Hi there again. After first time somewhat success i want to make to my mind better.
I tried doing static routing but somewhere i made bad config and had to start again which is no problem. Problem is making it work. I have 2 openwrt devices(shadow and mango from GL.iNet) that i want to be connected in mesh. Each house will use their own internet, but i want them to share devices and can see each other on network and i dont know how to configure it soo i would need help big time.
Well the good news is that these two will work well together in a mesh.
The max bitrate is 300Mb/s with throughput depending on a lot of factors, but sustained ~180Mb/s is probably more likely.
What is it you are trying to achieve?
Share a single Internet feed between the two houses.
Allow access between devices on house 1 lan and devices on house 2 lan.
Depending on distance an wall construction you may want to replace the 802.11s mesh with an Ethernet point-to-point extender like a pair of Ubiquiti NS-5ACL units (or similar).
Sharing files, backups and printer, disatnce is enough for WiFi they can see each other. But no clue how to make them to talk to each other and other devices on thier respective networks.
There are lots of ways, but most of them, as @psherman hints, come down to some sort of static routing.
In this case the 802.11s link is a "trivial" link and you can consider it to be just like a point to point ethernet cable carrying layer 2 from one house to the other.
Yes it can be more complicated but lets keep it as simple as we can for now.
The mt300n-v2 and ar300m will function just like a virtual ethernet cable, an ethernet port on one goes to an ethernet port on the other.
So the question to ask is how would you configure a point to point ethernet?
The answer is a simple router at each end, no nat, static routes.
The Gl-inet devices can also function as routers as well as simple mesh nodes, so no extra hardware is needed.
This means of course that the 802.11s link must be configured with its own ipv4 (and probably ipv6) subnet(s).
You should also give the shared devices at each end proper host names in the local dns at each end just to make things easy to use.
My next guess is i need to some firewall allowance on mesh devices and/or creating new interface device. Mesh devices default lan interface is static adress with disable DHCP settings if that help.
I guess that means i need to make new device interface just for mesh devices?
You don't have to use mesh here. Since this is layer 3 routing, even an ordinary AP-STA link will work. You could even use the AP running in the Fritzbox with its stock firmware, if it is in wifi range of the other house.
One of the devices in the house on the left of the diagram (I'll call this house A, and the other one B) should have a STA interface on the B LAN. If you use DHCP on this interface, it receives the B main router information and automatically installs a route to network B (via 192.168.0.1) into that device. If the A connection is A's main router, everything covering the A->B route is now in place. If you are using a separate router at A (192.168.1.116 on the diagram) to make the connection, the A main router also needs a route installed to make the hop inside house A to the router that is the way to reach B:
Main router A: 192.168.0.0/24 via 192.168.1.116
The B->A route needs to be set up in the house B main router. This will depend on the IP that the interface of the gateway device in house A takes on the B network. It should have a DHCP reservation to make it consistent. I will assume it is 192.168.0.2 for example. Then you have the route in the Fritzbox:
Main router B: 192.168.1.0/24 via 192.168.0.2
If you trust everything in both houses, you can place the new OpenWrt STA interface in the lan firewall zone. Make sure that intra-zone forwarding is enabled on that zone, which is the default. This allows unrestricted connections in both directions. Of course more sophisticated firewalling of traffic between the houses is possible.
Indeed. Be it 802.11s, WDS, Ap/Sta, ethernet, fibre, wet-string, it does not matter, it is just a black box magically providing layer 2 connectivity between the two houses, one way or another.
Yes i had previous working solution like that, but it looked...ugly if i have to say it. I want those 2 mesh nodes to be link, as i can move them to make stronger connection. But seems i am at my wits end.
The concept is the same. One of the link devices will be a bridge having the wifi link (AP or mesh) in a bridge with its house's LAN, and the other one will be a router, with its wifi link (STA or mesh) in a separate network. You don't want them to both be bridges because fully bridging the two LANs together will make them one LAN and not allow each house to use its own separate ISP.
Another approach would be to configure the two link devices as bridges then do the routing in the house A main router by separating one of its Ethernet ports into an independent network. This is the same configuration that would be used if the houses were linked by an Ethernet cable, except here part of the link is wireless.
Travel routers such as the Mango and Shadow are not a good choice for this application as they are 1x1 MIMO 2.4 GHz only and designed for short range coverage in the same room. Even if interference and signal strength is not an issue the maximum throughput between those devices would be about 40 Mb. As @fogmachine said you should be using 5 GHz CPEs at least at one end. With a CPE you could likely use the built in wifi of the other house main router as that house's radio.
You can certainly do better these days, that is true, but, not to mention the OP already has them, both of these have excellent coverage, to the point I have successfully used many of them (mt300n-v2 in particular, and, perhaps counter intuitively, the ar300m without external antennas), mounted in a waterproof plastic box with a 5 volt supply coming in through a cable gland. The beam pattern is ~120 degree cone out of the centre of the domed top. Point the dome in the desired direction outdoors and get good coverage for clients out to 50 metres or so and to another one of these pointing back (mesh config) out to 200 metres with no obstructions.
With obstructions, the 2.4GHz band gives dramatically better penetration than 5GHz.
It also is less susceptible to multipath interference (refections of its own signals).
There is also a final point, in many regions there are few if any 5GHz channels that can be used outdoors eg ETSI regions.
On top of that, using 2.4GHz/HT40, in the region of 100Mb/s is achievable with standard uci settings.
Contrary to common misconceptions, HT40 on 2.4GHz is perfectly legal. It might be a bit inconsiderate in a block of apartments with thin walls, but outside it will have little or no effect on other users of the spectrum.
Then if you add the mesh secret sauce (added for you with the mesh11sd service daemon):
mesh_queue_limit set to 1000
mesh_rss_threshold set to 500
mesh_airtime_queue_limit set to 2000
mesh_ddr_scheduler_quantum set to 3000
Expect sustained bit rates in the region of 180Mb/s to be achievable (makes the SoC work for its money in these tiny devices!). Even more for bursty traffic.
For client access, you are correct, it would fall back to HT20 because almost all clients refuse HT40 and user/clients do not see any of the mesh fancy stuff and would not understand it if they did.
But the OP does not intend using these two devices for client_connecting_to_ap use, only meshnode to meshnode.
I'm pretty sure they are both 2x2 MIMO.
The mt300n-v2 certainly is (ar300m must be too).
Here is the output of the wifi-chipset-detect utility run on one I had in my drawer:
The next issue will be how to set up DNS so you can reach hosts by name, not IP address while avoiding the maintenance nightmare of a static hostname file
Two possibilities are to run a single DNS/DHCP server for the entire network, but more likely is to run one at each site with per-site local domain names and rules for forwarding DNS requests back and forth. I can see this getting ugly, too - maybe people here have better ideas.
Thank you for help, your answer was moat helpful and well a little more tidier than what i did last time. My head hurts after trying and failing on all my attempts.
Yes i have them at hand and they are small so i can move them out of sight.
And they do job for now, better to try thing with cheap and on hand equipment then buy new for testing.
Well its not a problem for now, devices on one network cant see devices on other, but can connect through IP so i know all numbers i need for now.
This is how it looks now, so i can remove 192.168.0.138 device because his job is now to look good?
Static routes are only router and fritzbox, and 192.168.1.116 has both devices in lan firewall.
Yes you don't need 192.168.0.138 as house A is connecting directly to the Fritzbox instead.
192.168.1.116 should also be holding a 192.168.0.X IP on its other interface.
Ah yes it has 192.168.0.82 from fritz, sorry i forgot to add that. I was looking on that dot line and thinking it looks good nothing to do here, my bad.
