I'm completely new here and just want to thank the community for such an amazing alternative to router firmwares. I am also quite new to networking and messing about with routers in general.
I purchased a Xiaomi 4C and was able to get OpenWRT working on it quite well. I had no hiccups and followed Hoddys Guides (with a few exclusions/exceptions) as I was doing the firmware installation from MacOS.
One of the main functions I wanted the router was for OpenWRT's ability to create a virtual https server accessible from outside the network - which I used Lighttpd for and it's worked flawlessly on port 8080.
Now I have the Xiaomi 4C OpenWRT hardwired to my Fibre Router (Huawei and non-OpenWRT) and I have it configured as a Dumb AP.
For my current use-case, it works good. But I want to make it a little more capable (I have some weird ideas in mind) - and instead of having the Xiaomi 4C hardwired as a Dumb AP, I'd like to have it connected to my Huawei Fibre router wirelessly, but still as a Dumb AP.
I have seen some forum posts regarding this, but I'm not sure anyone was really successful or maybe they just didn't update their successes here:
Firstly, I'm not sure what it's called? BAsed on what I've researched I believe what I'm trying to do is called a Wireless Bridge? Or Wireless Station?
Anyways, it's a little hard to find information on Xiaomi routers regarding their full specs, but based on what I've found, the Xiaomi 4C does not by default support WDS. If this is what I need, is it possible that having OpenWRT installed on it will give it this capability since it has 4 antennas, and I'm assuming 2 radios based on what I've read.
Hardwire is always more capable than wireless so unless you have a situation where you simply must use wireless I would not recommend going wireless for your backhaul. Stick to good reliable copper. If you need to go wireless then it will depend on the capabilities of your Huawei non-Openwrt router. If the Huawei can do 802.11s mesh then connect it using mesh. If it can do WDS then connect over WDS (WDS doesn't always work from different manufacturers). If you huawei can do neither then your limited to setting up a basic wireless connection which will require natting and you will be running two different subnet IDs.
The thing is, I don't actually intend on using the Xiaomi 4C OpenWRT as an access point, in that, device will not be connecting to it. I simply need it as a small-scale http server that will host a static html page, accessible through WAN. So it's a pretty basic use-case.
I'm actually using it to monitor power outages. And at 260 bucks (South African) - it's cheaper than any other power outage detector solution available.
then your next step is simply to log into your huawei router and see what wireless capabilities it has. Mesh beats WDS so see if your huawei router can do mesh 802.11s then that's your best bet and you will need to remove wpad-basic and install wpad-wolfssl-mesh on your openWRT router. If it has WDS then you could try to connect using WDS but it's gonna be 50/50 if it will actually connect up and if it does whether it will stay connected. If neither of the aforementioned are available then you are stuck with connecting your openWRT router as a client to the AP of the huawei which will result in a double natted network and security nightmare (if you care about such a thing).
So my Huawei Fibre ONT, EG8145V5 does not support either Mesh or WDS.
I followed the following tutorial:
And I was able to achieve what I was trying to. I did not expect the setup to be so complex. Or rather, so hefty on the many steps involved.
Nevertheless, I'm assuming what I just did is double natted as you described. You mentioned it is a security nightmare. Can you explain a little if you have a chance. Thanks.
I tried relayd a while back and hit some snags so forced me to abandon it for the purposes of algamating to different subnet ids. My understanding is relayd works at L3 so it is unable to handle L2 traffic. You should test your setup to see if you can achieve what you want with relayd.
I've been testing and messing about with the relayd method. It's working flawlessly thus-far. I am even able to connect to it from outside my network, via my fibre router (ddns) which is port forwarded to an IP address for the Xiaomi router on the fibre router subnet. So where my fibre router is 192.168.18.1, the Xiaomi router is desginated off the DHCP range on 192.168.18.5 (this is how it is done on the relayd method). Also, the Xiaomi router has its own subnet, 192.168.1.1, the default subnet set up by OpenWRT.
