Problem using wireless as a wan

eclay · February 21, 2024, 5:25pm

I've been using a Netgear R6350 with OpenWRT v 23.05 configured to use wireless as a WAN in my RV. The thought was to have a wireless network with the same name/password that everything we use as we travel can connect to. Then I would either connect my Netgear router via wifi to a rv parks wifi or my mobile hotspot to get internet connectivity. The issue I've been having is that if I connect to a park wifi or my mobile hotspot, doesn't matter if I use 2.4GHz or 5GHz To connect to a internet source, eventually I have performance issues. Internet speed is way slower or causes constant buffering of streaming content when connected to the OpenWRT router as apposed to connecting directly to my internet source. Thinking there was something wrong with using WIFI interfaces in this manner, I decided to tether to my mobile hotspot via usb. I get the same issue.

Has anyone come across this issue before? If so how did do I get this issue fixed?

What should I be looking at on the router side to better troubleshoot.

LilRedDog · February 21, 2024, 5:30pm

Read this and then Install travelmate

Do these things exactly as written:

setup at least one AP, ideally on a separate radio
start the travelmate 'Interface Wizard' once

eclay · February 21, 2024, 6:01pm

How does one easily install travelmate package(s)? I found this git repo where it can be downlaoded but it fails due to dependency requirements.

Collected errors:

pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency curl for travelmate
pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency rpcd-mod-rpcsys for travelmate
pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for travelmate found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
opkg_install_cmd: Cannot install package travelmate.

github.com

openwrt/packages/blob/master/net/travelmate/files/README.md

<!-- markdownlint-disable -->

# travelmate, a wlan connection manager for travel router

## Description
If you’re planning an upcoming vacation or a business trip, taking your laptop, tablet or smartphone give you the ability to connect with friends or complete work on the go. But many hotels don’t have a secure wireless network setup or you’re limited on using a single device at once. Investing in a portable, mini travel router is a great way to connect all of your devices at once while having total control over your own personalized wireless network.  
A logical combination of AP+STA mode on one physical radio allows most of OpenWrt supported router devices to connect to a wireless hotspot/station (STA) and provide a wireless access point (AP) from that hotspot at the same time. Downside of this solution: whenever the STA interface looses the connection it will go into an active scan cycle which renders the radio unusable for AP mode operation, therefore the AP is taken down if the STA looses its association.  
To avoid these kind of deadlocks, travelmate will set all station interfaces to an "always off" mode and connects automatically to available/configured hotspots.  

## Main Features
* STA interfaces operating in an "always off" mode, to make sure that the AP is always accessible
* easy setup within normal OpenWrt environment
* strong LuCI-Support with builtin interface wizard and a wireless station manager
* render the QR-Code of the selected Access Point in LuCI to comfortably transfer the WLAN credentials to your mobile devices
* fast uplink connections
* support all kinds of uplinks, incl. hidden and enterprise uplinks (WEP-based uplinks are no longer supported!)
* continuously checks the existing uplink connection (quality), e.g. for conditional uplink (dis-) connections
* automatically add open uplinks to your wireless config, e.g. hotel captive portals
* captive portal detection with internet online check and a 'heartbeat' function to keep the uplink connection up & running
* captive portal auto-login hook (configured via uci/LuCI), you are able to reference an external script for captive portal auto-logins (see example below)

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LilRedDog · February 21, 2024, 6:04pm

From LuCI:

System/Software ->click all->update lists.

Then filter search to travelmate.

eclay · February 21, 2024, 6:04pm

NM I figured out how to use the luci package management tool. I think I have it installed now and will try travelmate wizard.

LilRedDog · February 21, 2024, 6:11pm

You can delete all clients you added but the active one you need to configure travelmate.
Travelmate will handle all of them as you add them again when you start adding hotspots.

eclay · February 21, 2024, 9:49pm

After having this up and running for a while and streaming a video I got a no internet available alert. I see the following in luci > services > travelmate > logview. OpenWRT was connected to my mobile hotspot.

Wed Feb 21 20:11:19 2024 user.info trm-2.1.2-2[3338]: travelmate instance started ::: action: start, pid: 3338
Wed Feb 21 20:14:14 2024 user.info trm-2.1.2-2[3338]: connected to uplink 'radio0/AtPlay-mobile guest/-' with mac '-' (1/3)
Wed Feb 21 20:14:32 2024 user.info trm-ntp [7234]: get ntp time sync
Wed Feb 21 21:40:00 2024 user.info trm-2.1.2-2[3338]: no signal from uplink
Wed Feb 21 21:40:26 2024 user.info trm-2.1.2-2[3338]: no enabled station on radio 'radio1'
Wed Feb 21 21:41:58 2024 user.info trm-2.1.2-2[3338]: connected to uplink 'radio0/AtPlay-mobile guest/-' with mac '-' (1/3)

Before I could get logged back in the connection seemed to reconnect.

LilRedDog · February 21, 2024, 10:02pm

In LuCI system/system ensure the time is correct.

eclay · February 21, 2024, 11:18pm

I have enabled NTP client in Luci.

LilRedDog · February 21, 2024, 11:20pm

Yes but I saw it fail to connect to the server so look at general settings to get current time and date with correct time zone.