Using OpenWrt as wired repeater

Installing and Using OpenWrt Network and Wireless Configuration
1

Hello openwrt community,

I have been trying to use my Xiaomi 4A Gigabit Edition router as a wired repeater or at leasy that was what's called in the stock firmware but I can not seem to be able to find the appropriate resources/guide for it. I am only able to find wireless repeater stuff which isn't ideal
My use case would be my home server/nas on the primary router, every other thing on the secondary router due to housing structure.
I was doing this on stock firmware but I wanted to try openwrt and been unable to achieve it.
Running on OpenWrt 21.02.3 r16554-1d4dea6d4f

I basically want to have the same IP range as my primary router.

Thank you for your time.

2

It's still unclear what you understand by that term, going on a limb, I'd venture into the general direction of the "dumb AP" scenario.

1 Like
4

I want to have the same IP range as my primary router and connect the WAN port on my secondary router with openwrt to 1st router's lan port

5

A wired repeater is a switch each 100m if you use ethernet cable…
A lot longer if you use fiber.

6

Like slh said, you are looking for "dumb ap" scenario.
(Easiest is to use one Lan port instead of the wan port...)

See

Old advice written by me:

If you connect the two routers using a fixed connection between LAN ports, the whole thing is ridiculously easy, as you can dumb down the APs. (The key to making things really easy is to NOT use the WAN port in the slave APs at all.)

Basically you need to adjust these in router2:

  • set the hostname to be different than the main router has
  • set router2’s LAN interface to match the subnet of router1, but to have a different fixed IP address. I use 192.168.1.2
  • set that router’s DNS and gateway info to point into router1 (192.168.1.1 in my case)
  • config the DHCP server in router2 to ignore requests from local LAN interface. I do that config to prevent mishaps with the service starting accidentally, although I also disable the service itself (dnsmasq).
  • disable the DHCP/DNS service (dnsmasq) in router2
  • config the Wifi normally. At least change the wifi channel to prevent signal overlap.