WDS bridging help

xrapidx

xrapidx

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Morning all

Need a bit of help here - a little out of depth. My house has bad wifi coverage - and I have a few wireless routers lying around - so I thought I'd try get them all working with WDS bridging, all the routers are different brands.

Asus DSL-AC52L connected to fibre and LAN, 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz wireless network.

Then - at another point - I'd like to add
Tenda N11 - connected to LAN, enabling WDS - and connecting to Asus DSL-AC52L

Further into the house - I'd like to add
TP-Link Archer C20 - connected to LAN, enabling WDS - and connecting to Tenda N11

Is that going to work? Or am I misunderstanding WDS? Then - further to the above

ASUS router - the SSID is set to HOME_WIFI

On the other two routers, what do I set the SSID to? Obviously the SSID to be bridged is HOME_WIFI - but what do I set the actual router SSID to?
 
WDS is patchy even amongst the same brands. Using other brands, you're just asking for a lot of pain. This is not the way to go

Not only that, you will reduce the entire speed of your network, as the channels and network type have to be matched. So you will be as slow as your slowest device
 
The above seems to work, just not 100% its been done correctly - I'm not looking for steller speeds here - as the "speed" sensitive items are on the LAN

Here's a speed testing to the net from the TP-Link which is only on wifi - no cable attached:
7713905408.png
 
So everything has been stable until today when dhcp leases expired

For some reason, the wireless devices aren't getting acknowledged by the dhcp server.

I thought I could enable a dhcp server on each router and split the range - but it means maintaining the static assignments on each router.

I also tried using pi-hole's dhcp server - but sit with the same issue where the clents aren't acknowledged.

All wireless devices with static ip addresses work fine.
 
does it happen if you connect to the wireless on the asus?
 
Doesn't look like it. Only the other two.

Now that I've moved the dhcp server off the Asus, none are working. Odd problem though.

All the routers also have a wired connection to the network as well.
 
Ethernet cable, pair of Ubiquiti UAP-AC-LITE. No WDS, setup once and forget.
 
Wait, you have a wired connection to the LAN from each router?

Set the SSID and authentication of all the routers to the same as the ASUS, and disable the DHCP on each. Since you don't care about speeds, that will give you one moerse wifi hotsopt.

If the routers have AP mode, then its even easier, just enable AP mode and the config is done for you, just plug in the LAN cable, heck, you can even daisy chain them.
 
Ended up getting everything up again - the issue was pihole running in a docker container, it wasn't serving requests on the hosts IP address.

Honey Badger said:
Wait, you have a wired connection to the LAN from each router?

Set the SSID and authentication of all the routers to the same as the ASUS, and disable the DHCP on each. Since you don't care about speeds, that will give you one moerse wifi hotsopt.

If the routers have AP mode, then its even easier, just enable AP mode and the config is done for you, just plug in the LAN cable, heck, you can even daisy chain them.
Click to expand...

I initially tried this - but for some reason it screws up the routing, devices on wired network try and and route via the wireless routers, killing their performance, and I wasn't in the mood to do static routes.

sajunky said:
Ethernet cable, pair of Ubiquiti UAP-AC-LITE. No WDS, setup once and forget.
Click to expand...

Trying to do this without spending more money.
 
sajunky said:
Ethernet cable, pair of Ubiquiti UAP-AC-LITE. No WDS, setup once and forget.
Click to expand...

So now I'm going to look into this - or maybe a mesh network?

Everything in the house is working fine - except for the google home devices, they keep dropping off the wifi network, and need to be re-setup in the app, even the one which is literally 1m from a router.
 
sajunky said:
Ethernet cable, pair of Ubiquiti UAP-AC-LITE. No WDS, setup once and forget.
Click to expand...
Please give some more details here?
I am in almost the same boat: 3 Apple Express units, one plugged into the fibre router, the rest configured with the main one via WDS. However I notice a lot of interference from the PS4 and Mibox, due to proximity of Express 2 to these devices.
 
Sweevo said:
If so, why the need for WDS?
Click to expand...

Because I don't know any better :D

[
Sweevo said:
I’d not make everything the same SSID. Sometimes it’s useful to have multiple SSIDs so you know which you’re connected to. Split the channels too:
Click to expand...

Might actually try this - just annoying when devices jump between networks.

Sweevo said:
Set channel width on the routers to lowest value (e.g. 20, not 40) and let us know if that solves it.
Click to expand...

This is for 5Ghz though? Current network I'm trying to extend is 2.4Ghz
 
The TP-Link Archer C20 seems to be the most problematic - when ever I bring it up it causes issues with the rest of the network - you also can't set the gateway and dns server on the router.
 
I'll have a look - haven't seen the option.

At the moment - the only devices having a problem are the google home devices, everything else, including devices far away in the garden are working 100%
 
Done that already- also tried switching them a bit to try and get stability.

The home devices are buggy at best - they'll randomly drop off the wifi network - you then have to go through the setup process again, select the wifi network - and everything works again. Simply switching them off and on doesn't get them to rejoin the network.
 
Sweevo said:
That's what made me think you were using channel bonding. I've seen some dodgy behavior on channel bonded networks. The home devices - are they chromecasts or other generic devices?
Click to expand...

Google Home x1 - and Google Home Mini x2. The Mini's being the most problematic.

Also have 2x Chromecast Ultra's hardwired - which give no issue.
 
Sweevo said:
Hmm... unfortunately I don't know Google Home devices well at all. You said you tried different channels? It actually sounds like a firware bug to me. Is there not perhaps an update? I guess they probably update themselves when online?
Click to expand...

Yeh, they update themselves - definitely think the problem is on the Google device side, if they don't have 100% stable network - they drop off. Googling the devices and wifi issues - seems I'm not alone.

If I have them all near a single wifi router - and all other routers off - they work fine.
 
So far - setting up the routers on separate SSIDs - and as dedicated APs seems to be the most stable. It was a serious pain in the ass though, most of these IoT devices had to be resetup completely, not allowing a simple wifi network change.

Even had to redo my entire sprinkler system as it wouldn't connect to the new wifi SSIS - thank goodness for backups.

Hopefully worth the effort though, damn google devices.

(also changed down 20Mhz - never seen the option before, but it was there)

Thanks for the help. Not a fan of wifi.
 
Bit late to the party but why would not consider powerline ethernet @xrapidx? Given the levels of effort already spent that may be the easiest option.

I appreciate the inner geek would want to make the setup work with the kit you already have but if it is fussy or unstable, the household will complain as they do not care for your geeky sh.it.
 
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