Hi,

We have two TP-Link WDR3600 routers we're trying to connect with WDS.

However, as soon as we power up the WDS client - both the WDS AP and WDS client become unresponsive (via either web interface or ssh). Once we disable the second router, the first router becomes responsive again.

Router 1 is setup with a LAN IP of 192.168.1.5, and DHCP is enabled on that interface.

Router 1 is on WDR3600 hardware revision 1.3.

Router 2 is setup with a LAN IP of 192.168.1.6, and DHCP is disabled on that interface.

Router 2 is on WDR3600 hardware revision 1.2.

On the wifi side:

• ESSID for the 2.4 Ghz radio is set to the same name (e.g. "my_network" for both routers), and for the 5 Ghz is set to the same name (e.g. "my_network_5g" for both routers).

• Channels are the same on both (channel 1 for 2.4 Ghz, channel 36 for 5 Ghz)

• Router 1 is set to Access Point (WDS) for both radios, Router 2 is set to Client (WDS) for both radios

• BSSID for router 2 is set to the MAC addresses of the two radios on router 1. Router 1 does not have any BSSID settings when you set it to Access Point (WDS)

• Encryption is set to WPA2-PSK on both routers for both radios, key is the same across all

• HD mode is set to 40Mhz 2nd channel above for everything

• Country code is set to AU - Australia for everything

I've uploaded Gists of the syslog (https://gist.github.com/victorhooi/7335677) and kernel log (https://gist.github.com/victorhooi/7335689) for the first router.

I noticed that there were a lot of errors of the form:

br-lan: received packet on wlan0.sta1 with own address as source address

I'm not sure if this is the cause of the issue, or possibly the discrepancies in the hardware revisions?

One strange thing I did notice was that on router 2 (hardware revision 1.2) - the tab menu at the top to select radios is missing.

You can see them here on router 1 (hardware revision 1.3):

However, on router 2 (hardware revision 1.2), it's completely missing.

Any thoughts on what to check?

Cheers,
Victor

Did you btw configured both routers' wifis with same MAC address?
dhcp enabled on router 1 implies no dnsmasq running (at least not on the interface expecting an ip address via dhcp)

I used WDS on my dual-band WNDR3700 and set only one of the radios to WDS mode.
Have you tried that?

https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php … 67#p186067

EDIT: and also read this thread:
https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php … 08#p213408

(Last edited by hnyman on 6 Nov 2013, 14:58)

HI,

@rAndy - Hmm, what do you mean by configuring both routers with the same MAC address?

If you mean for the WDS - when you set it to "Access Point (WDS)", it doesn't give you a BSSID field.

However, if you set it to "Client (WDS)", it does give you a BSSID field. Router 2 is the Cliend (WDS), and we set the BSSID to the wireless MAC addresses of router 1:

What did you mean by the second part? DHCP is enabled on LAN for router 1 - I've left the box at it's default (unchecked):

However, on router 2 - this box is checked, so DNS is disabled for the LAN.

What do you mean by DNSMasq isn't running? I thought it was a DNS and DHCP service together? So DNSMasq is running on router 1, but disabled on router 2, right?

@hnyman

STP is disabled (default) on LAN:

The advice from the second link you pasted seems to be that we shouldn't enable STP, right?

Also - so you're saying that I should only set one of the radio pairs to enable WDS?

So for example, I would set radio0 on both router 1 and router 2 just to normal "Access Point" (no WDS).

And I would then set radio1 on router 1 to "Access Point (WDS)" and router 2 to "Client (WDS).

That makes sense, so I only need to use one band to make the link between the two - I suppose it doesn't matter whether I use the 2.4Ghz radio or the 5Ghz one? Wouldn't the 2.4 Ghz have more penetrating power? But the 5 Ghz might get less congestion?

Also, does anybody know anything about what the:

br-lan: received packet on wlan0.sta1 with own address as source address

messages might mean?

Cheers,
Victor

i mean, if you 'ifconfig wlan0' (or whatever interface you have as wireless) on each router you get two different mac addresses; in other words you didn't force the same address, did you? Maybe this is it with BSSID tweaking.

Try leaving BSSID unset / at the value it present as default

Hi,

Nope, they have different addresses.

I believe if you leave the BSSID blank, the WDS doesn't work?

Cheers,
Victor

but did you try it?

what are you trying to accomplish by enabling wds on BOTH radios? you have a beautiful network loop.. it's like you connected TWO routers,  both configured as client bridge, to the same switch. packets will be broadcasted again and again!

test if you get more throughput with 2.4g or 5g, and enable the client interface only on one band.

if you want to have 2 links you need something like multiwan to do link aggregation.. but I never used it and cannot help.

Hi,

Aha, fair enough - so you're saying that I should only ever have WDS enabled on one band?

I'd assumed that by using WDS on both, I'd get better reliability (since there are two redundant links), and better throughput.

However, you're saying I'd need to explicitly enable link aggregation, or similar, in order to achieve that? Has anybody achieved this over WDS?

Cheers,
Victor