Posted: Fri Dec 13, 2019 4:42 Post subject: HELP! wl BSSID's going to zero ?!!!
I am tearing my few remaining hairs out
I could use help from a hwaddr/mac expert or two...
- This is on Kong build 40270, R7000
- I do have some fancy stuff but never has been an issue until I had to rebuild the config today.
(Multiple VLANs, 2+1 virtual AP's on 2.4G/5G)
What I see:
* On the surface: immediately after boot, all Wifi appears ok for a few seconds
* But then most disappear
(I have wifi on eth1, eth2, wl0.1, wl0.2, wl1.1)
Digging in, I noticed:
* nvram hwaddr's appeared ok, except def_hwaddr and def_whwaddr were 00:00:00:00:00:00
* wl -i xyz bssid is 00:00:00:00:00:00 for all wifi that disappears. (Disappeared: all but eth2?!)
* I tried replacing the 00:00 nvrams with the obvious default (pci/1/1/macaddr)
* After reboot, all looked good (all bssid's ok)...
* But a few seconds later, the 'bad' wifi bssid's went to zero again.
Joined: 18 Mar 2014 Posts: 12889 Location: Netherlands
Posted: Fri Dec 13, 2019 12:41 Post subject:
Well @MrPete you have been sleeping
This is a known problem:
From approximately mid 2018 VAP's on Broadcom units are problematic, you cannot connect or do not get an IP address. There are workarounds :
1) When VAP is not working at boot; workaround startup command Administrationn/Commands, Save as Startup:
sleep 10; stopservice nas; stopservice wlconf; startservice wlconf; startservice nas;
2) Alternative way to get VAP working: https://forum.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=317181
3) An other user reports the following workaround (save as startup):
sleep 4; stopservice cron; stopservice wlconf; wlconf eth1 up; wlconf eth2 up; startservice cron;
https://forum.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=319412
4)This one is from @Redhawk (guaranteed to work ):
sleep 20; stopservice nas; wlconf eth1 down; wlconf eth2 down; wlconf eth1 up; wlconf eth2 up; startservice nas
This is a known problem...:
From approximately mid 2018 VAP's on Broadcom units are problematic, you cannot connect or do not get an IP address. There are workarounds :
1) When VAP is not working at boot; workaround startup command Administrationn/Commands, Save as Startup:
sleep 10; stopservice nas; stopservice wlconf; startservice wlconf; startservice nas;
...
Last BS builds are better and some can do without the workaround but YMMV
Thanks for the reminder, egc
Well, yes I've been quite out of it this year
(If interested, my sweetie wrote a great blog post... just google: Pete tries to go to heaven... again -- there's a link at the end to why 'again' )
I do know about that, and the workarounds. I've had the workarounds in place ever since May, when BS fixed the 2.4GHz vs 5GHz MAC problem at my request.
Unfortunately, this is apparently a new/different issue.
Last night, I apparently chanced upon a workaround for the zero BSSID problem: wl down;wl up
I still have my "dumb" questions:
a) what is "Wireless: LAN" for on the VLAN/switch tab, and why does it revert to LAN no matter what I do...
b) Is there any way to use external DHCP with tagged (bridged) VLAN+VAP in DDWRT? It does seem to function if I just define everything static everywhere, but that's painful 12 months in the future, when someone (me!) doesn't remember how/why it was set up this way
Joined: 18 Mar 2014 Posts: 12889 Location: Netherlands
Posted: Sat Dec 14, 2019 8:25 Post subject:
Well MrPete, quite a story, luckily you are still around.
AED's can be life saving we have them everywhere here in the Netherlands.
Regarding question 1: LAN means bridged to br0, you do not set it there the bridging is set on the Networking tab.
You can have external DHCP and VAP's (do not forget the workaround)
Set the router up as a WAP ( https://wiki.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Wireless_access_point ) and take it from there.
A VAP in itself does not support VLAN tagging (it is not in the wifi spec) but create a bridge associate it with a LAN port with tagging and put the VAP on that bridge.
