I’m experimenting with a couple of routers (my main one, a Zyxel 5601 and a Fritzbox 7530) to see how wired mesh network work.
My Zyxel acts as main router, DHCP, firewall, etc etc, the Fritz should only act as a switch and access point, the two are connected LAN to LAN by ethernet.
I want a static IPV4 on the Fritz, while the IPV6 for the LAN interface should be handled by DHCPv6 so that I can access the Fritz via either of those.
Configuring the wireless part was a breeze, it worked immediately, but I had issues with IPV6 connectivity. Some things wouldn’t work (for example Speedtest website) and I had weird IPs for the gateway on my client devices.
Eventually I ended up with a working setup, but I’m not sure it’s the proper way to do it.
This is the configuration (ignore additional VLANs, IoT network, docker etc, I only tested the 5Ghz main network).
Nevermind, I noticed that if I disable “Request IPv6-prefix” on the AP I get weird behaviour, sometimes it works, sometimes it says “no internet” on my phone (wifi works tho, and I can ping both IPV4 and IPV6, same on my laptop).
You said that you have a "wired mesh network" -- this suggests that you are misunderstanding the term "mesh" (but don't worry, this is common due to marketing and such).
Mesh specifically deals with the use of a wireless backhaul from the AP(s) to the main router/AP and is made possible by the 802.11s standard. When you have an ethernet backhaul, that is not mesh -- those are simply bridged APs.
What you really have is a setup which should allow roaming across multiple APs (regardless of their backhaul). It's worth mentioning that roaming is largely a client side process, but sometimes 802.11r/j/v are added on top of a standard setup (these can cause problems, though, and should only be used if there is an actual demonstrated need for it).
Meanwhile, your AP(s) should be essentially transparent to the connected devices. The AP(s) can use IPv4 and/or IPv6, but the AP itself doesn't really need internet connectivity, just an address by which it can be managed. Most users will setup an IPv4 address on the management subnet, and that's it (no requirement for IPv6 in many situations). And in the case where there are VLANs, only the network that is used to manage the AP should have an address (the others will be unmanaged). Because the AP is s simple bridge, connected clients should get their DHCP assigned address from the upstream router/DHCP server, and have network/internet connectivity based on however the main router is configured.
I’m not here to discuss what “mesh” means, I need APs with backhaul and fast roaming, whatever it’s called.
The point is that it’s not working properly, sometimes the wireless devices connected to the secondary AP stop working and I can’t figure out why.
Ping works, DNS works, but I can’t load websites and the OS tells me there is no internet.
I’m almost sure that it’s a problem caused by IPV6 but I can’t understand what the issue is.
What seems to fix the issue most of the times is restarting the radio on the AP.
That's sad because it does not makes things simpler for everyone else.
However. Is there any reason you do ndp proxy on the ap?
Again it looks like you have a wired access point and you bridge all you networks. So no need need for ndp proxy or the like on the AP.
You have 2 non-coherent ip6 autoconf sources in your network.
Delete LAN6 interface completely. By default it will spit out route advertissements and dhcp6 via LAN interface with parts of /64 PD acquired via LAN6.
However. Is there any reason you do ndp proxy on the ap?
Again it looks like you have a wired access point and you bridge all you networks. So no need need for ndp proxy or the like on the AP.
I’m kinda new to IPV6, I couldn’t use it since my previous ISP didn’t provide it, hence I just now started to tinker with it… as I said I don’t really know the correct procedure to set up the IPV6 connection to the AP, so I tried stuff and that kinda worked.
My config changed since I posted because I was having odd issues, now I have no DHCP whatsoever on any of the two interfaces, but I’m still experiencing weird issues like my phone or my laptop losing internet connectivity while being able to ping and resolve DNS names.
I’ve also tried using ChatGPT and Gemini that usually work well for this kind of stuff to see what config they suggest and oddly they were quite far off each other, which confused me even more.
I’ll take a deep ook at the guide, oddly it didn’t come out when I searched (thanks enshittified Google I guess ).
What if I also want to access the AP using an IPV6 address? Do I just put it into the “Static address” configuration section? Because I’m pretty sure I tried that and it didn’t seem to work at all in that case, but I’ll try it again to make sure.
Just to be clear, I was not being pedantic. I was responding to this:
And the reason for the explanation was because the terminology is actually very important. Precision in the words used for the discussion are key to finding the correct solution, Incorrect terms can lead to misunderstandings of the topology/configuration and thus may fail to lead to a working solution.
Please understand that the misuse of the term 'mesh' is extremely common, including by many vendors when they market their wifi products. It is confusing. I elaborated on @brada4 's comment not to shame you for using the incorrect term, but rather to help clarify the topology and ensure that the discussion would yield the right results.
Update: I have noticed I had some weird things going on with that router, since it was my guinea pig to try stuff. In particular, for some reason it only showed 8MB of storage (in total, not afailable) while it normally has 70+.
That’s definitely due to the fact that I added space with extroot previously, but after that I’ve done a config reset and it probably left something broken.
Because of that I did a clean wipe and restored OpenWRT, I’ve tried the AP config again following the guide but the steps were pretty much the same that I already had done previously, but now it works.
I guess there was something odd left from previous tinkering then
After 2 days it seems to be stable without me having to restart the interfaces or the antennas.
).