WiFi-Mesh network

Installing and Using OpenWrt Network and Wireless Configuration
1

Hi,

i just sucessfully setup Mesh with 2x WiFi-APs.
Is there a way to affect the behaviour of switching between the two APs ?
Sometimes the devices (e.g. Smartphones) doesnt switch to the better/stronger APs or it takes for ages to switch to the better/stronger AP.
Can this be setup/configured in some way ?
Hopefully someone can help me.
Thanks a lot.

2

By this I take it that you mean how a specific client chooses which AP to associate with.

If so, the short answer is "no", as it is the client that makes the decision. As the client has knowledge of the signal strength and capabilities of the APs it "sees", its radios' capabilities, its own RF environment, as well as its current open connections, it seems a rational decision that the 802.11 specification leaves it up to the client to decide.

There are ways to "kick" a client off of an AP, but there is no guarantee that it will try to "roam" to another AP or SSID.

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3

ok ... but what is the advantage of Mesh then ?
Before i had the 2x APs running with same SSiD but differnet channel.
and i had the hope that Mesh will help me with better switching to the stronger AP.

4

Assuming that your clients aren't mesh-capable (which most cell phones, laptops, tablets, IoT devices, ... are not), then the advantage is when you have more than two APs connected wirelessly to allow the APs to connect to each other more reliably.

Two APs:

A <~~~> B

Only one path, "mesh" can't help you if that path is "down"

Three APs:

A <~~~> B
 \     /
  \  /
   C

Now, if the A-to-B link is down, a "mesh" approach can allow A to communicate with B by way of C

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5

In other words the mesh helps APs connect to each other. If you had both APs connected by wire, then mesh is pointless, just make your SSID and security identical on two APs and hope your client roams.

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6

any hint for me how to do that with kicking clients?
I found this:


Is this still working with newest stable Openwrt release ?

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7

I've never messed with kicking clients, but that looks reasonably recent (Feb, 2018) and appears to be a straightforward shell and Lua script, so I'd guess it's either compatible with 18.06, or pretty close.

8

So none of the existing mesh protocols ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network) make the client aware of the meshness of the wlan they are connected to ??

9

More that virtually none of the common, existing clients are mesh-capable.

There is no "mesh-ness" when connecting to an AP as a conventional client, no matter how the backhaul is done.

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