Applying any change to WiFi interfaces reboot all interfaces

[jeff]

Network reload can often be accomplished without recreating all interfaces

OpenWrt change oid after network reload

Use "/etc/init.d/network reload" instead of "/etc/init.d/network restart". The restart action will tear down the entire network, destroy all virtual interfaces (vlan interfaces, bridges, ...) and recreate them from scratch using other dynamically assigned interface indexes. The reload action on the other hand will try to only apply the minimum amount of required changes without disrupting other network state. For example the change of an IP address or the addition of another interface should no…

On wireless reload, it is well summed up by

@hnyman

I think that the current code does disconnect all clients from that wifi device that you are reloading but not from the other radio. The "wifi" command always runs down+up, in order to get all changes reflected to the radio that you are configuring.

So, if you make config changes to just one radio, it is likely possible to maintain clients connected to the other radio when you reload the config of the first radio..

If you look at the source code of "wifi", you can see that plain "wifi" affects all radios, but you can also specify just one radio for the "wifi up X" command.
https://git.lede-project.org/?p=source.git;a=blob;f=package/base-files/files/sbin/wifi;hb=HEAD#l125