[sanjonny]

Maybe i Misunderstand the s connection but I guess let me put my understanding of how i think this works and get holes poked in it..
If i have a normal WAP say jonny1 on channel 6 thru a 7800 and i want to "fake" mesh everything in the house so it switches...old style and i have another wap on a archer c7 v2 and that is also jonny1 on channel 6 and then I have my main router on another 7800 which also has a wap on jonny1 on channel 6....these are all bridged and depending on how i have the networks assigned, I could get away with them all on the same subnet and have say a phone autoswitch between signals as i walk thru the house. Yeah thats the old horrible way we used to do it but it worked and all served by 1 dchp (or static i guess)

Okay now i step into the future past and go to a segregated network. So one way of doing it is they backhaul to one another instead of having the wired drops etc etc. So they have a mesh but essentially its the same as above except a wire is replaced with the backhaul and it (phone) goes between ap as you cruise around on the same network.

If i then want to switch that network to have 2 vlans on the same equipment, basically adding a vwap...vap onto the mesh, why is that not handled just from the one main router/dhcp table and trunked at the main router via the port for each vlan.

So now in theory I have jonny1 and jonnymedia and jonny1 gets 192.168.1.x and jonnymedia gets 192.168.5.x, i am not following why i would need 4 bridge assignments instead of 2 at each part of the mesh.

Even drawing this out I guess i am missing where the extra are needed.

I currently have a more complex non mesh similar setup with everything segregated by vap, but thats because i have had so many headaches with mesh and such that its easier, and it allows me to have a few wifi points that I control on the routers to serve different vpn services etc etc.

So instead of jonny1 only...the bedroom has jonny6 and the front part of the house has jonny8 but the media is on jonnymed everywhere and add in a few vpn connections...

I have the media devices on vlan 2 lets say and they cant cross to 1, but on the router I can control via ip address if it uses the vpn or not. For example, I have 2 vaps on the bedroom router and if its on jonnymed its the us but if its on jonnyvpn1 its on the same bridge and vlan (I think, been awhile since I set all this up) but the router assigns a different ip address and thus it uses the vpn to britain instead of the us. So in the bedroom if i want to watch us stuff its on jonnymed but british is on jonnyvpn1.

So same VLAN/traffic segregated from the other traffic, but the router then switches it to the britain ip...still segregated from the jonny1 loop traffic but not necessarily from the other media traffic. What would be different about mesh or mesh S? And currently all is this (dhcp) is served from the local router on each segment, not from the main router....though thats where the mx4300 dhcp problems are showing up (separate issue)

Could i replicate this in mesh and wouldnt it only be 2 instead of 4 at say the bedroom router or am I missing something simple. Hopefully this makes sense...

Even following with Lex example, I am thinking should only need one for each vlan...normal, media, guest...Is it just to be extra segregating everything that you need the extra bridge?

Please poke holes and make suggestions...I am clearing cobwebs out and also trying to learn something at the same time

[lexridge]

Complex setups expect complex questions. I will do my best to work through this to the best of my understanding of how this works and your concerns regarding this setup. I will assume you are referring to the previous post regarding my example setup, which I am actually using in production.

[rknox]

Lexridge, great writeup. Is it possible to implement 802.11s with an ethernet (wired) backhaul? Presumably this means that 802.11s is implemented over the wired connections.

Also, I have heard of people using mesh products to implement an AP behind an existing router, also configured with the nodes hardwired.

Thanks.

[lexridge]

[rknox]

Thanks, I'll take a look at the document.

Basically, I have been using a NetGear R7000 running dd-wrt. I have some coverage issues and was looking to implement a mesh solution. I have however also run cable to key parts of my home. So, for me it seemed a good solution would be to grab the attractively priced MX4200/4300 units, implement it as you have described, but take advantage of the ethernet I already have in place. I don't have the AX units yet so was trying to find out if the wired backhaul solution had been tried.

Alternatively, I was thinking I could keep the R7000 but replace its lackluster wireless with a mesh AP consisting of MX4200s or similar.

I will probably get the MXs and start with your implementation.

[lexridge]

Since you already have the cables ran, I would definitely hook them up to each node. Let's see what happens!! I don't know what will happen, but would sure be great to find out. If nothing else, it will still give you access to the router if the mesh goes offline and super handy when configuring it to begin with.

You didn't mention if you would be using vlans. It may be easier to route or bridge all the wireless traffic to a vlan that is only available on wired connection. This kind of setup is all new to me too, so you should create a new thread on it as you proceed.

While 802.11s has been including in DD-WRT since what, 2018? It has never really been used except for a handful of folks and no howto was ever written for it. Well, until recently anyway. It was largely the OpenWRT (using mx4300s) folks coming over that really wanted it working and that stuck my interest to attempt to set it up myself (since I bought 4 of these things). So not much is written on this forum about it until recently. So we are all kinda learning as we go. The more people who use 802.11s in different ways is very useful and valuable to the dd-wrt community as a whole. Please keep us informed of your progress.

[rknox]

Not much experience with vlans. Guest network, OpenVPN on the router, and many devices. I'll update once I try it. Thanks again.

[bushant]

[lexridge]

[bushant]

[lexridge]

[bushant]

Working!!!
R7800 58785 Primary node Test router No Wan
R7500v2 58785 Secondary node

Reset both routers again again
Minimal config

wlan0 set 802.11s Mesh
wlan0 vap added same SSID Both nodes
wlan1 AP both nodes
DDWRT firmware
Mixed and AC/N mixed both work
SFE-NSS-ECM disabled

Family emergency intervenes.

Will complete configuring Primary as internet facing gateway this week (I hope) and swap in to service.
To be continued.....

[lexridge]

Good to hear you got it working. It is a bit odd these Netgear devices need so many resets to get the radios to turn on and get connected.

[bushant]

The multiple resets were more likely PEBCAK related in my case.

Full config complete and serving as Gway.

All that I use is working other than WG server. Android client completes handshake but that is all, no internet.

WG client to Proton works fine.

Vap's on both radio's.

DDNS refused to update but after overnight that fixed itself.

But as mentioned in OP wireless speeds suffer. Iperf between routers on 5Ghz 400Mb/s max.
Pc connected 5Ghz VAP only does 400Mb/s wan ->wlan with 500 Mb/s pipe which has been over 600 lately.

So mesh experiment over. With this speed limitation I am going back to WDS and last working build with vap enabled.

Edit: WG server working after a do-over. More PEBCAK suspected.

[lexridge]

Yeah, those are some pretty crappy speeds!

I am getting around 35MBps throughput on mine but I am not using any VAPs on the secondary node EA8500. I am just using three of the LAN ports assigned to my media vlan12 (the WAN is presently an unused trunk port). It's plenty fast enough for my purposes. They are connected to an Onkyo home theatre receiver, a TCL 4k smart TV and a RPi3 running Volumio. All are 100Mb connections.

I also dropped the 5ghz MESH channel width down to 40mhz on both nodes as I felt 80mhz was overkill. It made zero difference in throughput. I have a suspicion whenever 802.11s is selected the channel width is locked at 80mhz (even though it lets me change it to 40mhz). Status/Wireless shows they are connected to each other using VHT80SGI.