OK. Once again, apologies for the delay in continuing this thread, but I have had to do loads of research & reading to get myself up to speed on quite a few other areas of the OpenWRT ecosystem before I could actually find out more about 802.11s mesh networks. Firstly, I had to find out about Attended Sysupgrade as there isnât enough free space on the TP-Link WPA8631P to install what we need for 802.11s networks.
The stock 22.03 image for the TP-Link WPA8631P contains wpad-basic-wolfssl, along with dnsmasq, odhcpd & ppp. wpad-basic-wolfssl only has 802.11r and 802.11w support â but we need 802.11s for a mesh. However, there isnât enough space to install the packages that we need on the stock image. To resolve this issue, we need to use an Attended Sysupgrade to create & install a custom firmware image.
I have also discovered that you donât actually need any of the additional PowerLine OpenWRT packages installed. When you first flash OpenWRT on the TP-Link WPA8631P, it will remove the device from your existing PowerLine network. All you need is your standard TP-Link PowerLine utility software running on a Windows PC and the PowerLine keys (printed on the back of the TP-Link WPA8631P unit) to add it back into the PowerLine network. Thatâs the last time you need to do anything to the PowerLine network, so having the packages installed under OpenWRT is just unnecessarily taking up space â which we donât have lots of.
WARNING: Don't get creative or over-enthusiastic when selecting packages to remove. Keep it Simple. What I have done below works first time and gives enough space to do what we need, so I wouldn't advise removing anything else.
I installed luci-app-attendedsysupgrade from System â Software
This gave me a new menu item under System: Attended Sysupgrade
System -> Attended Sysupgrade -> Configuration TAB
Client -> TICK Search on opening (makes life easier)
TICK Advanced Mode (doesnât do what we need it to without this)
SAVE & Apply
Attended Sysupgrade -> Overview TAB
Click Search for âFirmware Upgradeâ which gives you the list of packages to customise for your image.
Some packages may not be in the list already, if you have disabled them in Luci
I removed these packages:
-odhcpd -odhcp6c -odhcpd-ipv6only
-ppp -ppp-mod-pppoe -kmod-ppp -kmod-pppoe -kmod-pppox -luci-proto-ppp
-dnsmasq
-wpad-basic-wolfssl
Then I added these packages:
+wpad-wolfssl
+iperf3
+mesh11sd
Click on Download firmware image, Keep settings and retain the current configuration
From your PC, set a ping to it's LAN IP Address in a terminal. Watch it as the upgrade is running, & after a short while you will see it suddenly start to time out. 30 seconds or so after this, your ping will start working again. At this point, open a new browser web tab and navigate back to the IP Address of your AP.
NOTE: The browser tab that you started the Attended Sysupgrade from will still be open & will be warning you not to reboot your device. Once you have logged in again a separate tab, you can safely close this one. It appears to be a bug in the interface â see this forum post about it.
Now, finally, I have everything needed to properly reassess my original question.
Current state of play:
Flashing all of my TP-Link networking kit with OpenWRT completely fixed my stability problems.
Ticking the 802.11r box on each AP sorts out all of my roaming problems. A beautiful & simple fix.
My PowerLine network is slow because of the way my house wiring works. The three AP's that form my WiFi network are using it as a backhaul, so I now want to add an 802.11s mesh backhaul to connect my AP's instead.
I have 3 TP-Link WPA8631P units running as dumb APâs. Each has been flashed with custom OpenWRT firmware that includes wpad-wolfssl & mesh11sd
I have replaced my Internet ADSL Gateway router with a TP-Link TD-W8970 and flashed that with custom OpenWRT firmware that includes wpad-wolfssl & mesh11sd too. Currently it has its WiFi radio disabled. It only has a 2.4GHz radio, so no 5GHz.
My 3 APâs run 2.4Ghz WiFi on channels 1, 5 and 9 (SSID: Home)
and 5GHz wife on Channel 40 (SSID: Home)
Each time I tried to set the 5Ghz to a 'free' higher channel, it wouldn't connect. Am I right in thinking that I should have just been more patient, & left it for 10 minutes to run its Emergency Service interference checks to make sure that the channel was actually available? It currently works like this, so I haven't looked at this issue in depth yet.
I now need your advice on Frequency & Channel selection for my AP's and Mesh. As all of my AP's & my Gateway router can 'see' each other at 2.4GHz, but at 5Ghz the ones at each end of the house can only see the one in the middle & my gateway doesn't even have a 5GHz radio, the advice from @bluewavenet to set up a 2.4Ghz 802.11s Mesh seems spot on.
Should I pick Channel 13 for my 2.4GHz Mesh and leave my existing 2.4Ghz AP's exactly as they are, running on Channels 1, 5 & 9...? Then wait until my family are out of the house & reset my 5GHz AP Channels to some of the unused higher frequencies - & give them time to check for interference?
Do I need to run my AP's to different channels to my Mesh, or have I got that bit all wrong?