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nas
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Simple "extention" type wifi station, how?

Thu Jun 03, 2021 8:43 pm

Hi there!

Mobile internet which is provided by Huawei B535 router. There is no plans and not much possibility to change it to smth from Mikrotik or other brand. Router is provided by carrier.

Router serves as:
-LTE/4G modem (obvious)
-DHCP server, IP range is 192.168.1.100-200, nothing extraordinary, typical basic home configuration.
-Switch with couple devices directly attached
-Wifi provider at 2.4 and 5Ghz

I have remote location where are some Ethernet IP cameras and other wired devices. They are accessible right now only by Wifi, and to access them I have brought Mikrotik wAP to work in "station" mode. My idea is to "extend" the Huawei wifi to those wired devices, and I want to have the network as transparent as possible: those devices need to have full access to all the local network and have their IP addresses leased by DHCP from Huawei router, and of course have them in the same 192.168.1.100-200 range. Another reason is that in future the wAP will be removed, a simple UTP cable will replace it. Another idea is that non-technical person does the job and everything works without intervention the same after the future change from wAP in station mode to the UTP cable.

There are some "station" tutorials out there but I feel that they miss that transparency point.
How to do this? I am asking too much? If so - how to do that as close as possible.
Last edited by nas on Thu Jun 03, 2021 9:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 
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Re: Simple "extention" type wifi station, how?

Thu Jun 03, 2021 8:47 pm

I want repaint my house with same color of my friend house, how much paint I need and what color should I buy it?

No answer or sarcastic reply to your question? How to write posts
 
nas
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Re: Simple "extention" type wifi station, how?

Thu Jun 03, 2021 9:30 pm

I want repaint my house with same color of my friend house, how much paint I need and what color should I buy it?

No answer or sarcastic reply to your question? How to write posts
I am so sorry that I missed the guidelines. My english is so shallow in tehcnical terms, especially in networking and MT terminology that there is no way I can explain this in the level that You need :(

The task is real and not so simple, as maybe I am missing some point. All the tutorials do the double NAT thing, which I want to avoid. Everything else I tried to explain in as simple words as possible.

To answer your question:
1. Get the palette of collors from the paint manufacturer you want. In most cases any big palette will do.
2. Go to the friends house and try to find the most matching color in your palette. Memorize the color code.
3. By using basic maths calculate the total area of your house surfaces you need to paint.
4. Go to the paint store:
4.1. Choose the paint type you like, it has to be suitable for the surface/material you have
4.2. Read painting instructions on the can, such as: the paint quantity needed for each layer, recommended layer count, recommended painting tools also the preparation needed before painting.
4.3. Ask the paint store to mix the paint in the quantity you need and color code you want
4.4. Also buy tools and preparation materials if needed.
5. Prepare surfaces and paint.
6. Profit!
 
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bpwl
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Re: Simple "extention" type wifi station, how?

Thu Jun 03, 2021 10:01 pm

If I understand well .... The Huawei is the main gateway and DHCP server. It is the main wifi AP.
The wAP is used to connect via wifi to the Huawei AP, and to deliver connectivity via ethernet to the wired camera's.
The wAP is not used as a wifi AP for other clients that connect to the wifi of the wAP to reach the wifi of the Huawei (this would have been "repeater setup")

The needed setup is not available in some Quickset. But it is very simple to set it up.

The needed config is
1-WLAN (1 or 2) connecting to the Huawei as "Station PseudoBridge". Wifi Connection can be made with "Scan" and selecting the SSID. Security profile must be correctly setup.
2-bridge connecting the WLAN with the ethernet ports (WLAN and ethernet ports connected to the bridge)

If starting from the default AP configuration, then don't forget to either remove the Firewall rules or to add the bridge to the LAN "interface list".
(Any interface in the WAN "interface list" will not be allowed any incoming connection!)
The local DHCP server on the bridge must be disabled or removed (*)
The DHCP client could be moved from ether1 to the bridge, if you want the wAP to have a DHCP lease from the Huawei.

This is a non-recommended setup, as it only works for IPv4. The "pseudo bridge" has to redistribute traffic coming from the Huawei based on its IPv4 table for the clients of the wAP.
There must have been traffic from the wAP client (camera) to build that table. All clients will have the same MAC address for the Huawei.
Some protocols FAIL. One of the culprits is sometimes DHCP leases. This can be very annoying. There are 2 workarounds:
1. use static IP addresses for the clients of the wAP
2. (*) split the IP subnet over 2 DHCP servers, part of the subnet is leased by the Huawei DHCP server, another part of the same subnet is leased by the wAP DHCP server.

This is a "transparent" setup as requested. Camera's can be reached via their IP address.
Removing the wAP and using an UTP cable needs no re-configuration.
 
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Re: Simple "extention" type wifi station, how?

Thu Jun 03, 2021 11:56 pm

To answer your question:
1. Get the palette of collors from the paint manufacturer you want. In most cases any big palette will do.
2. Go to the friends house and try to find the most matching color in your palette. Memorize the color code.
3. By using basic maths calculate the total area of your house surfaces you need to paint.
4. Go to the paint store:
4.1. Choose the paint type you like, it has to be suitable for the surface/material you have
4.2. Read painting instructions on the can, such as: the paint quantity needed for each layer, recommended layer count, recommended painting tools also the preparation needed before painting.
4.3. Ask the paint store to mix the paint in the quantity you need and color code you want
4.4. Also buy tools and preparation materials if needed.
5. Prepare surfaces and paint.
6. Profit!


ros code

NN   NN                                         
NNN  NN  oooo   oooo   oooo   oooo              
NN N NN oo  oo oo  oo oo  oo oo  oo             
NN  NNN oo  oo oo  oo oo  oo oo  oo ... ... ... 
NN   NN  oooo   oooo   oooo   oooo  ... ... ... 
Ok, you win
 
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anav
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Re: Simple "extention" type wifi station, how?

Fri Jun 04, 2021 3:01 am

Do not expect great results as using wifi to extend traffic often leads to disappointment.
Give it a try but please keep expectations reasonable. BPWL will do his darndest to get you up and running and may provide tweaks to optimize.
At the end of the day, our best bet regardless of the wifi settings is to try and provide a LOS or LEAST walls between devices.
I implore you to buy a big phucking drill and use ethernet. (through walls, ceiling, closets) whatever it possible to either wire the AP directly or get the two wifis talking at the shortest possible physical distance (if LOS cannot be achieved).

By the way you win a prize!!! I owe you a Canadian Beer for humbling the Italian pussy(cat). ;-)
 
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Re: Simple "extention" type wifi station, how?

Fri Jun 04, 2021 3:07 am

Miao...
 
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bpwl
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Re: Simple "extention" type wifi station, how?

Fri Jun 04, 2021 7:37 pm

Do not expect great results as using wifi to extend traffic often leads to disappointment.
"Extend traffic using wifi" indeed gets a performance hit. The classical "repeater" setup using only one radio is at least halving the bandwidth and more than doubles the delay.
Using the "turbo" variant ( this includes mesh with a 3th radio) where the wifi extension is done on one radio and the delivery with another, will at least double the roundtrip delay.

Multihop wifi extension on one radio channel is said to halve the bandwidth with each hop, what is mathematically not correct. (Two hops will divide it by 3 as first estimate, but performance loss is getting worse with more contending devices, so it is at least dvide by 3)

However I see no performance difference between (a laptop with) built-in wifi adaptor, USB wifi dongle, external wifi station connected with ethernet. There is always just one wifi transmission involved (with the corresponding roundtrip delay). And this is the current request.

UTP (or POF or MoCA) is always better than wifi @ home :-)
 
McSee
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Re: Simple "extention" type wifi station, how?

Sat Jun 05, 2021 12:22 am

I use some MikroTik routers in pseudo-bridge config and it works exactly like has been described above by bpwl.

You might also consider to get another inexpensive Huawei router (like Wi-Fi 6 AX3) to extend your network as Huawei routers have аn easy-to-use feature(HiLink mesh) for connecting them wirelessly into a single network.

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