802.11s mode missing on Cudy M3000

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

Hi all,

A little bit of a silly question as I thought these devices would support it, or at least the drivers available in OpenWRT 25 would be exposing it (compared to devices where I have seen it).

The Cudy M300 - does it support putting the WiFi card into 802.11s mode? As I am not seeing the option.

Update: It seems it is available on Cudy’s own OpenWRT firmware but not the later one? Maybe firmware 23 is what I need although the [M3000 page](https://openwrt.org/toh/cudy/m3000#network_interfaces) says otherwise it seems and only mentions OpenWRT 25. Although I see it says supported since 23, maybe I need to stay on 23?

Struggling to find it on the releases.openwt.org repo though…

Update 2: It’s getting late here :zzz: however I found it for 24 release and flashed it now - ==just thought I would mention that 25 doesn’t have the needed 802.11s support==

2

Did you install the correct wpad variant?

See: https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/mesh/802-11s

3

I have successfully used 802.11s mesh on a pair of Cudy M3000s. I uninstalled wpad-basic-mbedtls and replaced it with wpad-openssl and then followed the instructions in this post https://forum.openwrt.org/t/creating-an-ieee-802-11s-mesh-from-scratch/208332

4

Do you recall what version you were running. The 802.11s options are still present in the 24.x series (which I downgraded to). 25.x seems like it doesn’t.

5

I have never had to install such a package - is that only for when you want the encryption support?

6

24.10.x. I haven't yet upgraded to 25.

7

Nope, it is also for stuff like RADIUS, roaming and mesh.

8

Although that makes sense I will say one thing. The support was there when I flashed and when I updated one of the packages was the mediatek driver I am sure that made the option disappear.

When I re flashed (to get back to the pre-package upgraded state then it was fine.

There may very well be an upstream problem. But the 802.11s support is in the driver package? If not then why did it disappear when I upgraded - also wpad was installed…

9

Mmmh, yes.

I think I updated Mediatek driver that is the only package (of all those that had updates available) that would make it disappear.

Rolled back to prior package update and it is there now.

10

You never should update your packages because it might lead to breakages.

Also, sometimes things move around. Since I do not use mesh I can't say for sure but I thought that for mesh support you always had to change your wpad package. Anyways, with the firmware selector it is easy to make a custom build with the version you want.

Afterwards use owut or attended-sysupgrade to update your packages and/or OpenWRT version.

11

Yes, and it always has.
Note: The latest stable version of OpenWrt at the time of writing is 25.12.3 and I would recommend reflashing with this using one if the numerous ways you will find described on this forum.

As @Bartvz says:

Instead, "upgrade" the entire operating system.

Note: You do need at least wpad-mesh-mbedtls for the mesh as it gives you encryption on the air.
Why would you use encryption on your access points and then leave the mesh backhaul unencrypted?
I would recommend the full version ie wpad-mbedtls on this device as you are very far from a problem with free space.

You can go for the openssl version (wpad-openssl) if you really want to, but there is little reason to do so.

12

It was simply for testing, it's not long term but the encryption (or lakc

thereof) was not the issue