Posted: Sat Aug 31, 2024 16:38 Post subject: Having trouble to setup mesh between Linksys MX4200 and 4300
Hello, could someone take pity on this mountain of ignorance, me, and explain what I am doing wrong. I setup DDWRT build 8/30/2024 on both a Linksys MX-4200 and a MX-4300 and tested both work fine when connected to a Comcrap router.
Then setup the second 5 GHz interface in Mesh mode, with the same SSID, encryption and password on both routers (the 4300 being the main connected to Comcrap), took the 4200 a few meters away, connected my laptop to a LAN port of the 4200 but cannot access the internet. I can access the local 4200 fine, but cannot access the 4300 through the mesh.
How can I check that the mesh connected ? Is there a tutorial I could read ? I did not use WDS, but the latest option in the list, 802.11s mesh mode.
Thank you !
Slave 5GHz2
Master 5GHz 2
Last edited by konrads4 on Sat Aug 31, 2024 19:05; edited 3 times in total
Check the log and look for any errors there. The GUI is not going to show anything about why they are not connecting.
- Make sure both syslogd and klogd are enabled in Services tab.
- telnet or ssh into both routers and type #tail -f /var/log/messages
- You can also try looking for any errors with this command: #cat /var/log/messages | grep -i error
- You can check for kernel dumps on the mx4300 by typing #strings /dev/mtd26 (not sure what it may be for the mx4200. You can check by typing #cat /proc/mtd on that router. Look for the oop partition. That is where kernel dumps are stored. _________________ - Linksys EA8500: I-Gateway, WAP/VAP 5ghz only. Features: WDS-AP, VLANs, Samba, WG, Entware - r58662
- Linksys EA8500: 802.11s Secondary w/VLAN Trunk - r58662
- Linksys MX4300: 802.11s Primary w/VLAN Trunk over 5ghz. 2.4ghz WAP/VAP only - r58662
- Linksys MX4300 (WAP/VAP (7)) Multiple VLANs over single trunk port. Entware/Samba r58662
- Linksys MR7350: Testing r58662
- Linksys Velop WHW03v1 x2: OpenWRT w/GRETAP tunnel for VLANs on VAPs
- OSes: Fedora 39, 9 RPis (2,3,4,5), 20 ESP8266s: Straight from Amiga to Linux in '95, never having owned a Windows PC.
I tried this too and I got nowhere. I could see that they were all connected at the bottom of one of the pages. (I named the routers Linksys1, Linksys2 and Linksys3 and each router showed the other two in the GUI on the same page it shows all of the connections.) You can also tell they are connected if you connect to the primary router via ethernet and you can see the others by their IP addresses. So if you called the primary 192.168.1.1 and you can see 192.168.1.2 and 192.168.1.3 out there then they are connected.
But when they were connected for me, nothing could connect to the network. FYI, You can ask CHAT GPT about settings and it will explain everything pretty well. But in the end, it didn't work. (Linksys says on their page that this hardware doesn't work with MESH and I'm starting to wonder if it's not just a firmware issue...)
Joined: 08 May 2018 Posts: 15244 Location: Texas, USA
Posted: Sat Sep 14, 2024 2:29 Post subject:
The biggest problem I see is over-configuration. It's just like repeater modes and other things. You don't have to touch every knob and switch, but here we are. _________________ "Life is but a fleeting moment, a vapor that vanishes quickly; All is vanity"
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The biggest problem I see is over-configuration. It's just like repeater modes and other things. You don't have to touch every knob and switch, but here we are.
Agree. I tried different combinations including not really touching anything except the obvious. Still no. I still haven't tried WDS, and I will do that when I get some more time. But the MESH/802.11s setting was a no-go for me.
I am also trying 802.11s mesh on my MX4300. It is very weird there is nothing about this confirmation on dd-wrt official documents.
other than the wireless settings, do we also need to change something else? e.g. disable DHCP on the secondary wifi APs?
Anyone tried this on other machines before? I tried to search on the forum and nothing seems certain to me.
The easiest way to verify if your mesh is connected is from the Status/Wireless tab. This is a connection between mx4300<>mr7350 using wlan0. The image is from the mx4300. _________________ - Linksys EA8500: I-Gateway, WAP/VAP 5ghz only. Features: WDS-AP, VLANs, Samba, WG, Entware - r58662
- Linksys EA8500: 802.11s Secondary w/VLAN Trunk - r58662
- Linksys MX4300: 802.11s Primary w/VLAN Trunk over 5ghz. 2.4ghz WAP/VAP only - r58662
- Linksys MX4300 (WAP/VAP (7)) Multiple VLANs over single trunk port. Entware/Samba r58662
- Linksys MR7350: Testing r58662
- Linksys Velop WHW03v1 x2: OpenWRT w/GRETAP tunnel for VLANs on VAPs
- OSes: Fedora 39, 9 RPis (2,3,4,5), 20 ESP8266s: Straight from Amiga to Linux in '95, never having owned a Windows PC.
The easiest way to verify if your mesh is connected is from the Status/Wireless tab. This is a connection between mx4300<>mr7350 using wlan0. The image is from the mx4300.
Hi
Could you please share more information?
I'm not totally understanding how 802.11s works. I assume form each MX4300, I need to have one dedicated wireless backhaul, say 5G-1 on both MX4300 set to 802.11s/Mesh with the same channel, SSID(e.g. dd-wrt-backhaul), password. And it should form a mesh automatically. I can connect my devices to other interfaces, 2.4G and 5G-2 (e.g. SSID: dd-wrt). But. I don't know what other configurations are needed. For instance, on MX4300 lead ( which connects to the internet modem ), it has DHCP turned on, do I need to disable MX4300 followers' DHCP? What if one has 192.168.100.* and the other uses 192.168.200.*? How do they form a unified network? Will the MX4300 follower get an IP from the leader? Is my device know how to roam from one AP to the other? Or 802.11s is not made for this purpose since beginning?
You have the basics down. Set the 5G-1 ssid, pw, channels all the same. I would even go as far as to NOT used MIXED for Network Mode, but feel free to experiment.
Also the router IP makes no difference on the secondary nodes (but DOES on the main node). It can be on a totally different subnet. I actually just tested this and was still handed a proper IP address from my main subnet. The MESH takes care of the IP assignments from your existing dhcp server, so turn it off on the secondary mesh nodes.
EDIT: I also just removed the gateway and dns settings on the secondary from Basic Setup/Network Setup and it still works. My main Gateway dhcp server correctly still hands out the gateway and dns server through the mesh. _________________ - Linksys EA8500: I-Gateway, WAP/VAP 5ghz only. Features: WDS-AP, VLANs, Samba, WG, Entware - r58662
- Linksys EA8500: 802.11s Secondary w/VLAN Trunk - r58662
- Linksys MX4300: 802.11s Primary w/VLAN Trunk over 5ghz. 2.4ghz WAP/VAP only - r58662
- Linksys MX4300 (WAP/VAP (7)) Multiple VLANs over single trunk port. Entware/Samba r58662
- Linksys MR7350: Testing r58662
- Linksys Velop WHW03v1 x2: OpenWRT w/GRETAP tunnel for VLANs on VAPs
- OSes: Fedora 39, 9 RPis (2,3,4,5), 20 ESP8266s: Straight from Amiga to Linux in '95, never having owned a Windows PC.
You have the basics down. Set the 5G-1 ssid, pw, channels all the same. I would even go as far as to NOT used MIXED for Network Mode, but feel free to experiment.
Also the router IP makes no difference on the secondary nodes (but DOES on the main node). It can be on a totally different subnet. I actually just tested this and was still handed a proper IP address from my main subnet. The MESH takes care of the IP assignments from your existing dhcp server, so turn it off on the secondary mesh nodes.
EDIT: I also just removed the gateway and dns settings on the secondary from Basic Setup/Network Setup and it still works. My main Gateway dhcp server correctly still hands out the gateway and dns server through the mesh.
Thank you for the info. I double checked my settings again. It seems 2 routers are connected to each other. However, instead of showing mesh in the status page, they both show legacy at very low rate. I tried to turn off 2.4G and 5G-2 on the router attached to my modem. And, connect to follower router via wifi. No correct IP was assigned and does not connect to internet. Am I missing something?
I noticed another thread mentioned WDS works on MX4300. I personally want to give 802.11s a try. If I can make it work, I can try to write it down and share it.
If I can not make it work for the next couple days, I will move on to WDS and maybe hope this will be fixed in future FW release.
