Hey guys,
I just started using OpenWRT recently and I have pretty novice knowledge of networking in general so please, feel free to correct me on any misinterpretation/misconception I may have.
As stated in the title, I want to know how much integrated an OpenWRT router can be with non-OpenWRT routers set as dumb APs.
I have a TP-Link TL-WDR4300 V1.7 with OpenWRT 23.05.2 acting as a router but since its wireless capabilities are pretty bad to nowadays patterns, I have its wireless radios turned off.
I'm using as a dumb AP a TP-Link Archer C80 V1 which has its original firmware. Wish I could install OpenWRT on it but it seems that it's not available to this model yet.
The thing is, after putting the C80 in AP Mode, all its wireless capabilities it's still managed by the C80 itself, so if I want to change the SSID, password, channels and anything related to Wi-Fi, I have to go to tplinkwifi .net (without spaces) to access its web interface and change it from there.
I don't know if I'm missing something or if that's how it is because I can see that OpenWRT is indeed routing and managing IPs and stuff from all devices connected to the AP via Wi-Fi. I can even see them connected in the OWRT Overview page as if they were directly connected to it, instead of the AP.
In my imaginary, I thought that once I put the router on AP mode, it would just become a wireless radio and all of its settings would be managed by the router it's connected to, my WDR4300 router, in this case. So I could centralize all of my network managing on the OpenWRT interface, but as it is right now, for some settings I still have to go to each device's interface. So that's not how it works? I guess?
Is there something I'm doing wrong here? Is there a better way to integrate all devices and manage all of them just on OpenWRT? I plan to add more non-OpenWRTs devices to it as dumb APs too and it would be pretty bad to not have this kind of integration.