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Josephny
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Help understanding Cubes and 60ghz

Sun Apr 16, 2023 5:46 pm

This weekend's project (among many others) is to finally get the Cube60 Pro AC pair set up.

After messing it up a few times I have them speaking to each other.

But, I don't understand how and why.

Could someone please start by explaining (or pointing me to a place online that has an explanation for) what is "station bridge" and "bridge" wireless mode? Why one cube has station-bridge and the other station? Does it matter which cube is hard-wired to the LAN and which is remote?

Here's the config for this section:


Cube1
Interface Name: wlan60-1
Type: W60G
Wireless mode: bridge
SSID: Mikrotik-6229a5


[admin@Cube1] 
/interface w60g
set [ find ] disabled=no mode=bridge name=wlan60-1 ssid=\
    MikroTik-6229a5
/interface w60g station
add comment=defconf mac-address=04:CE:14:FA:8F:18 name=\
    wlan60-station-1 parent=wlan60-1 remote-address=\
    04:CE:14:FA:8F:09



Cube2
Interface name: wlan60-1
Type: W60G
Wireless mode: station bridge
SSID: Mikroti-6229a5


 /interface w60g
set [ find ] disabled=no mode=station-bridge name=wlan60-1 ssid=MikroTik-6229a5

 
 
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mkx
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Re: Help understanding Cubes and 60ghz

Sun Apr 16, 2023 7:02 pm

There are two basic operation modes of WiFi device. I'll use "wrong" terms just to make it clearer. These are: master and slave.
In a particular wireless subnet there is one single master (which carries SSID and mandates physical properties, such as frequency used, bandwidth, etc.). And there are zero, one or many slaves.

Master can operate in a few mode variants, Mikrotik offers these: AP, AP-bridge or bridge ... the first one is 802.11 compliant, the second one adds vendor-specific extensions (but is compatible with 802.11 stations), and the third one is proprietary and is used for point-to-point connections.
Read more in general wireless help page ... description of property mode.

Slave can operate in a few different mode variants, all are nicely explained in this article


So in short: one of cubes has to be in bridge mode ... or ap-bridge if this was a point-to-multipoint (PtMP) deployment and if license level allowed that. The other cube has to be in station-bridge mode (and all further devices in case of PtMP deployment).
 
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bpwl
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Re: Help understanding Cubes and 60ghz

Sun Apr 16, 2023 7:38 pm

Huh, forgot to post my answer (busy at the phone) .... most is already said now, but will post it anyway.
Some may just be double, sorry.

Mikrotik convention in naming wifi

AP: access point, for multiple clients/stations
AP-bridge = AP + bridge (4-address mode in wifi)
bridge = AP for one station only + bridge (4-address mode) = (because of lower RouterOS license level 3, no AP license for multiple stations))
station = connecting to AP or Mikrotik bridge , or AP-bridge (not requesting for 4 address mode)
station-bridge = connecting to AP, AP-bridge or bridge , and requesting that bridge (=4 address mode) is activated. 4-address mode will work towards Mikrotik's "AP-bridge" and "bridge"

Once the wifi link is connected, data flow goes in both directions, independend from the setup direction.

4-address mode is important for LAN to LAN connection, sends 4 MAC addresses .... 'source -transmitter - receiver- destination'
Standard wifi takes receiver and destination as one MAC address, and that is only enough info if the receiver is also the destination end-point.
 
Josephny
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Re: Help understanding Cubes and 60ghz

Tue Apr 18, 2023 12:50 pm

Thank you mkx and bpwl for your generousity!

Do I understand correctly that your master/slave terminology corresponds with the the traditional 801.11 access-point/station terminology?

The Cubes are set up almost as they came from the factory, as follows:

Cube1 has the following config and would be the access-point/master because the mode is "Bridge"?

Wireless interfaces:
wlan1
RS
18:FD:74:62:29:A6
Mode: bridge
5ghz=A/N/AC
SSID: Mikrotok-6229a5

W60G interfaces:
wlan60-1
04:CE:14:FA:8F:18
Mode: bridge
SSID: Mikrotok-6229a5

W60G Station interfaces:
wlan60-station
04:CE:14:FA:8F:18


Cube1 in bridge mode means it is set up for PtP (to allow connection from one station/slave only (or at any time), right?

And, bridge mode includes 4 MAC addresses.



Cube2 has the following config and would be the station/slave because the mode is "Station Bridge"?

Wireless interfaces:
wlan1
RS
18:FD:74:62:2A:72
Mode: Station Bridge
5ghz=A/N/AC
SSID: Mikrotok-6229a5

W60G interfaces:
wlan60-1
04:CE:14:FA:8F:09
Mode: Station bridge
SSID: Mikrotok-6229a5

W60G Station interfaces: NONE


Cube2 in Station Bridge mode means Cube2 will connect to Cube1 to form a bridge between the LANs on each of the Cube's ethernet ports.


wlan1 is the 5ghz backup link to the 60ghz link, right?

wlan60-1 is the 60ghz link, right?

Why does Cube1 has a W60G Station interface ("wlan60-station")?

I see that on Cube2 W60G shows traffic flowing, but on Cube 1 W60G shows no traffic and W60G Station shows the traffic flowing.

I undertand the RS means Running Slave, but why is wlan1 RS on both cubes?

W60G is RS on cube2 only.
 
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bpwl
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Re: Help understanding Cubes and 60ghz

Tue Apr 18, 2023 5:53 pm

All correct.

No idea why the 60GHz interface in bridge mode, is split per station as interface.
It resembles a WDS setup in the 2.4 and 5 GHz interfaces, where you have one interface per WDS link.
60GHz somewhere must have it's own topology, and that is not documented AFAIK.
As a "CubeSA 60pro ac" can have multiple stations connected on 60GHz , that could make sense it that case.

Backup via 5GHz is an interesting interface bonding with failover
 
Shadman73
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Re: Help understanding Cubes and 60ghz

Thu Mar 07, 2024 3:03 am

"wlan60-1 is the 60ghz link, right?

Why does Cube1 has a W60G Station interface ("wlan60-station")?"



Just noticed this post when looking for the same answer, I'm guessing the answer is in the following quotation from a presentation from Mikrotik:

https://mum.mikrotik.com/presentations/ ... 613485.pdf

Specifically the line:

Connected clients are treated as individual
interfaces - easy to configure and manage

Therefore each client connecting to the parent bridge will get its own virtual interface.

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