Overview that shows which device connects to which AP?

Installing and Using OpenWrt Network and Wireless Configuration
1

Hello all!
I just installed and set up my first OpenWRT instances. Since I had some annoyances with my ISP-provided router, I bought two second-hand devices (Asus AX-R1800U and Linksys EA 7500 v2) and flashed them with OpenWRT 25.10.
I managed to set everything up and it works.
For now, my network is fairly simple:

  • The Asus works as the main router, it is connected to the ISP-provided fiber modem via its WAN port
  • ASUS has a single bridged LAN interface with the ethernet ports and two Wifi radios. I may want to split that up into different VLANs in the future but for now everything is in the same LAN.
  • The Linksys is connected via ethernet to the ASUS, and is set up as a dumb AP, with two wifi radios. All the routing and DHCP is handled by the ASUS.
  • All wifi radios use the same SSID

This all works as it should, I have decent wifi reception throughout the house and all devices can talk to each other.
One thing I noticed though, is that the overview page on the ASUS doesn't really show me which client connects to which AP. I can sort of infer that from the list of DHCP leases and the associated stations but it would be nice to have that in a single table or graphic. So my questions are:

  1. Is there a package or setting that provides an easy overview in the LUCI web interface of which client connects to which AP?
  2. Are there ways to nudge clients to connect to a specific access point? Due to some restarts, I can see that certain clients with fixed positions (ESP based smart home devices) have connected to an AP that is not optimal while the other one was rebooting, but they don't switch over by themselves.
  3. Would it help for either of the above to install/enable 802.11s mesh networking and/or enabling 802.11r? I've not done that yet. Are there types of devices that would experience compatibility problems with that?

Thanks a lot, Allard

2
  1. it's shown on the status page of each AP ?
  2. there's a disconnect button on that same page ?
  3. some IoT devices might have issues with this.
3

The extender does not know dhcp leases and the dhcp server does not know wifi associations....

4

Thanks for the swift replies!

So there isn’t a way to get the information about which device connects to which AP on a single page? I know I can gather the information but I had hoped to have a quick overview. I don’t have a very good basic knowledge of how networking really works so it surprises me this isn’t possible.

Ah, I should have specified it better: is there a way to set a ‘preferred access point’ or something similar from the server side? So you don’t have to manually check and correct? Or maybe even some sort of script you could run that says: “if both access points are available and client with mac address X connects to AP y, disconnect it and see if it connects to the other one”

5

you have multiple APs, feel free to create the page which pulls the info from the "other AP", and presents it locally.

only by not letting a device to connect (use multiple SSIDs, etc).
the client decides where it connects.

there are ways to push clients in the right direction, by using DAWN for instance ...

6

Ah, thanks, that looks indeed like the kind of functionality I was looking for. I’ll try it out.

Given my current level of knowledge of OpenWRT that seems like too much of a time investment for me right now. But maybe someday.