I just upgraded by BPI-R3 from 24.10 to 25.12.1 and had so much trouble I had to revert on a different router:
Because of the renaming of the SFP modules I did an attended sys upgrade without saving the configuration. But I couldn’t get on line with that - I could ping websites but had no connectivity (so looked like a DNS issue but I checked all that). Of course, there may have been package problems in the upgrade (I’m suspicious about mwan3) so in the end I flashed the router with a fresh instal. That did get me on-line. But:
I use the BPI-R3 as a wired router and have four TP-Link XE70Pro Deco mesh units to provide wireless. They are set in Access Point mode and and the BPI-R3 handles the routing, hands out the IP addresses etc. The TP Link Deco use wired backhaul through an unmanaged switch. This all worked fine under 24.10. But under 25.12.1 the mesh system simply will not work. The entire wireless part of my network has no internet access. It’s not simply that the wired backhaul fails and the Deco’s switch to Wi-Fi backhaul - that would be irritating but I would understand it was about packets being blocked and try to diagnose the issue. This is different - even though the Deco’s seem to be allocated IP addresses by the BPI-R3, they cannot get online.
I’ve had to revert to an old Prosumer TP-Link Gigabyte router ER605 which works fine with the mesh setup. I’m happy to swap my BPI-R3 back in and do some experimenting if anyone can point to possible causes, or even wants me to pull some logs. But at the moment I’m stuck and I’ve had to put Openwrt to one side, which is a real shame.
To be clear, the "mesh system" that your Deco's refer to is a proprietary closed source thing that OpenWrt knows nothing about.
Mesh, in terms of internationally accepted open standards, is something very different to what TP-Link and others refer to.
OpenWrt, and all other Linux distros, have IEEE802.11s mesh support built into the kernel and this is concerned with wireless backhaul with layer 2 mac-routing and has nothing to do with client roaming. In fact, normal user-client devices cannot even connect to an 802.11s mesh, instead connecting to special mesh gates that provide AP functionality.
I contrast, your Deco's use their proprietary tech to facilitate roaming of user devices from one access point to another. They can also auto-configure wireless links between Decos and compatible devices where a cable link is not available.
BUT, as I said, OpenWrt is completely unaware of all this, so should not effect how the Decos work, particularly if they are configured in AP mode. Clearly, something is missing for the Decos to function correctly, which implies they are not in a true AP bridge mode but still trying to do fancy/secret proprietary stuff.
Maybe you should ask on a TP-Link forum to see if anyone there has any idea.
Thanks for this. I will be asking the TP link community too, of course. But it is important to recognise that the variable here was the move from Openwrt 24.10 to 25.12.1. Nothing changed on the TP Link mesh setup. So for the system to go from working to not working, something must have changed on Openwrt. I accept that TP link may not be implementing official mesh standards. But it did work with Openwrt and it doesn't seem to now.
It could be that something is being blocked that was previously allowed. Or if could be the configuration - since the upgrade of the BPI-R3 cannot support saving the configuration it's hard to be sure the new setup perfectly replicates the old as the GUI options on most pages have changed slightly (Lan interface, DCHP etc). So it's perfectly possible I've made a mistake in the 25.12.1 configuration. I'm not necessarily saying this is a problem with the Openwrt code.
If anyone else has experienced this, or anything similar like a networked device of any type not being able to access the internet, please let me know. It's hard to debug on your own.
Thanks. I thought this, but they definitely are all set to access point mode.
One additional point - wired internet access also felt quite flakey. It worked sometimes, with disconnects fairly frequently. I had to reboot the BPI-R3 quite a lot. I see some users have difficulties connecting to their ISP so I wonder if this is in some way related. Deco devices don't provide real time information on whether they are connected (really it's just the LEDs as the Deco app is very slow to update) so it could be they are experiencing the same erratic connection that my wired devices do, but are reporting they are permanently offline.
Well yes, but you are missing the point that the TPLink is not doing a mesh at all. The word "Mesh" that they are using is very misleading when asking for help on this forum, or any Linux forum for that matter. Not your fault, more the fault of a marketing department than anything else.
As for your actual problem, the network through your cabling should be layer 2 and not care at all what layer 3 protocols are being passed and be transparent.
Yes, you might have a config error on your BPI-R3.
If you connect your computer/laptop/whatever directly to the BPI's lan port, do you get a dhcp ipv4 address along with Internet access?
What is the ipv4 subnet address of your isp router? If it is 192.168.1.x, then it will clash with the BPI-R3 and break your Internet connection.
You could reflash with a standard OpenWrt image - and it should just work if the ipv4 subnet does not clash with iupstream (this is without the Deco network connected at all). This will eliminate the basic OpenWrt functionality being the cause.
Thanks for this. I don't use an isp router. I have fibre into the home, a stand alone modem, then the BPI-R3. So there's nothing to conflict with. But I do agree that I need to get back to basics with diagnosing this so testing the BPI-R3, flashed with a clean image, directly connected to the modem and a single pc, cutting out my entire wired and wireless network, is the way to go.
I'll need some time to test that but when I have, I'll post the results here.
Just closing the loop on this. The TP Link Deco “mesh” was just a distraction - it is just those devices shout loudest when they lose internet connectivity. The actual issue was my ISP binds to the original ISP supplied router MAC address. Because my BPI R3 needed 25.12 to be installed without the configuration (because sfp ports have been renamed) the WAN MAC address was reset and I was locked out of the internet. The problem was fixed as soon as I remembered and I changed the Wan MAC address back.
I see there have been some issues around Wan MAC addresses in 25.10 for some devices, but I don’t think this is related to those problems. It was a simple configuration mistake by me.