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.
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!)
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!
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!
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!
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.
@@siddharth4662 A year in, still no issues. I replaced the parabolic reflector with a panel antenna mounted on the shed roof, and replaced the Archer C20 with something more suitable to get a higher throughput. I have an automated ping to a couple of the shed devices, which might miss one now and again. I run my proxmox offsite backup in the shed and its been fast enough and pretty reliable so far.
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!
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 🙂)
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!
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
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.
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.
@@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 !
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!
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.
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 🤔
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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 :)
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 !
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.
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.
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
That bit about how to include the wan port in the lan network is exactly what I was looking for yesterday but couldn't find. OpenWRT is very confusing for a newcomer, but I am sure is very powerful. I wanted a dumb access point with wpa3 security, but my device is EOL according to the OEM, and they haven't provided firmware for years, so this seemed like the next thing to do.
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
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
@@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. :(
Hi guys! Im currently using a Tp-Link C20 v4 as dumb ap and a Tp-Link Archer C60 as main router and ap. No issues so far and im using it with over 20 devices connected in total. The best part is that I got them for around $8 each (second hand, im not joking). So, ULTRA CHEAP!
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
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).
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.
my problem is that i dont want to loose either frequency/band, i want to use both 5ghz and 2.4ghz in our house. However, when i follow your tutorial on a radio that already has a access point (SSID) there, both mesh and the access point are disabled with the errors "Wireless is not associated". When i disable either protocol, the other one starts.
Hello Marc, thank you very much for the tutorial. Could you advise, does mesh connection between routers should have the same radio channel as the access point? When I try to switch mesh connection radio channel between routers, the access point changes itself for the same channel and frequency.
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?
Cool video but what if I wanted to use an outdoor POE point to point bridge or point to multipoint bridge ? like a TP-Link 2.4GHz N300 Long Range Outdoor CPE for PtP and PtMP Transmission | Point to Point Wireless Bridge
Well, if you want to use a specific hardware then you would need to check if it supports OpenWrt. If it does not, then you would have to go with what they offer you. If you wanted to do VLANs over such a config then you could try and tunnel point to point with some L2 protocol such as gretap which I show in the second episode ua-cam.com/video/WIKwOPwtTJU/v-deo.html
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.
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.
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?
My ISP's modem is also a router and has a DHCP server enabled. How should I configure the first router in this case? In my scenario right now, I have my ISP's modem/router with DHCP server, and another router in "Bridge mode", providing wifi, but the cable goes from LAN to LAN. How do I setup a router that goes from LAN to WAN?
You would only need this if you wanted to create a "DMZ" between your ISP's router and the first OpenWrt router. If you want to have that then just use the default settings of OpenWrt, connect your ISPs router to the WAN port and the other APs to the LAN port.
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?
nice guide, but I wish there was a guide on how to set up an OpenWRT router to act as a wifi connection extender while wired into 1st router. I have one router with modem on one side of house (main router is running DDWRT), I have ethernet running to the other end of house and have a router with Open WRT. They are on same wired LAN. My wifi doesnt reach all the way across the house so Id like to know how to set it up so that devices can switch between the 2 access points depending where you are in the house.
Why is only WPA3-SAE supported? I have other mesh devices, but unfortunately that can only use WPA2. Can I somehow manually force some of the other encryptions in the list?
No you can’t- it has more to do with authentication really - (SAE=simultaneous authentication of equals) - see chapter 2.3 in this article for further explanation: sar.informatik.hu-berlin.de/research/publications/SAR-PR-2021-01/SAR-PR-2021-01_.pdf
Marc, I also don't use mesh since I have a cat6 to my garage and that gives me full coverage. However, what good is an afternoon without trying something new? So I tried but WPA3 does not work with mesh and luci does not allow using wpa2. So I ssh'ed into both routers and then changed the encryption to psk2 and voila the mesh was up. Once again, great tutorial.
Hi Anil, great feedback, many thanks! So basically you just did a uci set wireless.wifinetx.encryption='psk2' followed by uci commit ? Did you do this on the mesh Wifi itself or on the AP wifi ?
@@OneMarcFifty I wasn't sure if UCI will also force validation to WPA3 like luci, so I just used line editor to edit it to psk2 and qw! to save and reboot.
Nice video. Thanks. But what can I change when I want all routers wireless? I have a Telekom router and I want a wireless connection to Xiaomi router nr 1. this router should then extend the Wi-Fi and should also create a mesh system that connects to Xiaomi router nr. 2 which then also acts as an wireless access Point.
Hi David, you would need to make the connection to the ISP router over Wi-fi then. You would create a DMZ/NAT if you do so, as we can not bridge devices in STA mode. Click the "Scan" button on a Wifi adapter in OpenWrt and select "join". Then create a WAN interface on that Wifi. Documentation is here: openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/connect_client_wifi Alternatively you might get it to work with WDS but I have never tried that : openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/atheroswds
Thanks for your answer. I will try it out but am still a little unsure. I'm pretty new to the subject. If I do as you described, how do I connect the second Xiaomi router best with the first? And what do you think is the better solution for my situation? This video or the other video of you about the cheap Wi-Fi mesh system with fast roaming?
Hi Michael, many thanks - I have replaced the product ID of the Archer C7 - still - the way I link to Amazon is not ideal (as I have viewers around the world and the ASINS could be different) - but Amazon needs a national setup for each of them. Anyhow - many thanks for the feedback !
I have problem with mine but i use Comfast EW-73. When i try to update list and download the package i get error package. I just used bridge to get internet because it has only one lan slot and one poe lan. Any idea to solve this problem?
You would need to check if the internet connection, name resolution and routes are set up OK. Go to Network - Diagnostics and ping a host such as openwrt.org for starters
Many thanks for a great and informative video. However, I could not get this working. I have a Linksys WRT3200ACM and a TP-Link Archer A7 both have the latest 22.03 software and are configured on the mesh interfaces identically. I was trying to use the 2.4G radio as the backhaul. But could not get any association between the 2 even in the same room. I configured one AP on the 5ghz radio. I even reflashed the devices with a clean image of OR 22.03 and clean configs. Currently I am back to roaming with the 2 devices at opposite ends of the house with wired backhaul. I just need to figure out how to liberate them from the wire! Any help appreciated. Cheers
Hi, i see archer c7 as discontinued.. do you have any recommendations for newer routers.. also both archer ranger routers to get higher coverage.. thank you
Hi Moyeen, definitely the Belkin RT 3200 if you can get hold of it (Xiaomi AX3200 has similar hardware). I am currently testing a handful of others. Please see my Github Repo for status: github.com/onemarcfifty/mu-mimo-test#test-progress - Video to follow soon.
Well done. I have tp-link deco m5 ,the main deco connected to an ONT and my router is off from my isp the 3 decos in my 2floor house says the 3rd deco on the 2nd floor where my ps5 and xbox is ,but shows NAT strict and double NAT..how do i solve this?
@@OneMarcFifty hello,it’s an honor for ur reply . I don’t have the openWrt. Ur overwhelming,simple and explanation is one of a kind so wanted it because of ur video,which I love by the way. I have a TP-Link Deco M5 mesh network. But my isp guys did the work and my router was off but still connected with Ethernet cable. So the there is this white box called Gpon terminal and a white box with 3 optical cables with one connecting ONU and the ONU connected my deco m5 (making it the router as per the main node) there’s a network switch which are filled up with cables on the ground floor. Then 2node (satellite is connect wirelessly to the main node,the 3rd where my PS5 and Xbox are gets low service with a 100% Wi-Fi connection. But it keeps giving me doubleNAT and NAT Strict. Our isp back here in west Africa no a little about some technical details. So how do I get an open NAT,coz they’re different up addresses.like apart from the first node which has become router,. The 2 satellite ones and atleast one of them is maybe in router mode and dispatches up addresses too. Can I wire it from main deco m5 unit aka my new router from its Poe switch straight to second floor. Thanks and I appreciate. Never missed ur videos
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... :(
is it possible to make a mesh network via 5ghz where the first mesh point is a mikrotik cap Ac conected via wan a isp with routerOs and the first node is an archer c20 with openwrt?
Excellent content! Your depth on the subject and clarity of instruction is perfectly executed. I wonder if there is a way to set up mesh with 2 dumb access points off a switch off a pFsense firewall that handles routing, DHCP etc? One access point is wired while the other one needs to be unwired as I'm moving it to another location. If anyone knows please inform me. Thanks!
@@balldavida@OneMarcFifty FWIW I did try this, but the access point unwired was unable to hit the default GW ( firewall ). I'm not sure how I would work that out. From my understanding of mesh, the AP wired to the switch acts as a GW for the other APs that are unwired. Currently all my APs are dumb, so how would I be able to make the unwired AP hit the firewall and be mesh?
I use unencrypted mesh with Xiaomi Mi Router 4A Gigabit Edition as a router and one Archer C60 v3 as dumb ap, on the 5ghz band. Sometimes, like once every 3 months, It suddenly stops working requiring restart of the radio interfaces on both devices. To mitigate this problem occurring on work hours I scheduled an auto restart at 4am on both devices, but this is not an ideal solution.
Is the R4AG the culprit? I have two of them (both connected via ethernet as aps) and one of them just always seems to give me trouble. It sometimes just won't respond. I don't know what's wrong exactly but in that time websites take ages to load and it will eventually start working again. Do you have an idea?
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
Wish my devices are compatible with OpenWRT. I got an Asus BRT-828 and Deco X50. I beliieve Asus BRT-828 is not Mesh-able, but it looks like I can't check if my X50 supports OpenWRT because I can't SSH on it. Any other devices that I can use for this that supports Wifi6(yeah, I have a few devices that needs it like my Oculus Quest 2)? Specially the main router must have at least 2 WAN ports because there are already 2 routers provided by our ISPs and adding a separate load-balancer might require me to get a small server rack which takes a lot of space.
Hi, unfortunately the support for Wifi6 is quite limited in OpenWrt at the moment. (Basically limited to Mediatek). However, there are some hacks for Intel AX200, enabling the AX AP functions - I need to experiment with those as soon as I find the time. For the moment, look here openwrt.org/tag/802.11ax?do=showtag&tag=802.11ax
@@OneMarcFifty Thanks for the details. I tried to scrounge the internet about this last night and the most affordable I can get in my country is a Redmi AX6S. The seller confirmed that the device they're selling is flashable with OpenWRT, hopefully this is true. The hardware looks promising. I believe the other LAN ports can be turned into another WAN ports and do the load-balancing through OpenWRT. Will order two units on next payday and hopefully I can make it work.
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 😁
Can I add a 5GHz mesh backbone as well as a 5GHz WLAN AccessPoint on the same openwrt router or will this break the mesh? What is the reasoning behind not adding both a 5GHz and 2,4GHz mesh backbone while also adding 5GHz and 2,4GHz WLAN AcessPoints for the wireless interfaces?
Hi Franz, you may of course use 5 GHz as a backbone and have access point on 5 GHz at the same time. the reason I used 2.4 GHz is because I have walls between the mesh points and also I have a 100 Mbps Internet line, so 802.11n is enough for the backbone for me.
On mesh point I see empty list of Active DHCP Leases, even if devices are near child mesh point. It seems devices still connect to main router instead of nearest child, that makes mesh useless. How to resolve this? I configured all as in this video.
Hello Marc I have a Qualcom Atheros QCA9880 Like wifi cards into the router and i follow all your steps but i cant create the mesh , never can i see the ssid mes of the other router. Please your help the model of router is TP-LINK OnHub, firmware version of Open WRT is 23.05.0.rc2
First off - if you have cabled/wired the access point and the router then you don't need mesh. An alternate solution using fast roaming is here: ua-cam.com/video/kMgs2XFClaM/v-deo.html
@@OneMarcFifty this is what i followed! thank you! all working now! can you have a tutorial for backing up the openwrt router? i mean everything including the installed packages? this is the only problem im facing right now..losing the whole configuration of my network if something goes wrong..is there any way to restore a backup or flash an image that includes everything you installed in openwrt and of course the config.
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!
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!
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 !
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.
Can this system be reliable for a Industrial Level deployment?
@@siddharth4662 A year in, still no issues. I replaced the parabolic reflector with a panel antenna mounted on the shed roof, and replaced the Archer C20 with something more suitable to get a higher throughput. I have an automated ping to a couple of the shed devices, which might miss one now and again. I run my proxmox offsite backup in the shed and its been fast enough and pretty reliable so far.
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!
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 🙂)
These videos are gold. Extremely high quality and well thought through.
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!
Your tutorials always deliver solid information for setting things up and running, great job!!!!
Many thanks Alex!
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!
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 !!!
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 just wanted to thank you for all the efforts to create such comprehensive and extremely well explained tutorial. Simply Masterclass
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 ;-)
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!
These are by far the best videos in openwrt and networking in general. Thank you.
Hi Mark - Thank you very much ;-)
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 🤔
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.
@Kyrylo_Borovyk: Did you use ethernet cable for backhaul support?
@@The0421016 no, I used wifi for a backhaul. Speed was awful, but good enough for what I needed
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!!!
Thank you for this video. It helped me finally get everything working after spending hours trawling through forum posts and various online docos.
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?
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!
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 ;-)
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 !!!
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
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
@sugataahad4078 Did you use ethernet cable for backhaul support?
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!
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!
Marc, great video again. As always :)
Can'r wait for the VLAN follow up...
Thank you very much
Great guide! I have made a mesh with two Google Wifi. I want 5ghz also, how do I do that?
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 !
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!!!!
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!
Thanks for another great tutorial! BR's from Brazil!
Thank you very much;-)
That bit about how to include the wan port in the lan network is exactly what I was looking for yesterday but couldn't find. OpenWRT is very confusing for a newcomer, but I am sure is very powerful. I wanted a dumb access point with wpa3 security, but my device is EOL according to the OEM, and they haven't provided firmware for years, so this seemed like the next thing to do.
this might be the best tutorial video i have ever seen
really cool that you explain so clearly. its nice when content is a bit easier to follow 🎯
most comprehensive tutorial and saved me loads of money
Thank you very much - I am glad that it was useful to you.
How to do a mesh network with wan ports connected at the router? I think that should be faster isn't it?
This is the best video I found on the topic. Thanks for sharing!
Awesome!!! Waiting for the next episodes!
Thank you!
Great tutorial. Every step explained and not too fast. Thank you!
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
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 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.
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.
Wunderbar . As always a very succinct and informative video. Looking forward to the next in series.
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
11:45 if I turn off 3 things firewall etc - router will not be able to connect to main router
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.
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. :(
You are the best Marc thank you for teaching us!!
Hi guys! Im currently using a Tp-Link C20 v4 as dumb ap and a Tp-Link Archer C60 as main router and ap. No issues so far and im using it with over 20 devices connected in total. The best part is that I got them for around $8 each (second hand, im not joking). So, ULTRA CHEAP!
8$ - wow - that's REALLY a lot of bang for a buck ;-)
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
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!
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).
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.
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!!
my problem is that i dont want to loose either frequency/band, i want to use both 5ghz and 2.4ghz in our house. However, when i follow your tutorial on a radio that already has a access point (SSID) there, both mesh and the access point are disabled with the errors "Wireless is not associated". When i disable either protocol, the other one starts.
Is it a limitation of your hardware? Some Access points let you chose either the one or the other. What hardware do you have?
Hello Marc, thank you very much for the tutorial. Could you advise, does mesh connection between routers should have the same radio channel as the access point? When I try to switch mesh connection radio channel between routers, the access point changes itself for the same channel and frequency.
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! :)
Great tutorial! Clear and concise instructions. Thank you!
Thank you very much!
Cool video but what if I wanted to use an outdoor POE point to point bridge or point to multipoint bridge ? like a TP-Link 2.4GHz N300 Long Range Outdoor CPE for PtP and PtMP Transmission | Point to Point Wireless Bridge
Well, if you want to use a specific hardware then you would need to check if it supports OpenWrt. If it does not, then you would have to go with what they offer you. If you wanted to do VLANs over such a config then you could try and tunnel point to point with some L2 protocol such as gretap which I show in the second episode ua-cam.com/video/WIKwOPwtTJU/v-deo.html
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.
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
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?
My ISP's modem is also a router and has a DHCP server enabled. How should I configure the first router in this case? In my scenario right now, I have my ISP's modem/router with DHCP server, and another router in "Bridge mode", providing wifi, but the cable goes from LAN to LAN. How do I setup a router that goes from LAN to WAN?
You would only need this if you wanted to create a "DMZ" between your ISP's router and the first OpenWrt router. If you want to have that then just use the default settings of OpenWrt, connect your ISPs router to the WAN port and the other APs to the LAN port.
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.
nice guide, but I wish there was a guide on how to set up an OpenWRT router to act as a wifi connection extender while wired into 1st router. I have one router with modem on one side of house (main router is running DDWRT), I have ethernet running to the other end of house and have a router with Open WRT. They are on same wired LAN. My wifi doesnt reach all the way across the house so Id like to know how to set it up so that devices can switch between the 2 access points depending where you are in the house.
You mean like in this video: ua-cam.com/video/kMgs2XFClaM/v-deo.html
@@OneMarcFifty yes! awesome!
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 ;-)
Why is only WPA3-SAE supported? I have other mesh devices, but unfortunately that can only use WPA2. Can I somehow manually force some of the other encryptions in the list?
No you can’t- it has more to do with authentication really - (SAE=simultaneous authentication of equals) - see chapter 2.3 in this article for further explanation: sar.informatik.hu-berlin.de/research/publications/SAR-PR-2021-01/SAR-PR-2021-01_.pdf
Marc, I also don't use mesh since I have a cat6 to my garage and that gives me full coverage. However, what good is an afternoon without trying something new? So I tried but WPA3 does not work with mesh and luci does not allow using wpa2. So I ssh'ed into both routers and then changed the encryption to psk2 and voila the mesh was up. Once again, great tutorial.
Hi Anil, great feedback, many thanks! So basically you just did a uci set wireless.wifinetx.encryption='psk2' followed by uci commit ? Did you do this on the mesh Wifi itself or on the AP wifi ?
@@OneMarcFifty I wasn't sure if UCI will also force validation to WPA3 like luci, so I just used line editor to edit it to psk2 and qw! to save and reboot.
@@OneMarcFifty I changed to psk2 using vi editor on the AP (802.11s) and on the mesh (also 802.11s).
Thanks for sharing - I’ll try that out.
Nice video. Thanks. But what can I change when I want all routers wireless? I have a Telekom router and I want a wireless connection to Xiaomi router nr 1. this router should then extend the Wi-Fi and should also create a mesh system that connects to Xiaomi router nr. 2 which then also acts as an wireless access Point.
Hi David, you would need to make the connection to the ISP router over Wi-fi then. You would create a DMZ/NAT if you do so, as we can not bridge devices in STA mode. Click the "Scan" button on a Wifi adapter in OpenWrt and select "join". Then create a WAN interface on that Wifi. Documentation is here: openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/connect_client_wifi Alternatively you might get it to work with WDS but I have never tried that : openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/atheroswds
Thanks for your answer. I will try it out but am still a little unsure. I'm pretty new to the subject. If I do as you described, how do I connect the second Xiaomi router best with the first? And what do you think is the better solution for my situation? This video or the other video of you about the cheap Wi-Fi mesh system with fast roaming?
Can I use the mash function also over cable?
Because I have 2 Routers connected over cable (lan) and another only over wifi.
Thanks😊
Using mesh, are the ethernet ports on the second router accessable? I would like to plug in a switch and provide netwok access to a few devices.
Your links for the routers are incorrect now, Can you update them please? Thank you sir. Great Video again.
Hi Michael, many thanks - I have replaced the product ID of the Archer C7 - still - the way I link to Amazon is not ideal (as I have viewers around the world and the ASINS could be different) - but Amazon needs a national setup for each of them. Anyhow - many thanks for the feedback !
I have problem with mine but i use Comfast EW-73. When i try to update list and download the package i get error package. I just used bridge to get internet because it has only one lan slot and one poe lan. Any idea to solve this problem?
You would need to check if the internet connection, name resolution and routes are set up OK. Go to Network - Diagnostics and ping a host such as openwrt.org for starters
@@OneMarcFifty thank you but i already did that one and my work is finished. Thanks! Merry Christmas & Happy New Year! 🎄🎄🎄🎇🎆🎉🎉🎉
@@waltrix5693 Thank you - same to you my friend ;--)
Many thanks for a great and informative video. However, I could not get this working. I have a Linksys WRT3200ACM and a TP-Link Archer A7 both have the latest 22.03 software and are configured on the mesh interfaces identically. I was trying to use the 2.4G radio as the backhaul. But could not get any association between the 2 even in the same room. I configured one AP on the 5ghz radio.
I even reflashed the devices with a clean image of OR 22.03 and clean configs.
Currently I am back to roaming with the 2 devices at opposite ends of the house with wired backhaul. I just need to figure out how to liberate them from the wire!
Any help appreciated.
Cheers
Hi, the Wi-fi drivers on the WRT3200ACM are - how should I put it - a challenge sometimes.
Could we setup 1 mesh dumb AP, then save configuration and import that into the second dumb AP? Just changing the host name afterwards? or?
You could. Take a backup on one machine and restore on another. As long as you haven't specified/overwritten any MAC addresses anywhere.
Hi, i see archer c7 as discontinued.. do you have any recommendations for newer routers.. also both archer ranger routers to get higher coverage.. thank you
Hi Moyeen, definitely the Belkin RT 3200 if you can get hold of it (Xiaomi AX3200 has similar hardware). I am currently testing a handful of others. Please see my Github Repo for status: github.com/onemarcfifty/mu-mimo-test#test-progress - Video to follow soon.
What do you do if you already have wifi configured on one router? How can you continue to use this SSID.?
Can I do this mesh with an ethernet connection between the routers instead of wifi
Well done. I have tp-link deco m5 ,the main deco connected to an ONT and my router is off from my isp the 3 decos in my 2floor house says the 3rd deco on the 2nd floor where my ps5 and xbox is ,but shows NAT strict and double NAT..how do i solve this?
Hi Mohammed, I am not sure if I understand the setup and the question - are you running OpenWrt on those ?
@@OneMarcFifty hello,it’s an honor for ur reply . I don’t have the openWrt. Ur overwhelming,simple and explanation is one of a kind so wanted it because of ur video,which I love by the way. I have a TP-Link Deco M5 mesh network. But my isp guys did the work and my router was off but still connected with Ethernet cable. So the there is this white box called Gpon terminal and a white box with 3 optical cables with one connecting ONU and the ONU connected my deco m5 (making it the router as per the main node) there’s a network switch which are filled up with cables on the ground floor. Then 2node (satellite is connect wirelessly to the main node,the 3rd where my PS5 and Xbox are gets low service with a 100% Wi-Fi connection. But it keeps giving me doubleNAT and NAT Strict. Our isp back here in west Africa no a little about some technical details. So how do I get an open NAT,coz they’re different up addresses.like apart from the first node which has become router,. The 2 satellite ones and atleast one of them is maybe in router mode and dispatches up addresses too. Can I wire it from main deco m5 unit aka my new router from its Poe switch straight to second floor. Thanks and I appreciate. Never missed ur videos
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!
Thanks for the video. Any idea why my main router's access point disable when the dumb access point disconnects?
is it possible to make a mesh network via 5ghz where the first mesh point is a mikrotik cap Ac conected via wan a isp with routerOs and the first node is an archer c20 with openwrt?
Hi Marcos, I can’t say for sure as I don’t know RouterOS well enough. But if they stick to the 802.11s standard then it should work
Excellent content! Your depth on the subject and clarity of instruction is perfectly executed.
I wonder if there is a way to set up mesh with 2 dumb access points off a switch off a pFsense firewall that handles routing, DHCP etc? One access point is wired while the other one needs to be unwired as I'm moving it to another location. If anyone knows please inform me. Thanks!
That should work.
It should work, just turn off the DHCP server on the access points.
@@balldavida@OneMarcFifty FWIW I did try this, but the access point unwired was unable to hit the default GW ( firewall ). I'm not sure how I would work that out. From my understanding of mesh, the AP wired to the switch acts as a GW for the other APs that are unwired. Currently all my APs are dumb, so how would I be able to make the unwired AP hit the firewall and be mesh?
@@the80scyborgninja39 you would need to bridge mesh and ethernet on one of them
I was wondering the same.
Did you manage to achieve that set up?
I have a pfSense firewall handling DHCP, VPN etc and would like to keep it that way
I use unencrypted mesh with Xiaomi Mi Router 4A Gigabit Edition as a router and one Archer C60 v3 as dumb ap, on the 5ghz band. Sometimes, like once every 3 months, It suddenly stops working requiring restart of the radio interfaces on both devices. To mitigate this problem occurring on work hours I scheduled an auto restart at 4am on both devices, but this is not an ideal solution.
Many thanks for sharing this with us!
Is the R4AG the culprit? I have two of them (both connected via ethernet as aps) and one of them just always seems to give me trouble. It sometimes just won't respond. I don't know what's wrong exactly but in that time websites take ages to load and it will eventually start working again. Do you have an idea?
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
Wish my devices are compatible with OpenWRT. I got an Asus BRT-828 and Deco X50. I beliieve Asus BRT-828 is not Mesh-able, but it looks like I can't check if my X50 supports OpenWRT because I can't SSH on it.
Any other devices that I can use for this that supports Wifi6(yeah, I have a few devices that needs it like my Oculus Quest 2)? Specially the main router must have at least 2 WAN ports because there are already 2 routers provided by our ISPs and adding a separate load-balancer might require me to get a small server rack which takes a lot of space.
Hi, unfortunately the support for Wifi6 is quite limited in OpenWrt at the moment. (Basically limited to Mediatek). However, there are some hacks for Intel AX200, enabling the AX AP functions - I need to experiment with those as soon as I find the time. For the moment, look here openwrt.org/tag/802.11ax?do=showtag&tag=802.11ax
@@OneMarcFifty Thanks for the details.
I tried to scrounge the internet about this last night and the most affordable I can get in my country is a Redmi AX6S. The seller confirmed that the device they're selling is flashable with OpenWRT, hopefully this is true. The hardware looks promising. I believe the other LAN ports can be turned into another WAN ports and do the load-balancing through OpenWRT. Will order two units on next payday and hopefully I can make it work.
Please see details on OpenWrt support for that device here: openwrt.org/toh/xiaomi/ax3200
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 😁
Can I add a 5GHz mesh backbone as well as a 5GHz WLAN AccessPoint on the same openwrt router or will this break the mesh? What is the reasoning behind not adding both a 5GHz and 2,4GHz mesh backbone while also adding 5GHz and 2,4GHz WLAN AcessPoints for the wireless interfaces?
Hi Franz, you may of course use 5 GHz as a backbone and have access point on 5 GHz at the same time. the reason I used 2.4 GHz is because I have walls between the mesh points and also I have a 100 Mbps Internet line, so 802.11n is enough for the backbone for me.
On mesh point I see empty list of Active DHCP Leases, even if devices are near child mesh point. It seems devices still connect to main router instead of nearest child, that makes mesh useless. How to resolve this? I configured all as in this video.
Hello Marc I have a Qualcom Atheros QCA9880 Like wifi cards into the router and i follow all your steps but i cant create the mesh , never can i see the ssid mes of the other router. Please your help the model of router is TP-LINK OnHub, firmware version of Open WRT is 23.05.0.rc2
can this still work with the cable between the two routers?
If so and a video had already been made, could you please supply the link. I just found these videos. Looks like an awesome set. Thanks
First off - if you have cabled/wired the access point and the router then you don't need mesh. An alternate solution using fast roaming is here: ua-cam.com/video/kMgs2XFClaM/v-deo.html
@@OneMarcFifty this is what i followed! thank you! all working now! can you have a tutorial for backing up the openwrt router? i mean everything including the installed packages? this is the only problem im facing right now..losing the whole configuration of my network if something goes wrong..is there any way to restore a backup or flash an image that includes everything you installed in openwrt and of course the config.