont know how good an idea this is now that i see
antamedia has its own hotspot software. I didnt install it ! ! !
So each ap is just a wireless access point (slave wds).
thanks for your info anyway

Still need some answers to the 8 point wds etc

Hope i get some answers from this great board…

9

surfer
Still cant get my head around this :-

Your 5.8ghz backhaul is still wds ?

thanks