What would you say is the best method for the next use case:
The system consists of a ad-hoc linear “daisy chain” of wifi repeaters that extend the effective wlan from a gateway router throughout a linear space such as a corridor for example.
The main use case: A human operator will walk away from the gateway switching on the identical units one by one. The units will automatically define the path. Wifi client devices will be free to roam through the corridor and have seamless connection to the main gateway.
This paper addresses only the R units in the attached sketch.
The units are identical and will act like a repeater - softAP+STA at the same time or an MP. no DHCP, no firewalls.
The units consist of a new hardware with two versions - 1. 802.11.n 2.4 GHZ with low power consumption and lower performance. 2. 802.11.ac\ax Dual band with higher power consumption and higher performance.
Failover - when a signal from the previous AP or MP is under the threshold RSSI the unit will scan for an alternative path. No closed loops are allowed of course.
Totally depends.
Could be you are served well with 11s and it's build in forwarding.
Could be batman version 5 serves you well.
Could be depending on the distance you need to tune tx power.
Given; so called repeater mode even sucks more.
I would argue that even if you really do well tune your tx power shit can hit the fan. If you can't ensure that you really can not get a loop, then running without any form of STP is just dump.
Sure I have done so too.
But if something breaks, most of the time it will never recover so you go around and power cycle everything....
I have run a 12 node 802.11s, mesh many years without stp without fatal loops. I added the batman for vlans, Basically I'm a kiss (keep ist simple stupid) kind of fool.
If you're saying it has to work regardless of the physical order of how the devices are placed (a person taking them out of a box at random), that will require a mesh protocol. It is possible to use a chain of repeaters but each one's STA needs to be pre-configured to BSSID locked to the MAC address of the one upstream of it in line. Otherwise a group of units can connect together in useless loops instead of to the proper one that gives it a path to the control system.
Answering your initial question: YES, you smell wright. The problem to be solved "by chance" is very similar to a 2 days old project offering on a well known job site. Thus, either one of the bidders wants us to do the work for him, or the project provider tries to get the work done for free. BTW, I have seen this a few times here on the forum already.
i think this is the problem. if you want a daisychain, you should enforce that with distinct wds links between adjacent links. if you want some fallback protection, use 802.11s.
