No more routing on Unifi AC Lite

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

Dear community,

after several months of fun my Unifi AC Lite stopped routing between Ethernet and Wifi after the latest update – and I can't get it back to work.

I tried different releases and am now back to reset to factory settings, but neither DHCP nor with static IP I get anything in Wifi see devices on the LAN side and vice versa.

To me setup seems as simple as it can get:

config interface 'loopback'
	option device 'lo'
	option proto 'static'
	option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
	option netmask '255.0.0.0'

config globals 'globals'
	option ula_prefix 'fd47:b480:a6b8::/48'

config device
	option name 'br-lan'
	option type 'bridge'
	list ports 'eth0'

config interface 'lan'
	option device 'br-lan'
	option proto 'dhcp'
	option ipv6 'off'

Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
default         192.168.0.254   0.0.0.0         UG    0      0        0 br-lan
192.168.0.0     *               255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 br-lan

192.168.0.254 is the correct gateway to the internet and also DHCP server.

eth0 gets correct IP from DHCP server but no Wifi Device.
I can see DHCP traffic on Wifi device but it doesn't get forwarded to 192.168.0.254.

I'd be very grateful for any advice where to dig.
Thanks!

2

This is incorrect, it should be '0' (most boolean options use '1' or '0' for true and false). But I don't think that's causing the problem.

Run brctl show to confirm that the AP and eth0 are bridged together. A dumb AP uses bridging, not routing, and the kernel routing table is not important for the clients to connect to the main router.

1 Like
3

Mike, thank you so much for taking your time!
Bridge looks ok to me:

 brctl show
bridge name	bridge id		STP enabled	interfaces
br-lan		7fff.18e829fa2c4c	no		eth0
							phy1-ap0

I only activated one Wifi to KISS.

4

Can you confirm that you are using this as a dumb ap (and not as a router)?

5

Confirmed!
It's a AC Lite with only one Ethernet-Port.

Yesterday I discovered another AC Lite with my old setup (OpenWrt 22.03.3, r20028-43d71ad93e).
When I visit Network tab on the LuCI interface it asks:

Network ifname configuration migration
The existing network configuration needs to be changed for LuCI to function properly.
Upon pressing "Continue", ifname options will get renamed and the network will be restarted to apply the updated configuration.

And now I remember after confirming that the trouble started.
I notice that interface naming changed (wlan0 -> phy1-ap0).
Might that disturb things?

6

The answer to the prompt is yes - otherwise there could be serious issues.
But better yet, just reset the device to defaults. Configuring the dumb ap should only take a few minutes.

7

Hi Peter, first thing I tried (see first post).

I will try when no one is affected in the office and report back.
I think there is something special here because the AC Lite only has 1 eth port.

Thank you very much for now.

8

What specifically are you saying is "special" here?

9

There is no WAN port (as with all other WRT-devices I'm using).
At least when I'm using it as the dumb AP.

10

You don't need a wan port for a dumb AP. In most devices, the physical wan port can easily be reassigned to be 'just another' lan port. But from a logical standpoint, the wan (as a network interface) is never used in a dumb AP configuration.