Having already setup dumb ap, bringing up the guest wifi is where I got stuck:
4. Add a new WiFi and connect it to your "guest" interface
Choose an SSID fur your wirless guest network.
In this guide we use Guest_WiFi Connect your Guest_WiFi to the Interface “guest” which we created in step 1
We do not change wireless security settings (= WiFi Password Setting) in this guide - you maybe should
press “save” button
Binding the guest interface to Guest_WIFI results in an AP nothing can connect to (Able to revert and retry using ethernet). It will appear very briefly under Network > Wireless > Associated Stations with a “?” under “Host” tab, then fail to connect. As an exercise, I’ve followed both guides closely and without deviation. Besides device-specific breakage, undocumented changes or missing steps, it should work.
Only Dumb AP setback was it not wanting to work using 192.168.1.2. No idea why, anything above 192.168.1.3 worked.
Granted, first guide works well if you overlook the traditionally outdated™ images in the luci section (i.g. method #2). For some inexplicable reason up-to-date wiki text finds itself missmatched to example images old enough to marry. Either practice dd or don’t bother including them, stick to text-only like arch wiki.
Second guide is special too. Text was updated 11/2025, references outdated images heavily, put together by someone whose English isn’t fit for public consumption. Some steps are either missing or without context. Non-English speakers using translation services for accessibility can not self-help. Community efforts aside, the lack of wiki uniformity is a disservice to the project.
This guide says to create a br-guest in addition to br-lan. This is incorrect for DSA devices like the WAX202. I guess that's what you're referring to when discussing "device-specific breakage".
We usually ask for posting configs to verify and confirm statements such as this.
What’s shown on the pictures is several versions removed from matching present-day gui (Luci). At least for the first guide we can bin it as a pet-peeve since the CLI method is thorough and despite my whinning method #2 has some nice text to go with it; guide #2 is hurting, it seemed so promising too.
OpenWrt SNAPSHOT r33157-6c4c988a5f
Cut out the fist half, sorry about that.
Could you please elaborate on why this is the case? An alternate course of action?
Well, it was factory reset and the only changes made to it are shared between both guides. I’m going to get you its config soon as it let’s me reach it. Can connect, reach the internet, but can’t sign into Luci. Screwed it up between responses. I’m sorry for having wasted your time so far.
Really? I just looked through both tutorials and they seem consistent with LuCI in its current form. If you have installed a different theme, obviously yours might look different, but it would be purely cosmetic. I do see some items that are maybe different than your situation -- like for example the fact that the screenshots come from a device that uses swconfig (rather than DSA), but swconfig still exists on some targets even in 25.12, and it's not material to the configuration.
Any particular reason you're running snapshot (vs stable)? It's fine if you want/need to run snapshot, but it does have some downsides.
As I noted earlier, if your guest network is wifi only, you can follow the guide verbatim. If you need the guest network to also be associated with ethernet, you need to make a few changes, but you can actually start with the wifi bit and then make those adjustments after the majority of the work is done.
@lleachii said that the comment was based on some potentially incorrect assumptions (i.e. ethernet).
