I was running a standalone Access Point with DHCP and NTP server, hostname of the AP 'openwrtLED1'. The AP clients send NTP requests to 'openwrtLED1' and the DNS service resolves the hostname, all good.
Now i want to connect the AP to my LAN, and I followed these Dumb AP instructions https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/dumbap It works well, the AP clients get their IP address assigned by the LAN router's DHCP.
However, the AP is too dumb now to catch any traffic for 'openwrtLED1', so my AP clients' NTP requests are not answered. How can i configure the AP to intercept this DNS request? Do i need to use dnsmasq? hostnames? static routes? (sorry i'm not very familiar with these features)
In the dumb AP role, the main router tells the clients that it is the DNS server. So if you want to offer a LAN service on the AP machine, the main router's DNS must register the AP's hostname so it can provide the AP's IP address when the clients request it.
This is usually done by making the AP a DHCP client. In OpenWrt an interface set as DHCP client must have the hostname explicitly set with an option hostname. The general hostname is not advertised on DHCP by default.
The other way to do it is to make a reservation in the main router.
Your Dumb AP should just forward the dns request to the main DHCP server resolve "openwrtLED1" to itself & then the client should request the NTP from the DHCP sever just like anyone else on the network
I'd just check that you have not called you dumb AP "openwrtLED1" as well
that you have turned off the DHCP server (IPV4) in the dumb AP
that you have made sure the IPV6 DHCP side of the DUMP AP is also disabled "i made this mistake my self"
but would start off by confirming you get the correct ip for an nslookup of "openwrtLED1"
AP clients usually have some default/fallback NTP configuration, which you can revert to by disabling NTP server announce on your DHCP server and reconnecting/restarting all the AP clients.
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Thanks, your suggestion of setting the AP up as DHCP client solves the problem. I had not tried that before because these instructions for Bridged AP https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/bridgedap seem to mention in step 1 that that may create another problem. But now i see it makes sense to use a dynamic IP, as it becomes portable (no need to adjust the main router), just what i need, thanks a lot.
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