Partial ethernet upgrade of 802.11s

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

Hello everyone,

I have the following scenario and cannot find the relevant information in the wiki and forum and hope someone can help me:

The following network topology:

OpenWRT DHCP router with LAN/W-LAN network and second 802.11s mesh network bridged to lan.
Two remote access points, connected wirelessly via 802.11s mesh.

Now I have connected the AP on the first floor to the router via ethernet cable, the AP on the upper floor follows.

I am now wondering how I can tell the AP on the ground floor that it is no longer receiving its signal wirelessly but wired? Basically, it should now work as a pure AP but continue to provide the mesh network for the AP on the upper floor.
When I connect the network cable, I create a loop through the 802.11s network.

Is this even possible or do I need Batman-adv? or only Spanning Tree Protocol (STP)?

With products from the manufacturer AVM, this can be easily implemented via plug and play.

Greetings

2

Just to make sure I understand the overall topology --
4 APs total -- one of them has been the main and the other 3 have been remote mesh nodes (wireless backhaul). Now you are wiring one of those three, so there will be 2 wired together + 2 with wireless backhaul.

Does the newly-wired (or newly-to-be-wired) device need to be part of the mesh at all (i.e. as the uplink)? The easiest option is to simply make it a dumb AP with no mesh whatsoever. That assumes that the main node works sufficiently well to provide the backhaul connectivity to the 2 remote mesh nodes. (or conversely, you could disable the mesh on the main station, and leave it on for the one that will be newly-wired).

The only reason to have 2 devices acting as "mains" would be if they are required for coverage reasons... if that is the case, I don't know how to achieve this (hopefully someone else will have some ideas).

3

I read that as 3 devices.

As @psherman suggested, disable the mesh interface on the "OpenWRT DHCP router" as it will be this that creates the redundant path that causes the bridge loop.

FYI: Mesh terminology that might clarify things for types of mesh nodes is as follows -

  1. A meshnode with an Internet feed on a cabled port is a "mesh portal"
  2. A meshnode with its own access point is a "mesh gate" (often called a mesh gateway)
  3. A meshnode with no cabled Internet and no access point is a "mesh peer"
  4. A meshnode with both cabled Internet and its own access point is a "mesh portal/gate)
4

Thank you very much for the advice.
I have implemented it accordingly.

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