Two SSIDs/Two Zones/One Radio

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

I've recently updated to 21 from 19.0.8. I live in a building where there is shared wifi for the handful of tenants, and I am using OpenWRT as a wireless client, and then it's rebroadcasting/protecting/zoning my personal wifi.

The building wifi is my ISP, per se.

I'm having difficulty with my Linksys WRT3200ACM. It has three radios, 5Ghz, 2Ghz, and a third diagnostic radio normally used for intelligent channel changing/congestion detection.

I'd like to use the 5G radio to both connect to the building as a client, and also be my primary internal wifi space.

However, after defining the internal zone and then scanning/adding building wifi as a client under the same radio, it knocks both wifi networks offline and disables all activity.

I made sure the client was connected to "wwan/wan" instead of "lan" like the internal SSID.

If I add the client to the diagnostic radio (OpenWRT can use it as a regular radio, too, although that's not its purpose) then things work fine.

So, it's just the attempt to hairpin traffic from building wifi through the same radio that's causing issue.

This is what I see mostly in the log:

Sun Nov 21 14:50:37 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: handle_probe_req: send failed                                  
Sun Nov 21 14:50:37 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: handle_probe_req: send failed                                       
Sun Nov 21 14:50:38 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: handle_probe_req: send failed                                  
Sun Nov 21 14:50:38 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: handle_probe_req: send failed                                  
Sun Nov 21 14:50:38 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: handle_probe_req: send failed                                  
Sun Nov 21 14:50:38 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: handle_probe_req: send failed                               
Sun Nov 21 14:50:40 2021 kern.debug kernel: [   96.780700] ieee80211 phy1: staid 8 deleted                     
Sun Nov 21 14:50:40 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: handle_probe_req: send failed                                  
Sun Nov 21 14:50:40 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: handle_probe_req: send failed                                  
Sun Nov 21 14:50:41 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: Remove interface 'wlan0-1'                                     
Sun Nov 21 14:50:41 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan0-1: interface state ENABLED->DISABLED                     
Sun Nov 21 14:50:41 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan0-1: AP-DISABLED                                           
Sun Nov 21 14:50:41 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan0-1: CTRL-EVENT-TERMINATING                                
Sun Nov 21 14:50:41 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: nl80211: deinit ifname=wlan0-1 disabled_11b_rates=0           
Sun Nov 21 14:50:42 2021 kern.info kernel: [   98.609586] device wlan0-1 left promiscuous mode                 
Sun Nov 21 14:50:42 2021 kern.info kernel: [   98.614281] br-lan: port 6(wlan0-1) entered disabled state       
Sun Nov 21 14:50:42 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: Configuration file: /var/run/hostapd-phy0.conf (phy wlan0) --> 
Sun Nov 21 14:50:42 2021 kern.debug kernel: [   99.211321] ieee80211 phy0: change: 0xffffffff

Not sure how to approach resolution. I'll be happy to provide any other config files as needed, but didn't want to spam with extraneous information and I'd need to collect it while it's in a "broken" state as I've reverted back to using the little diag radio as my bridge device to the building for the moment.

Thanks in advance --

Eric

P.S. -- I already had an issue with 21 and it not allowing me to add two SSID's to the same radio as well. I was able to resolve that by forcing a second BSSID Mac address on the second SSID added. That situation also took down all SSID's on that radio's config.

2
  1. Make sure your country code is set.
  2. What channel is the building AP using? AP and STA at the same time probably won't work on a DFS channel.
3

I took a look and the building is on 34, and my internal Wifi is on 36. Country Code is at US for internal and was set to "driver default" for the client. I can try forcing it to US when I have time to take the wifi online tomorrow.

Is there any other config files that would be helpful (or screenshots) when it's in a "broken" state?

--Eric

4

This won't work, both AP and STA must be on the same channel.

1 Like
5

Okay -- I will force the channel to be the same later this evening and give you an update. Makes sense.

--Eric

6

I tried forcing all the channels on that radio to be the same as the upstream (44) on the 5Ghz radio. So it's acting as an AP and STA on the same radio, with the client being in the wwan zone and the AP on the internal LAN. But I can't get it to authenticate as a client/STA. I've double checked and it's the exact same settings as when I try to use the little diagnostic radio which is currently dedicated to being the client to the rest of the world. So, still not working. I can't really go back to 19.x at this point, but pretty sure this wasn't a problem before. I get a lot of these errors in the log when this configuration is active, plus the PSK mismatch. Anything else I can try. or any other configuration/log files/debug modes I can enable to try and track down why I can't have the one radio acting as both a client and providing AP services at the same time?

Sat Nov 27 16:31:44 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: handle_probe_req: send failed
Sat Nov 27 16:31:46 2021 daemon.info hostapd: wlan1: STA 3c:9b:d6:b2:bc:6f IEEE 802.11: associated (aid 7)
Sat Nov 27 16:31:46 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: AP-STA-POSSIBLE-PSK-MISMATCH 3c:9b:d6:b2:bc:6f
Sat Nov 27 16:31:47 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: AP-STA-POSSIBLE-PSK-MISMATCH 3c:9b:d6:b2:bc:6f
Sat Nov 27 16:31:47 2021 daemon.info hostapd: wlan1: STA 3c:9b:d6:b2:bc:6f IEEE 802.11: authenticated
Sat Nov 27 16:31:48 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: handle_probe_req: send failed
Sat Nov 27 16:31:48 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: handle_probe_req: send failed
Sat Nov 27 16:31:48 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: handle_probe_req: send failed
Sat Nov 27 16:31:48 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: handle_probe_req: send failed
Sat Nov 27 16:31:48 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: AP-STA-POSSIBLE-PSK-MISMATCH 3c:9b:d6:b2:bc:6f
Sat Nov 27 16:31:48 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: handle_probe_req: send failed
Sat Nov 27 16:31:48 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: handle_probe_req: send failed
Sat Nov 27 16:31:49 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: AP-STA-POSSIBLE-PSK-MISMATCH 3c:9b:d6:b2:bc:6f
Sat Nov 27 16:31:50 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: handle_probe_req: send failed
Sat Nov 27 16:31:50 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: handle_probe_req: send failed
Sat Nov 27 16:31:50 2021 kern.debug kernel: [524742.102942] ieee80211 phy1: staid 9 deleted
7

Here's more information -- when I switch back to the other radio, it authenticates fine.

Sat Nov 27 17:16:36 2021 daemon.info hostapd: wlan1: STA 3c:9b:d6:b2:bc:6f IEEE 802.11: authenticated
Sat Nov 27 17:16:36 2021 daemon.info hostapd: wlan1: STA 3c:9b:d6:b2:bc:6f IEEE 802.11: associated (aid 7)
Sat Nov 27 17:16:37 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: AP-STA-POSSIBLE-PSK-MISMATCH 3c:9b:d6:b2:bc:6f
Sat Nov 27 17:16:38 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: AP-STA-POSSIBLE-PSK-MISMATCH 3c:9b:d6:b2:bc:6f
Sat Nov 27 17:16:39 2021 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: AP-STA-POSSIBLE-PSK-MISMATCH 3c:9b:d6:b2:bc:6f
Sat Nov 27 17:16:40 2021 kern.debug kernel: [527433.503740] ieee80211 phy1: staid 9 deleted
Sat Nov 27 17:16:45 2021 daemon.info hostapd: wlan1: STA 3c:9b:d6:b2:bc:6f IEEE 802.11: deauthenticated due to local deauth request
Sat Nov 27 17:16:52 2021 daemon.info hostapd: wlan1: STA 3c:9b:d6:b2:bc:6f IEEE 802.11: authenticated
Sat Nov 27 17:16:52 2021 daemon.info hostapd: wlan1: STA 3c:9b:d6:b2:bc:6f IEEE 802.11: associated (aid 7)

Here is the config file for the two different radio sections, note they are exactly the same including password, but only the one on the shared radio throws the PSK mismatch:

config wifi-iface 'wifinet5'
        option device 'radio2'
        option mode 'sta'
        option network 'wwan'
        option ssid 'Sarvela0105'
        option encryption 'psk2'
        option key '<redactedbutexactlythesame>'

config wifi-iface 'wifinet6'
        option device 'radio0'
        option mode 'sta'
        option network 'wwan'
        option ssid 'Sarvela0105'
        option encryption 'psk2'
        option key '<redactedbutexactlythesame>'
        option disabled '1'
8

I should note that if I disable the 5G 'ap' mode for my internal LAN running on that radio, then the client can startup just fine. It's just holding me to one or the other. This new 21.x version also won't let me run two 'ap' configs on the same radio either, unless I manually override the second SSID with a unique mac address, an issue that didn't occur with 19.x either. But I'm only doing that (for now) on the 2.4Ghz radio. I'll start adding additional SSID's to the 5Ghz channel after I get this ap/sta conflict figured out.

9

I gave up and reverted to 19.0.8, where everything works exactly as expected with no bugs and sharing is totally working fine on the same radio as both 'sta' and 'ap' modes.

This are clearly some issues with 21.x at this point for the WRT3200ACM platform at this point, and hopefully the above information is sufficient to to recreate in a lab environment. Something I don't have the luxury of, and need my home production network to be up and stable.

Eric