I've been trying to get a wifi extender from my ISP (https://broadband.yourcoop.coop/) to work for months to no avail. Router in the front room, work-desk at the back of the flat, no easy way to do wired - must be a common story.
First the ISP sent me a Technicolor OWA0131NLK, and now recently they've sent me a TP-Link HX220 to replace it. The first one would somehow crash the main router (a Technicolor DGA0122NKL) daily and I got the second one working briefly yesterday but today it entirely refuses to connect to the router.
I'm frustrated with that situation, and I also enjoy tinkering with open source soft/hard-ware, and so I'm thinking about dumping the above and trying out an OpenWrt One. I could either get one and set it up as a wireless extender (continuing to use the Technicolor DGA0122NKL as a router), or get two (or three?) and replace the main router too.
I'm fairly new to this. I've been using linux for ~6 months. Fairly happy on the command line. Got Wifi Analyzer on my phone. But I'm definitely at the edge of my knowledge/comfort.
I think my question is: am I missing something simple? Is there an obvious reason why I shouldn't do the above, or why I should do something different? Any good pointers to blogs or tutorials I could read? (I'd love a "I bought 3 OpenWrt Ones and set up a mesh network and here's exactly how I did it!" blogpost...)
If wireless -- you need to use relayd since the upstream wifi is not OpenWrt. WDS and Mesh/802.11s generally require the upstream and downstream devices to be in the same firmware ecosystem. Your main router/AP is not using OpenWrt, so those won't work, thus relayd is your only option: https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/relay_configuration
This device is very good and would probably be a good option. But the value of replacing your ISP device depends on a number of factors -- most notably, your ISP router must be easily removed or bypassed (if it is a modem+router combo, you might need the modem part; maybe you can turn off the routing functions and operate the devices as a pure bridge).
In case, you do not really need an extender, you might simply install an openwrt device using your ISPs WiFi router as “WAN”, between front and back room. For a cheap try, a Cudy TR1200 is a low cost, suitable device for this. Some performance penalty, of course, but you might even install an ad-blocker on the Cudy, to (partly) compensate for it.
uci set wireless.wifinet6=wifi-iface
uci set wireless.wifinet6.device='radio1'
uci set wireless.wifinet6.mode='mesh'
uci set wireless.wifinet6.encryption='sae'
uci set wireless.wifinet6.mesh_id='Mesh5'
uci set wireless.wifinet6.mesh_fwding='1'
uci set wireless.wifinet6.mesh_rssi_threshold='0'
uci set wireless.wifinet6.key='password'
uci set wireless.wifinet6.network='lan'
same thing same canal on second and normaly you are the mesh
