[strange]

Greetings, I just received my order of three LN1301s. I am interested is setting up a MESH network at home. Looking in the WIKI, I found two guides:

WDS
https://wiki.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/WDS_Linked_router_network
OLSR
https://wiki.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Mesh_Networking_with_OLSR

I am not sure how old the guides are, so what I am asking is which guide should I use and is there a newer guide out there? I am not supper techie so the WDS guide looks more attractive to me.
Thank you for your input.

[lexridge]

I have only tried WDS myself and it works well. Especially since these routers have a 2x 5ghz radios, one can be entirely dedicated to the backhaul.

There is also 802.11s which I have not tried, but could likely be a better solution in the end. Not sure if there is a guide for it however. Here is one such discussion:
https://forum.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=330870

[kernel-panic69]

Neither of those guides are applicable.

[strange]

[lexridge]

I first used the linked WDS guide a few years ago to connect four Atheros (R7800<>EA8500 and EA8500<>EA8500) routers and it was adequate to get it working. You should be fine to try the Atheros part of that old wiki. It should at least get you connected. I think some settings were either missing or completely different. Just ignore those. The important sections are the AP WDS and Station WDS, then just fill in the MAC addresses under the wlanN_WDS on both (or more) routers and it should connect nearly instantly. Once it does, you can start tweaking it.

[kernel-panic69]

You don't fill in MAC addresses for Atheros. Different protocol, that is straight from the man. WDS modes are on wireless settings. IOW, this ain't WRT54* or old Broadcommy stuff. But someone *does* need to figure out actual mesh settings and seeing what does or does not work.

[lexridge]

Okay, good to know. So while MAC addresses are not required on Atheros, it didn't break anything by adding them. I'll remove them soon and see what happens.

Yea, we do need to figure out actual 802.11s settings as it works not only over wifi, but LAN too (at least according to the RFC). I have been meaning to mess with this since I have so many modern routers on hand right now. Just finding the time is the problem.

EDIT: Come to think of it, I never had to enter MAC addresses when setting up WDS on OpenWRT. So yeah, this would be correct. WDS is pretty easy.

[strange]

Thank you so much for the replies. I feel like there are going to be many Mesh questions in the future now that the Amazon price for the LN1301 has dropped to $20. I will use the WDS guide for now (not entering the MAC addresses) but 802.11s is intriguing. Thanks again for the replies.

[TomA777]

[strange]

Yes, I used this guide.

https://wiki.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/WDS_Linked_router_network

Just don't do step #10. VAP is currently not working.

[lexridge]

[strange]

[ohmic314]

I tried doing mesh with WDS but found similar to strange that VAP doesn't work. That means that the node can't talk with another node or act as a relay. I found that 802.11s works much better and acts exactly as I would expect where it can relay from one node to another back to the main router.

Here are my setup instructions. You can vary different things like what radio you want your mesh network to talk on or what security to use. I'll just list my setup for a good starting point. All of this assumes a fresh install. I'm using build r58381.

Setup instructions:
* On the main router:
Setup -> Basic Setup
- WAN Connection Type = DHCP (in order to connect to the internet)
- Do not enable STP. I found this dramatically slows down DHCP where instead of taking a second or two to assign an IP address, it takes like 30s. It makes testing very painful and any connection change takes forever to update.
- Set the IP address to 192.168.1.1
Wireless -> Basic Setting (I chose to use wlan2 as the mesh network)
- Radio Mode = Mesh/802.11s
- Pick a channel - I chose 165 because almost no one uses that one since most routers are dumb and try to use a full 80 MHz channel width and there's a ton of congestion
- Set an SSID - for example MeshNetwork
Wireless -> Wireless Security (for wlan2)
- Security mode = WPA
- Checked off WPA3 and AES
- SAE Passphrase = dd-wrt-rules

* On the first node:
Setup -> Basic Setup
- WAN Connection Type = Disabled (I won't be using the WAN port)
- Do not enable STP.
- Set the IP address to 192.168.1.2
- DHCP Server = Disabled
Wireless -> Basic Setting
- Radio Mode = Mesh/802.11s
- Pick a channel - Same as router
- Set an SSID - Same as router
Wireless -> Wireless Security (for wlan2)
- Security mode = WPA
- Checked off WPA3 and AES
- SAE Passphrase = Same as router
Security -> Firewall
- SPI Firewall = Disabled (I don't think this is necessary, but I did it anyways)

* Node 2 is setup exactly like node 1, except setting the IP address to 192.168.1.3

That was it. Everything just works. It was a lot easier than the WDS instructions. I will give some notes based on research I did.
- STP is not necessary because 802.11s is supposed to automatically prevent network loops.
- DHCP can stay enabled on the nodes, but they need to be set so the DHCP addresses don't overlap and some extra config needs to be set so traffic knows to go to the router. Having multiple DHCP servers may be desired based on your situation.
- Disabling DHCP on the nodes makes debugging the nodes more tricky. Either set a static IP (192.168.1.20) on the computer/laptop or use an ethernet cable to connect the node to the router. The router will assign an IP address to the computer.
- Administration -> Keep Alive -> Connection Watchdog is useful if you want the node to auto reboot if it can't talk to the router

As a test, I put the router on one end of the house, then one node on the other end with about 50% signal strength to the router. I took the second node and drove down the street until the second node couldn't see the router and had 5% signal strength to node 1. I could still access the internet and got 20 Mbps off of 5% signal strength. Even with the two nodes next to the router, nothing interferes with each other and they can see each other and report signal strength. Data flies through at close distances.

Thanks everyone for all the good work on making this router amazing!

[kwc]

how did u managed to make 802.11s works with DHCP enabled?

I thought it is a known issue that DHCP won't work with 802.11s? Currently I have to use my old router to act as DHCP server because of this issue

[lexridge]