DIY WI-FI MESH with OpenWrt
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- čas přidán 2. 06. 2024
- MANY THANKS TO ALL MY PATRONS on / onemarcfifty !!!
Please visit my channel page: / onemarcfifty
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We will build a DIY 802.11s Wi-fi mesh with OpenWrt and two cheap commodity consumer routers using fast roaming 802.11r. Please use my affiliate links if you want to buy them:
Archer C7 : www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=U...
Xiaomi: www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=U...
The scripts for automatic deployment are on my github repository:
github.com/onemarcfifty/openw...
0:00 Let's build a cheap Wi-Fi mesh
0:30 Preparations
01:00 Config 1st Router
01:45 Software (wpad mesh)
04:50 Mesh Wifi settings
07:00 Turn 2nd Router into dumb AP
12:30 Config 2nd Router
13:20 Test Mesh connectivity
15:07 Turn both into Access points
17:25 Why did I chose 2.4 GHz?
19:00 Troubleshooting
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Thanks a lot for this video. I have an issue setting up mesh in 5ghz with TP-Link Archer C7 and TP-Link Access Point RE650. mesh says not associated. It works well in 2.4ghz but the I have an issue with some clients not 5ghz capabilities.
Maybe check that on 5 GHz you are on the lower channels (36,44,52) because those do not have dynamic frequency selection DFS
@@OneMarcFifty thanks for your reply Marc, I'll check that tonight
I had the same problem.
Solution: Replace:
ath10k-firmware-qca988x-ct
with:
ath10k-firmware-qca988x
Good luck!
Good point, many thanks!
@@pauldurand2 Thanks a lot, i'll try this evening if my wife does not use the wifi :-D ;) many thanks for the help guys!
These vids should be used in place of the official documentation.
The OpenWrt forums make us feel like we shouldn't even *think* about posting unless we've completed our Cisco certifcation beforehand. These vids are very accessible and consumer grade and could help the project reach a much larger userbase.
Dude, that comprehensive material and for free? Thank you so much, its basically leading by the hand across all steps of setting up real working decentralized mesh. Keep up the good work!)
Many thanks Anton!
@@OneMarcFifty hello what do you think of the new easymesh standard?
Hi Marc, I have recently started watching your excellent videos on OpenWrt.
Being pretty new to the OpenWrt project I'm really grateful for your comprehensive and detailed explanations.
Following your step-by-step instructions in this here video I have been able to build a 4 node mesh system based on Zyxel Multy M1 (WSM20) devices, whose stock firmware is not even beginning to unfold the potential that these pieces of hardware offer (to put it very euphemistically).
I'm still experimenting with a couple of tweaks:
- I have additionally installed the mesh11sd daemon for dynamic configuration hoping to improve roaming behavior for my older devices (the newer ones do roam as expected).
- Also, I had to disable the "802.11r Fast Transition" option in the wireless settings since some of my devices would not connect at all in WPA2/WPA3 mixed mode with that option enabled. Disabling fixed that problem immediately
Next topic I will look into is VLANs for network segregation and BATMAN adv.
Thank you so much for your work and for the effort you are putting into your channel! Keep up the great work!
Your tutorials always deliver solid information for setting things up and running, great job!!!!
Many thanks Alex!
Marc, You just keep getting better! This is as detailed a tutorial as most users would need - my compliments! The way you have outlined common noob mistakes/gotchas shows your commitment to quality - awesome!
Thank you very much;-)
You did a fantastic project for OpenWRT community. Thanks, really appreciate it!
Many thanks !
Superb! Been looking for tutorials on this forever! thank yo so much for your clear, concise instructions, and all of the accompnying "why" of what it is you are having us do.
Hey Brian, didn't know you were watching here - many thanks for the feed-back. Love your channel !!!
Great tutorial. Every step explained and not too fast. Thank you!
These are by far the best videos in openwrt and networking in general. Thank you.
Hi Mark - Thank you very much ;-)
Thank you for comprehensive tutorial, I've used it with minor modifications to configure two Archers C6 v2 EU. So far so good
Awesome, many thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the quality content. You possess the gift of explaining complex concepts in a simpler language, making them accessible to a broader audience. You should make more videos. And your voice is truly captivating. I wonder why you have only 47k subscribers 🤔
Awesome!!! Waiting for the next episodes!
Thank you!
Wunderbar . As always a very succinct and informative video. Looking forward to the next in series.
Thank you very much!
Great tutorial! Clear and concise instructions. Thank you!
Thank you very much!
Marc, Thank you for these tutorials... topics are advanced enought that I have never tried them on my own, but simple enought to follow. Just finished playing and puting toghether a mesh network with 3 GL-Inet travel routers... really simple, looking forward to test them in a real scenario on my parents home. Thank you for your time and effort.
Many thanks for your feedback Miguel ;-)
@@OneMarcFifty btw and for your información the TP-Link RE200 from v1 to V4 are OpenWRT and mesh compatible ... And preowned (second hand as we say in spanish) are about 5-10€ each, they can make a cheap/great mesh setup 🤓🙂
@@hkfuertes Oh - I haven't thought about those ones yet - true - a bit weak on the Wi-fi side (one Antenna) but great form factor and presumably an awesome solution for a small room / remote PC !
I ran into a small (?) problem setting up the mesh on a Ubiquity UniFi AP AC PRO. Your suggestion to SSH into the device and use the "logread" command was perfect. After a little searching on the OpenWRT forums I found the problem and the solution. I documented everything on the forum for future Josiah and hopefully other people. Thank You So Much!!! I've tried several times to setup a wireless Layer 2 link between my shop and the house, and this seems to have done the trick. I'm looking forward to adding more mesh nodes, wireless user devices to the mesh, and VLAN support. - So much done, so far to go!
really cool that you explain so clearly. its nice when content is a bit easier to follow 🎯
Dude, why can't one just upvote this with more than one thumb?! Awesome video and guide to success with the realization for a mesh Wifi, need to sit tight until my hardware arrives. Thanks a bunch!
Awesome - many thanks! Btw - cool name for a channel ;-)
Marc, great video again. As always :)
Can'r wait for the VLAN follow up...
Thank you very much
Many thanks. 5 years ago I did almost the same with the B.A.T.M.A.N mesh protocol on 2.4GHz. This worked great. We had the best performance with the default transmit power.
Many thanks for sharing!
WOW, great video with so much detail. I love how you answered potential questions before asked. Fantastic. I currently have an OPENWRT NetGear Nighthawk X6 AC3200. I still need to check if it supports mesh and also need a second router.
Hi Traviss - many thanks, glad you liked it ;-) Let me know how things go !
Thanks for another great tutorial! BR's from Brazil!
Thank you very much;-)
Thanks Marc for your video. I’m testing a mesh network with 1 tp-link Archer C50 as a main router and 1 Xiaomi 4a Gigabit and 2 Xiaomi 4a 100M as acces points. I followed your instructions and until now it’s working fine. Thanks again for your effort and keep up the good work
Hi Ismail, many thanks for the feedback!
Great video. I used an Archer A7 as the main router and tried another A7 and an Archer C7 as access points. I set up the mesh on 5 GHz because I have IoT devices that only connect to 2.4 GHz. I also ran into the issue with mesh not working on 5 GHz until I replaced ath10k-firmware-qca988x-ct with ath10k-firmware-qca988x. Many thanks!
Hi Greg - many thanks for sharing this!
Wow! I was surprised how easy it was to setup the mesh. In my case I have a few buildings with IOT devices. Therefore, I don't need very fast internet, but I need a better signal coverage instead.
I use the 2.4ghz band and iperf3 says that I have 40 mbits/s on the farthest AP.
The solution is quite stable: IOT devices (esp8266 based) report no disconnects, no package drop.
Thank you a lot for the guide!
Hey Marc! Excellent video. I just used two Archer C6 V3.2 and the fast roaming and mesh works great! The performance is also very good.
Awesome - thanks for sharing this !
Did you have any problems with wifi disconnections i have the same router like you with openwrt ?
@@bekim137 Sorry for the late reply! Use the snapshot versions. They solved the disconnection issue for me
I wish more subscriptions for your channel, you deserve it!
It is an amazing work to explain things clearly, detailed and very efficiently
Thank you
Thank you very much!
Thanks for the video. Followed and was was l able to configure a mesh. Different routers probably different openwrt version and still worked.
Your videos are very useful and well explained
This tutorial is awesome. There was still a bit of learning curve as I was connecting my mesh to an existing router and there were some conflicts in the beginning. But it's running and we'll see how long it stays that way. I'm using three D-Link DIR-6240's (As per one of your other videos). I'd say the D-Links made the process easy, and the ease of flashing them made them worth the purchase. I learned a lot along the way. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I can now ditch the proprietary (Just download our App) bullshit that comes with commercial mesh products. I have full control over my network and hopefully strong, stable wifi for a long time to come.
That's awesome ;-) Thank you so much for your feedback!
This was pretty good, please post more videos regarding openwrt...many of us are very interested in learning more about this great open source project.
More to come ;-)
Great tutorial mate, Thanks for it.
Many thanks ;-)
this might be the best tutorial video i have ever seen
most comprehensive tutorial and saved me loads of money
Thank you very much - I am glad that it was useful to you.
Another great one Marc.
Thank you very much
GReat content as usual Marc!
Many thanks Juan !!!
Great, incredibly useful content! Thank you so much!!!
Thank you very much;-)
This is a superb tutorial, thanks! A bit of an old-timer here; I've avoided mesh/roaming until now. Now that I see how you've spelled it out, I'm pretty sure I could have set up mesh/roaming in our last home; a roaming-over-wired-connectivity solution would have required an electrician to fish the wires.
Also wanted to add that this was so tantalizingly well done that I had to double-check whether I could run client AP connectivity over 5 GHz while still using 2.4 GHz for the backhaul. The answer was easy to find, based on your video chapters. For anyone else wondering, jump directly to 16:22 for the answer. (The answer is 'yes' btw 🙂)
Hi Marc. I use mesh with two Linksys EA8300, OpenWRT 20.02.1 and WPA-SAE3 encryption with the wpad-openssl packet. As Fernando already stated the mesh sometimes freezes about every 2-3 months. Then a reboot is needed, in some cases it even needs a cold restart to get the wifi-mesh connecting again on both nodes.
Many thanks for sharing Ulf!!!
Great stuff, as usual 👍👍
Thanks a lot ;-)
Great job, all your video are the best, thenk's.
It's been a little over a month since I committed my internal home network to 802.11s, and I haven't looked back. I use the 5GHz band for the back haul and this is fine. I think the hardware choice makes a difference as I can get the back haul extended to my shed about 50m from the house, albeit at bit on the edge with about 4% packet loss and a couple of walls..
My mesh nodes are made up of repurposed equipment:
ASUS RT-AC58U as my gateway.
Netgear WNDR3700 (old but works a treat)
TP-Link Archer C20 v5 (cheap purchased especially for this purpose - great range)
2x Raspberry Pi Model B Plus Rev 1.2
I followed this video and the batman-adv one. I now have 3 subnets running over the mesh. Everything is stable and provides all the throughput I need. Thanks for the videos. They made the process way easier.
Hi, that's really great to hear - 50m is REALLY far for 5 GHz - I'll have to try out some of the hardware you suggest (especially the Archer C20 - I see this one sells for roughly 25 EUR). Many thanks for sharing!
@@OneMarcFifty You're right about the 50m for 5GHz. If anyone else is in the same position, the 5GHz on the C20 seems to be pretty good, and on the remote end I have fashioned a parabolic reflector behind a USB WiFi adaptor on the raspberry pi. I don't use it for multi-media but it syncs my files between house and shed fine.
Still waiting for 802.11ah HaLow to become mainstream.
Marc, this tutorial was fantastic and I ran right out to buy a bunch of Archer C7 v2s from eBay (wow - CHEAP!); I'm trying to get our house meshed up with them this weekend. One issue I've run into: The C7 wireless radios may not behave very well until the country code is set (through the Advanced Settings tab in Wireless). If users are getting "Device is not active" errors that won't respond to any LuCI commands to enable wireless, etc., it's worth checking the country code and rebooting. Just about any individual setting change seemed to immediately "break" my 5GHz radio, requiring an ugly hard wipe of the complete wireless config ('rm /etc/config/wireless' or similar), until I set the country code. This quirk may only affect the US version / image of OpenWRT v21 for the C7, can't be sure, but it was a suggested solution I ran into several times while trying to diagnose. Cheers, thank you, and subscribed!
Many thanks for sharing with us ! It might be worth noting that some channels also need a minute to get associated due to DFS / weather radar regulations. Country code is important as well !
thank you, this trick works for me in New Zealand!
Excellent quality video!!
Thank you very much !
Wow, your videos are the best! I wanted to buy proprietary mesh system, but now I start looking for OpenWRT supported hardware. Thanks a lot! Best regards from Poland :)
Thanks Mateusz! Let us know how it goes!
Very good, it clarified many doubts, I can't wait for the next video, could you talk more about the different open-mesh protocols like batman-adv and others?
He already said that he is going to talk about them in the following chapters.
@@francocastilloAR I'm sorry, I didn't pay attention, my English is very bad.
Yeah - no worries ;-) next episodes ;-)
I love the way you explain thing u hvae very nice videos I think I watch them all
Thank you!
As always a awesome tutorial! I really like your way of describing things. One question is left: At what point would you recommend mesh over ethernet? I think, most people realize their over means like powerline etc.
I always prefer hard wire over radio if possible - if there is no way to pull a wire then use mesh
Thanks for this video - excellent tutorial!
By the way, I'm using two Linksys E8450 running OpenWrt 22.03.5 :)
Hi Marc, thanks for this video! I want to try this at home. One question, is it possible to keep connected both routers via lan cable instead of wifi? for more reliability or if the second router is too far from the first one to catch the wifi signal of the first one
Hi and thank you for your excellent video. Here is my experience with free wifi mesh.
I am using a wifi mesh system since about 4 monthes with 2 Xiaomi 4A gigabit edition with openwrt 21.01 on 5GHZ band, hardware acceleration activated.
The system is pretty stable but with some random and short micro disconnects, not very problematic for me as they don't accur very often and are not very long ( just some seconds)
In the main node, which acts also as a router, I installed DOH , wifi scheduler, UPNP and activated the NTP server.
In the second node, I just disabled DHCP server, DNSmasq and firewall, and installed wifi scheduler and put the adress of the 1st node as NTP server .
By the way, when I activate fast roaming as described in your video, a dlink router DIR-1665 acting as wifi client is not being able to connect to wifi anymore, so I disable this option.
I am happy with the global performance, but I have to restart the hole system periodically ( 2 to 3 times per week ) because I notice some drop in performance after a long period of use.
The performance return to normal immediately after restart.
Many thanks for sharing your experience here !!!
Good job, man!
Thank you ;-)
awesome awesome explanation!!!
Thank you very much;-)
but irrespective your experience and knowledge is really at the edge and i can say if you are not an inventer then you are second in line nothing less. your broad experience in fequency, routerboards, deep knoweldge of openwrt aqnd networking. thank and know that i appreciate the info you provide please don't stop
Awesome video as always :) I tried the mesh function on two AX6S which Iam getting ready for a Festival Wifi but i think i will go for LAN connection. The performance is not the yellow from the egg :P maybe because of the 22.03.rc5 version and as well because of bandwith sharing if your using two wifis/ssids on the same band. I tried it on the 5GHz AX network and it looks awesome if you see 2gbps but the effective speed was only 140 mbit between the routers :D I would recommand a triband router for mesh where you can have a special stream for mesh :)
Hi OMG ;-) many thanks for the feedback ;-) I totally agree - either tri-band or wire.
Thank you for creating this guide! Wish it was easier to create mesh 'nodes' - perhaps making a config save file would help, being able to save that to identical routers now being mesh-only access points.
For some reason, when disabling services, the AP hangs and does not work (10:45). If we avoid these steps it works! We are working with a Xiaomi Mi 1G (Master) and Xiaomi Mi 100Mb (AP)
Besides this all good!
Thanks Marc we love you!!
Hello Marc, I have installed 802.11s at m'y parents house. They have a quit great house with large wall. The wifi dis not reach the kitchen and it was not possible to use a LAN cable to put a 802.11r Access point. So i install an AP in the kitchen with 802.11s. it works great
And it is stable.
Awesome - many thanks for the feedback!
Marc, the content on your channel is awesome! What is the difference between a mesh system with fast roaming capabilities and a system which utilizes only fast roaming? I'm mainly interested in a good coverage at my apartment and seamless transition between AP's with all of them connected by air. Which option you would think best meets my criteria?
Same doubt here!
Actually - they are both the same. The access points are configured for fast roaming. the only difference is that the back bone is a wire in one case and over the air in the mesh case. So in a nutshell - if you have a wire then use it, if not then you can go for the mesh. Either way use fast roaming for faster hand-over from one AP to the other.
I always knew this day would come
Erm... which day ?
excelent turtorial.
Thank you
Great video, thank you! It's a pity that with today's consumer degradation trend, this video will not be in the TOP
Thank you - we’ll see ;-)
really good! thank you!
Hi Michi, thank you very much
Hi Marc,
i have set up my home wifi using the beautifully explained method here using 3 Xiaomi Mi 4a Gigabit routers flashed with the latest Openwrt.
However the dumb nodes have taken a performance hit and is extremely slow. I used to get better speeds by using WDS connection.
I do have to mention that the connection is solid but the performance is poor for the dumb nodes
Hi, many thanks for your feedback. What exactly is the performance hit, i.e. what speed did you get before and what after ? Presumably if you got speeds above 100 MBps and you use the 2.4GHz as the mesh backbone then of course you would be limited to the 802.11n speed on 2.4 GHz. Alternatively you could run th mesh backbone on the 5 GHz.
Hey Marc! Great video, always admire your tutorials, was thinking about this last night and boom you have one already!
One question though, was gonna use Openwrt + Ubiquiti u6, could this mesh work? Or should i go with 802.11r fast roaming?
They are two different things.
@@francocastilloAR Yes, I realized that now. 😅 apologies, a bit of a noob.
There you go - great minds think alike ;-)
Love your work thank you for this got this up and running with 4 x Xiaomi Mi Router 4A Gigabit Edition and 2x Xiaomi Mi 4C and its working well.
Awesome- many thanks for your feedback and sharing!
Since both of you have R4A Gigabit routers, did you ever encounter problems with wifi just not sending packets? Both of my R4AG's are connected via ethernet and one of them just always ends up starting to make some trouble with long website loading. It's really weird and I can't really debug it... Maybe one has a hardware problem or sth
@@LampJustin Question and the dns firewall ect turned off ?? With a laptop ping google dns for a while and watch if you get any spikes.
Install htop and check the logs.
I have an issue try ingto solve my self with one of mine I changed the port 1 to 4 I do know it's from the storm we had as the ehernet cable is in the roof since then has not been stable.
SNMP i want to install next and then see what it dose i use prtg and ping it and see times out alot want to reload it but could be hardware.
@@MRLGM07 hm yeah I'll probably need to run a logging agent since during the "problem" the ap is completely unreachable no packet is going anywhere and it happens at random times... :(
i didnt realized that this could applies on xiaomi router 4c too, omg just 40 bucks for 3 mesh system, thanks fyi!
Great video as always! You are my go to source when it comes to OpenWRT.
My backbone is 5Ghz, same routers - Archer C7 and Mi R4A. I am able to get max 100Mbit of speed. During speed test I noticed cpu go to 70% on both routers. Do you think it's CPU limitation?
waiting for this!
Yeah - I kept you guys waiting for it - I know
Gute Anleitung, die auch gleich Fragen beantwortet hat, über die ich stolperte. Hab's trotzdem noch nicht hinbekommen 😂 ich üb dann mal noch mit OpenWRT... Ich wollte ein Mesh Netzwerk mit 3 EX3700 von Netgear aufbauen, bei denen einer der Access Points eine LAN-Verbindung zu einem Router hat. In Ermangelung eines WAN-Ports ist das gar nicht mal so einfach 😉
Ah jetzt ja - ich musste erstmal nach EX3700 googlen. Klar - die sind ja als repeater konzipiert. Ich würde da wirklich einen zusätzlichen Wi-fi router benutzen, der den Internet Zugang bereitstellt. Hat Dein Router kein Wi-fi ? Oder ist er proprietär ?
@@OneMarcFifty Es sollte eigentlich allgemein nur ein kleines Experiment sein und dann möglichst einfach umkonfigurierbar werden, damit man das bei jedem der sich mal über Netzwerkprobleme beschwert als Ersatz geprüft werden kann, also ob's ggf. nur am WLAN liegt, wenn die HomePods aussetzen, auch wenn die Verbindung bei anderen Geräten soweit funktioniert. (lag in dem Fall am WLAN des FRITZ!Box Mesh) Und ich würd gern gleiche Geräte verwenden und per LAN einfach an den vorhandenen Router gehen.
Mittlerweile läuft die MESH-Verbindung schon, aber der AP am Router gibt noch nix zwischen LAN und WiFi weiter, aber das sollte nicht mehr lange dauern 😁
Hi Marc, thks for this amazing tutorial, Just one question
does this technics work when the archer c7 is in acces point only .? when the dhcp is before it, do you know if a client catch the dhcp through the archer, do you know to if we need absolutly to plug all mesh on it, can they pass through a switch .? ok sorry it's not just one question ... :) so nice you have an other fan
Thanks for your great video. I followed your steps and everything was OK until I did an attended upgrade on the mesh point which blocked my access to it. After some investigation, I suspect that it was due to the fact I removed the firewall rules, while the attended upgrade enabled the firewall service by default. So I suggest you to skip the removing firewall rule part, since in any case you will stop the firewall. In this way, attended upgrade won't break the access.
I was confused whether a normal mesh router (not using openwrt) would extend primary and guest network. I was searching through a lot of stuffs including VLAN support, interoperability (easy mesh) etc. Couldn't get precise answers. But all those answers are available in your videos, and they are well presented. Many thanks! I have subscribed.
I have a question. Can we connect one router with 2 access points at a time, one over mesh, and the other over wired backhaul (using openwrt)?
Many thanks for subscribing and for the feedback ! Yes, you could have that type of config. At some point in the network you would need to bridge the Ethernet VLAN and the batman VLAN (e.g. bat0.56 and eth0.56)
Brilliant video, after trying to change the firewall zones something seems to have happened and i can not reach my second router anymore... i can see it in the network, while accessing the first router, but am in no way able to connect to it... any tips?
I am using Xiaomi Mi Router 4A Gigabit Edition as main router and Xiaomi Mi Router 4C as access point. Both works great with OpenWRT and mesh.
Many thanks for sharing!!
Thanks a lot for the video. Does mesh only work with some routers or with all routers running openwrt?
Your Wifi hardware needs to support it - you can run iw config or the like to see if it is supported
This is fantastic, can you do an updated 2023 version of this please, perhaps include travel/battery operated routers that can be part of the mesh as well as vpn travel routers. Ive seen the mango vpn with open wrt router, but cant find out if i can add the mesh function? My plan is to have a large mesh thought my home and then transmit it several miles to wards my place of work and towards the local park so i do not need to use data. Its a fun project im investing time and at this point a little money into as i now have about 6 of the routers from your video, 2 tp link 1975 and 4 mi 1g routers from your video. It would also be great to find out if the routers memory can be expanded by adding a usb 4gb stick so i can do en-mass over the air updates over time. Is it also possible to use a raspberry pi, 1,2,3,4 or zero as a mini server as i wish to add them into the mesh for self hosting content, from a wordpress site on the pi 4 to video and database data and vpn protection across the others.
It would be wonderful to get a little feed back on this and amazing to get a video of you just talking about the above as a point of interest video on what can be done and roughly how to go about it as best advice for getting started.
Many thanks in advance, Chris
great vid. Is there a comprehensive website listing routers with mesh capability?
Not that I would be aware of - it really depends on the Wifi hardware. I think a good starting point though is one of the table of hardware (TOH) views on the OpenWrt site: openwrt.org/toh/views/start If you select one of the "Ideal for OpenWrt" views then that should be quite close to what you are looking for.
Very nice tutorial. Using the scripts someone with little network skills can setup a mesh.
The scripts also worked (only updating system time was missing otherwise the packages for wpad cannot be downloaded).
Could you give me an advice on what I need to configure so both mesh access points may be connected to the same physical ethernet network? Currently this creates a loop with the mesh wifi. Is disabling the mesh-wifi the best option?
@OneMarcFifty - great video. thanks!
I was wondering - is there a way to configure a LAN backbone for the Mesh (or fast roaming)?
or if I have eth cable for all APs I don't need mesh?
Both are possible. You can use a wire with batman-adv (see this video czcams.com/video/t4A0kfg2olo/video.html ) or - if you have a wire then you would not need mesh at all - see this video: czcams.com/video/kMgs2XFClaM/video.html
Thank you SO much for this! I do have a question that I would like to verify: 1) Setting up a mesh on 2.4 doesn't prevent you from serving different SSIDs on that same radio, correct? 2) I'm assuming that all that's happening is the mesh is just a hidden SSID network used for AP-AP traffic?
1.) correct 2.) it's not hidden but running in a different mode - the effect from a STA device is the same in the sense that it wouldn't see it. It would be visible on a Wifi analyzer though
@@OneMarcFifty Thanks so much for the confirmation, that makes it much easier for me to understand!!!
Thanks for the video. I'm unclear about one thing. After joining the 2.4Gside and getting that up and running, does that second router broadcast that same SSID or is it just a client for your 5G ap config?
All APs participating in the mesh will broadcast the mesh SSID. But that mesh SSID can not be used to connect to them with a client. For this you need to add an SSID in access point (AP) mode on every AP serving Wifi. Plus you may use the same band for this or a different one.
Thanks for this great video again.
Question:
Using Mesh network, would it be similar than using small wifi bridge devices?
Why i am asking?
Well, bridging wifi generally takes 50% of the wifi connection off the equation. Resulting in loss of speed.
So the question eventually is: would Mesh network also cone at the expenses of the speed and bandwidth? (Hance slower internet)?
I do understand that sometimes is not possible to use wires along the house, but maybe power line could supply to the issue?
I like the idea of mesh a lot.
Could i say it depends from the actually delivered ISP speed if Mesh network is actually functional in your house?
And again, i can be very wrong.
Thanks for letting is know.
Regards
Hi Cattivello, You are totally right. If you have a mesh with two nodes and you are using the same radio for mesh and AP then this will half the bandwidth very much like a repeater would. Possible solution would be to use tri-band devices. I just got my hands on a bunch of ASUS Lyra MAP AC2200 which I bought cheap on eBay - those can do 5 GHz on two separate radios plus 2.4 GHz - just the switch and VLAN is a bit of a challenge :-)
Would this work or could it be altered to work in a daisy chain? In my house, I am looking to set up three routers all connected via mesh, but router1 connects to router2 which connects to router3 which connects to the internet. I do not have the option to physically move router3 between router1 and router2. Also, router3 is way more powerful and has 3 radios and my other two have 2 radios. Would I want router3 to be connected to the internet in this chain, or, in the middle between the other two routers?
Hi - yes, you can daisy-chain those (i.e. have a chain of APs connected with mesh and your router at the end - or in the middle). Whether you put it in the middle or at the end really depends on where you position everything.
Hello dear Marc, first of all congratulation for your videos, very good content, with good preparation, sometimes I have to search along the video, and the chapters you split helps a lot. But I hvae a question, I have 2 TP-Link C6 v4, not yet supported by openwrt (and may take too long as the specs doesnt fit the needs of the firmware), but they support mesh natively by TP-Link firmware with WPA3 authentication. Is it possible to connect their native mesh to batman adv openwrt mesh protocols? thanks in advance, br.
Hello Mark, great your tutorials!
Does openwrt now (2022/09) working in mixes 2,4GHz and 5Ghz meshes under the same SSID name?
Hi Steffen, you mean have the same SSID for clients or for the mesh backbone? For clients no problem, but for the backbone I would use different SSID s
Hi Marc, I am wondering if Fast Roaming is much faster than Mesh? As you said in the Fast Roaming video all access points are connected through Lan cable?
this works if I have the main node and two others by cable? is that in my case I live in an apartment and I have too many nearby networks, so cable is the only option since I have almost 30 networks nearby and I capture them with enough signal, in 2.4 I have all the spectrum saturated, in 5 I have 2 free channels without overlap, but with bandwidth of 40 MHz, so I would not give all the speed, the best in my case would be by cable, I imagine that if it works well, but I need to buy the slave nodes, but I would like to know your opinion about it marc.
Hi Luis, if you have cable then you don’t need mesh. Just set up fast roaming on the access points
@@OneMarcFifty thanks marc
At around 11:21, you mentioned that the WAN port can be assigned to the LAN ports and basically become another LAN port. Is there any possible way to reserve the WAN port as an emergency LAN port where a physical connection to the WAN port could go to something like 192.168.1.0 and always be reserved as an access to configure the router to a static address while the other LAN ports work as a DHCP client, all without having to physically reconnect to the DHCP server to get back into the router?
Sure. Just add one of the ports to a different interface with a static address.
@@OneMarcFifty I tried that but no luck. Specifically, I tried setting the normal lan ports to dhcp client and creating a new interface to the wan and setting that as a static address, but yeah, no joy. :(
Can I use the mash function also over cable?
Because I have 2 Routers connected over cable (lan) and another only over wifi.
Thanks😊
I setup mesh between 2 Xiaomi AX3600 on 2GHz band (40Mhz), and one near the other they do 210Mb/s which is quite impressive for 2GHz band, didn't test further away or with 5Ghz, since that band is the one used for devices and is more occupied.
Reliability can't speak about it since I just got it setup.
Hello, thanks for the video. I was following along, and everything was fine, until when I made the second router a dumb AP. Now I can't login into Lucid there. Although I see that there has been an IP address leased to it by the main router, I can't connect to it. My dumb AP is connected with Ethernet cable to the main router. How do I connect now to the dumb AP?
Do I create two mesh points each for the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz bands? I'm willing to do the practice of making the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz bands have the same SSIDs so clients can automatically pick the stronger one.
You will have to have all mesh points in one given mesh on the same channel and SSID. Therefore, if you want to have your _mesh_ cover the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz band then you need them on one bands. You can of course have the mesh only on let's say 2.4 GHz and serve Wifi as access point in both bands. For this you'd use 802.11r (fast roaming).
great content!
Is it possible to create the mesh network with both working as access points?
i have pfsense as my DHCP server and i was wondering if i could use create a mesh network to expand the coverage using 2 OpenWrt devices as access points
Thanks for this great tutorial! What if I wanted a 'dumb' AP to have a WAN source as well, for loadbalancing/failover purposes? What would be needed for that? This could be useful if you want to share your mobile data plan with the home network using the hotspot functionality of your smartphone to whichever mesh router is in range.
I have that use case on my list for a very long time. My idea would rather be to run the phone in STA mode and then VPN to a wireguard ON the phone FROM the main router and map it out as an interface. But I need to test a bunch of things before this comes to life ;-)
I noticed @11:50 that you disabled dns , dhcp and firewall. I have archerA9 running openWRT and would like to use it as a dumb AP that sends vlans to another AP and repeater upstairs . I already have my main router running firewall and dhcp,dns etc.
Should I disable firewall, dhcp and dns like you did in this video on the ArcherA9 that’s running luCi?
You should disable DNS and DHCP. You can still run the firewall, but not with zones (as there is no routing on this device) but you could use it to block services etc.
Also make sure you disable IPv4 and IPv6 forwarding on the AP!!!!
Thanks for the video. Any idea why my main router's access point disable when the dumb access point disconnects?
I have the Dlink Dir-2660 I as think about getting the Dlink dir-2640 which supports mesh and is on openwrt compatibility list. As long as both routers support openwrt and 802.11s should this should work I assume?
Hi, afaik they are both identical. Maybe consider the Belkin RT 3200 as well.
At around 11:44, you delete the firewall zones and then remove firewall from the startup. Are both of these steps necessary or would just doing one be sufficient?
Disabling the firewall would be enough. the firewall config file is not read if the service doesn't start and hence the zones don't get created.
@@OneMarcFifty Many thanks! :)
I built a 5GHz home mesh connection with two old Xiaomi routers that I got from a guy on the internet. The powerful router has 256MB of ram, 128MB of flash, and an 880GHz dual-core processor. I tested the home mesh on 5GHz with a Redmi note 10 and iPhone 13. The iPhone passed quickly but the Redmi failed. The Home-mesh works fine on 2.4 GHz with both.
Hi, when you say home mesh - is that using the stock firmware or OpenWrt? I am asking because whether it's mesh or not should not affect client connectivity. 802.11s is back bone only.
@@OneMarcFiftyHi Marc, I am using Openwrt on two Xiaomi 3G routers. I agree with you about 802.11s so the hardware of Redmi is low speed
Thank you Brother ! Great video Greets from Amsterdam