TP-Link RE650 as Dumb AP

[tectonic]

Hi,

I'm considering purchasing a TP-Link RE650, and flashing it with OpenWRT to use as a Dumb AP (router is a NanoPi R4S). I intend to run a trunk from the router to the RE650 carrying multiple VLANs.

Before I purchase the RE650, is anybody able to confirm that I'll be able to set-up multiple SSIDs on the AP, each assigned to a different VLAN (e.g. VLAN 3 for a guest network, VLAN 4 for an IOT network, etc.)? Are there any limitations / 'gotchas' with the RE650 of which i might need to be aware?

Thanks!

[fodiator]

No experience with the RE650, but could easily flash the RE200 v3. Had to make a minor change to make the switch vlan-aware. This unit is capable of doing dynamic VLAN, 802.1x, and FT.

I’d expect the RE650 should be capable of doing the same…

[tectonic]

Thanks! I'll check out the RE200v3; it may well serve my purpose. I'll also compare the specs of the RE200 and the RE650.

What change did you have to make to make the switch VLAN-aware?

[tectonic]

Looking for 802.11ac access point architecture/chipset recommendation

Postscript I decided to hold off on AX devices for the time being. I still think they are the way to go forward, but I'm not completely convinced that they are stable enough at the moment, especially since I need them to do OpenWrt. In the meantime I decided to take a stab at a "better" AC device than my old Netgear R6220. I got a very reasonable second-hand deal on a TP-Link RE650. It runs on a MT7621AT, removing the CPU bottleneck of the R6220's MT7621ST, and its wifi is done by MT7615N in 4…

suggests it'll do what I need...

[L37]

I have RE650 working as router, few thoughts:

• It is MT7621+MT7615, which is known to have some issues with 5Ghz wireless on OpenWRT. It has been working fine for me on 22.03, but I only use very few 5Ghz clients (2-3).
• v2, which is nowadays what you'll get, has 8MB flash. It is more or less fine, i have been able to fit SQM even, but it is limiting and will be even worse with time.
• I had some weird issues with terrible packet loss on devices very close to it, had to reduce tx power for it to work, which is kind of annoying, but might have been caused by clients, not AP.

Otherwise i do not see why it would not be able to do what you want, i've used multiple SSIDs and it worked, did not play with VLANs, but it should not be an issue...

[fodiator]

The standard installation (21.02) sets the board up in a default setting (not recognized).
To utilize the switch (see output from swconfig dev switch0 help ), simply change it in /etc/board.d/02_network .

For me the change looks like:

        tplink,re200-v3|\
        tplink,tl-wr902ac-v3)
                ucidef_add_switch "switch0" \
                        "4:lan" "6@eth0"
                ;;

Original config

…
tplink,re200-v3|
tplink,re200-v4|
tplink,re220-v2|
tplink,re305-v1|
tplink,tl-wr802n-v4|
tplink,tl-wa801nd-v5|
widora,neo-16m|
widora,neo-32m)
ucidef_add_switch "switch0"
ucidef_add_switch_attr "switch0" "enable" "false"
ucidef_set_interface_lan "eth0"
;;
…

Then, after saving changes, move board.json out of the way, and run /bin/board_detect .

After that you can use LUCI for further updates.

[tectonic]

Thank you! The (second hand) unit I've got my eye on is V1, so I may benefit from the extra flash.

Good to know it should do what I need; and I'll work through any gremlins as/when I encounter them.