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mirabilos
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no IPv6 through hAP mini as WLAN Repeater

Wed Nov 23, 2022 10:53 pm

I’ve unboxed a brand-new hAP mini, booted it up connected to the Fritz!box that serves this location with internet access and WLAN, upgraded to the latest stable RouterOS, rebooted, and then used the 「Setup Repeater」 button to set it up as WLAN repeater. (And disabled the DHCP server…)

Now I can switch my laptop between the Fritz!box and the hAP mini by using:
$ sudo iwlist scan   # sometimes needed to make the following commands work
$ sudo wpa_cli -i wlan0 scan_results
bssid / frequency / signal level / flags / ssid
11:11:11:11:11:11       2412    -62     [WPA2-PSK+SAE-CCMP][ESS]        mynetworkssid
22:22:22:22:22:22       2412    -45     [WPA2-PSK-CCMP][ESS]    mynetworkssid
$ sudo wpa_cli -i wlan0 roam 11:11:11:11:11:11   # to switch to the Fritz!box
$ sudo wpa_cli -i wlan0 roam 22:22:22:22:22:22   # to switch to the hAP mini
(MAC addresses and SSID redacted, of course)

However, as soon as I do that, my IPv6 connectivity is gone. Worse, if I
ping6 ff02::1%wlan0
I only get one duplicated response back, indicating that the hAP mini is not bridging as it’s supposed to.

How can I fix that? IPv4-only is absolutely insufficient.
 
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mkx
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Re: no IPv6 through hAP mini as WLAN Repeater

Thu Nov 24, 2022 7:51 pm

True wireless bridging is not standard feature of 802.11. Different vendors came up with different workarounds which work well only when main AP and "repeater" talk same dialect (mostly that means they are both made by same vendor).

I don't know how exactly QuickSet configures "repeater mode", but I'm guessing "station-pseudobridge" which works somehow for IPv4 but doesn't work for IPv6. You can read pretty good explanation of the problem in this article.
 
mirabilos
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Re: no IPv6 through hAP mini as WLAN Repeater

Thu Nov 24, 2022 9:47 pm

Thank you.

This is sad. Indeed, switching to station bridge loses connectivity, so AVM and Mikrotik don’t speak a common dialect.

Well, the Fritz!box is… not very good anyway, so maybe we’re going to replace the WLAN part of it, at least, with another Mikrotik box. (Probably would like to do more, but we need its VDSL, VoIP→POTS and DECT parts still…) Then we can bridge between these.
 
pe1chl
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Re: no IPv6 through hAP mini as WLAN Repeater

Thu Nov 24, 2022 10:38 pm

When you buy MikroTik again, please do not choose a hAP mini.
It is a nice toy but not useful for real usage. You can keep it for doing special things like having a Wireless client on a device that has only Ethernet.
Whatever you do, do not upgrade it to version 7.xx
 
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mkx
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Re: no IPv6 through hAP mini as WLAN Repeater

Thu Nov 24, 2022 11:05 pm

When looking for mikrotik wireless devices to build wireless bridge beware of this: there are two wireless drivers, wifiwave2 which only works with newer wireless chips (some ac and ax) and legacy which works with all except ax chips. wifiwave2 brings much better performance on supported chips but currently doesn't implement 4 address mode which is needed for wds and *-bridge modes (MT said that 4 address mode is on ToDo list but without any ETA). Legacy wireless driver suports 4 address mode (and a few other functionalities), but at sub-optimal speeds. And can't drive newest ax devices. Which means you either have to wait for 4 address mode implementation in wifiwave2 (could be months or even years) or decide on a slightly older devices with ac chips and build wireless bridge today. If you decide for the later option, you may be able to change to wifiwave2 driver later, but device has to fulfill the following specifications: all radios are built around ac chips (RB4011 fails this criterion), have at least 256MB RAM (hAP ac2 fails this criterion) and have at least 32MB of flash storage (my own experience says 64MB is minimum; hAP ac2 fails also this criterion).
 
pe1chl
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Re: no IPv6 through hAP mini as WLAN Repeater

Thu Nov 24, 2022 11:24 pm

Given the sad state of MikroTik indoor wireless, and the fact that the OP already has a Fritz!box, he is probably better off buying the AVM WiFi extender.
 
RipperFox
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Re: no IPv6 through hAP mini as WLAN Repeater

Tue Feb 21, 2023 11:04 pm

True wireless bridging is not standard feature of 802.11. Different vendors came up with different workarounds which work well only when main AP and "repeater" talk same dialect (mostly that means they are both made by same vendor).
Ran into the same problem today - no IPv6 over station mode pseudobridge.
IEEE 802.11c from 1998 specifies wireless bridging, it was integrated in 2004 into IEEE 802.1D - why would Mikrotik not support this?

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