Hi all,
I’m looking to see what MikroTik router models would support WiFi Repeating. I have a situation where my daughter is living where she is on an open WiFi network and I would rather her be a little more secure. So I want to give her a router that can connect to the WiFi network where she is living but then create her own WiFi network behind that.
Yes, I know repeating WiFi slows it down. I don’t care. Just looking for what product(s) support this.
Thanks!
Any Mikrotik device with dual band (2.4 and 5GHz radios) should be able to do that. You can use 2.4 GHz radio to connect to the open wifi network and 5 GHz radio can be used to broadcast secured wifi for your daughter.
2.4 GHz is used as your WAN interface while 5 GHz radio is used for secured wifi access.
OK. Thank you. So set up that was as opposed to repeating on the same band?
Yes, you want to secure your wifi, so router will do it’s job, it will provide you with separate SSID with your own password, network and everything will be protected by router’s firewall.
Correct. I want my own SSID. Right now I have a different router that repeats with a different SSID on both bands. But that router seems to have some stability issues so that’s why I am asking here.
So my question was more about the best way to do it. Connect one one band for WAN and another band for LAN or is there way to repeat on both bands.
Unfortunately, you can’t broadcast new SSID on both bands as one of the radios will be used to connect to the open wifi.
OK. Thanks. So MikroTik does not offer a true “repeater” solution. But still, it might actually be better to set one band on the WAN side and the other on LAN. Then you don’t lose any speed.
You should know that a truly transparent repeater cannot be made manufacturer-independent.
That means that you would need to buy a device from the same manufacturer as your main router. And when that is MikroTik as well, you even need to make sure that it is from the same WiFi generation (there are two different WiFi generations within MikroTik that are not compatible).
Now, as you really do not want a repeater but instead want a device that connects to one WiFi and provides another, that does not apply to this case.
What gigabyte091 writes is not correct, you can make a “virtual” wireless device as a slave to the primary wifi interface and make the primary wifi interface the “client” and the “virtual” device the access point.
But you cannot put them both in a bridge. You need to run a separate IP network with NAT between the networks, so the existing WiFi network issues a single IP to that and that is used for all traffic.
Of course, it all will do nothing w.r.t. security. Except when you would setup a VPN on the router to use for the traffic.
OK. That is interesting as the other device I have is able to connect to a WiFi network which then becomes the WAN interface and then creates a second SSID on the LAN side. That router runs on Open-WRT, but I am having stability issues with it and a WireGuard connection back to my MikroTik router which is why I want to go MikroTik on both sides.
Yes, you can do that with a MikroTik device. You need to choose in advance which band you want to use to connect to the main router. A “dynamic” solution is difficult to make.
At first you can setup the desired band as a client (remove it from the bridge, set the wifi to client mode and enter SSID and password, put a DHCP client on it), setup the NAT and test it from the other band.
When that all works you add a slave interface to the band you used for the client, set that as an AP with the same config as used on the other band, and put that slave interface into the bridge.
Then you can connect to the device on both bands. That does not require 3 radios.
However, the settings for channel and bandwidth etc will be the same for client and slave.
There is a MikroTik device called “audience” that has 3 radios and would be slightly more optimal, but two of the radios are on 5GHz so you have to be able to connect the open WiFi on 5GHz for that to work.
A virtual wifi interface can act in ap mode, while its master is in station pseudo bridge.
The only thing to be careful with is that it will share the same physical parameters as the master interface.
Same band, same channel, same width.
And expect throughput for such a setup to be less then 50% of what it will be capable of otherwise.
Honestly, I totally forgot about virtual interfaces, my apologies to the @NA9D for the incorrect information.
That would only be a problem when you were the only one answering topics.
Hey all,
Thanks for much for the replies. Sorry for not replying before now.
Agree that repeating on the same band is going to affect throughput. So maybe that is not the best. I do like the solution though of connecting to the AP on one band and then making your own LAN on the other. That’s probably optimal.
I did check out the Audience AP. That’s pretty slick and would work well but it’s more money than I want to spend for this application.
I’m sure I’ll be back eventually looking for help setting this up! 