I’m using a OpenWrt main router (x86/64: 24.10.5 to replaced by 25.12.2 soon) which is connected to the router of my ISP to get to the internet.
My main OpenWrt router has no wireless capabilities.
I also use 2 Deco M5 v3 EU’s (flashed OpenWrt on those as well, version 25.12.1) of which one is connected via wire to the main openWrt router. These Deco’s act as accesspoints, getting DHCP, firewall, etc from the main router.
I have several vlans defined on the main router and the same on the 2 Decos.
For only 1 of the VLANs (vlan 20 interface “home” I have created a SSID “Home” on the Decos
I can connect to the SSID and I see that the IP address is in the correct range and also firewall rules are being applied. I use fast-roaming as well. The setup has been taken from OneMarcFifty’s video: “CHEAP WI-FI MESH ALTERNATIVE with fast roaming OpenWrt Wi-Fi Access points”
I created the second access point the same way.
But the second accesspoint only works when it is physically connected with a network cable (LAN to LAN) between the decos. Thus when taking out the wire from the second access point. I cannot connect to the second access point any more. (So roaming is not working then.)
In picture 1 I show the overview of the working config and in picture 2 the overview when it’s not working.
Does anyone know how I can get also the wireless second access point working?
This seems like it might be entirely expected. Did you setup and configure 802.11s (mesh) to enable a wireless backhaul from the second AP to the first?
Indeed I did not. (Thanks for showing me what I missed.)
Therefore I now have created a mesh for the mgmt network, which solves the problem of not being able to access each AP’s Luci. These are on the mgmt network)
I can now access all the Deco AP’s.
However the SSID “Home” which is connected to the home-network, did only have internet access when it was connected to AP-1. When it roamed to AP-2 (defined a different channel for this) it was connected, but had no internet access. I assumed that this was caused by not having wifi-backhaul for the home-network. After creating this additional mesh also the problem for the “Home” SSID was solved.
The following steps I want to take:
Implement also wireless access to the guest-network and iot-network by creating wireless networks with SSID “Guest” and “IoT” on all APs and create a mesh for each of them.
Add around 3 more Accesspoints and use a modified backup of AP-2 after item 1 has been finalized. (Alter the static IP addresses of each interface, and set a non-used channel for each AP, so that I can see when it roams to a different AP.)
This does not seem to be much trouble.
Is this a proper way to do this or should I be looking at a more sophisticated solution like Batman-Adv?
Glad we fixed the problem of connecting to the device.
Detailed 802.11s mesh setup is not my expertise, but it is possible to carry multiple networks via the mesh backhaul (it may require using hostapd-full, I think). That said, it probably makes sense to make a new thread for the specifics of that (and thus it can also be titled accordingly to catch the eye of those who are well versed in this aspect).
This thread can probably now be considered solved (we fixed the general connectivity issue).
If your problem is solved, please consider marking this topic as [Solved]. See How to mark a topic as [Solved] for a short how-to.
Thanks!
