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WDS multi-ap nightmare
Tue, 03/11/2008 - 19:24 — manuelbiliar
Hi all!
I'm trying to build a 'big' hotspot. I've flashed 7 WRT54GS AP with coovaAP and tried this: Enable WDS on all of them, disable lazy WDS on all of them, add all seven macs to the seven AP's WDS tab.
Inmediately all the net starts lagging (ping answers takes up to 30s to return, also if I leave a machine pinging another one, the lag starts growing after every ping, first one may take 25s, next 25.1s and so on...)
In an WDS of just two AP this doesn't happen.
Anyone has any idea on why this is happening? What's the correct to way to set a WDS mesh of more than two AP's?
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Re: WDS multi-ap nightmare
No, I was referring to .11-.16's LAN address being added as Allowed MACs on .10 running Coova. I'm not sure though it's needed, but if you have any DDNS or router based internet activity (logging) you'll need to allow the peer Clients to get out somehow.
As to hangs, Since everything is on the same channel, perhaps you've got one of your Peer WDS nodes power up too high and it's causing interference?
Do you have a Wi-Spy unit to check for interference.
Re: WDS multi-ap nightmare
(.0.11 only has WDS of 0.12, 0.12 has only 0.11 and 0.10.
0.15 only 0.14, 0.14 with 0.15 and 0.13.
0.13 only has 0.14 and 0.10.
0.10 master should only have 0.13, 0.16, and 0.12)
Yes, I did this and it worked great for a while, but sometimes it starts again acting as if there is some sort op loop, delaying everything until it 'magically' (grrr!) starts working again.
I've manually configured dns and gateway on every one of them. I had to manually write every /etc/resolv.conf file because setting the dns server in the web interface wasn't working. Is dnsmasq an option in the web interface or should I disable it in the console?
You mean the ADSL router LAN address to the MAC allow list of the router marked as 'master' in the picture? Why is this needed? I haven't filtered out any MAC afaik.
I'll be Thursday and Friday on the site, trying to solve the delay issue so if I find the reason why this is happening, I'll follow up here.
Re: WDS multi-ap nightmare
Did this all work out for you ? Did you understand the point about having your WDS MACs only span 1 hop ?
(.0.11 only has WDS of 0.12, 0.12 has only 0.11 and 0.10.
0.15 only 0.14, 0.14 with 0.15 and 0.13.
0.13 only has 0.14 and 0.10.
0.10 master should only have 0.13, 0.16, and 0.12)
I'd turn of dnsmasq, and manually configure each of the WDS nodes DNS and gateways. Also you might consider adding the routers LAN address to the MAC allow list of the host router.
Re: WDS multi-ap nightmare
Ok, here's a better diagram:
Master router knows his default gw is 10.220.0.1 and all the AP's are on 10.220.0.0/23 network.
There may be some loops, I'll dig on the STP thing.
Update:
Ok, STP = Spanning Tree Protocol, I thought it was enabled 'per se' in WDS.
I won't be able to make more test on the network till Saturday so I'll try to look forward (ahead?) into more showstoppers:
Once the network is running I'll need AAA services. As far as I know, WPA2 won't work with WDS, but can I set up accounting with CoovaAAA using WPA? (we are thinking in a free (as in free beer) hotspot, but not free (as in free software) hotspot, use will be restricted to just the people of a basement, so we want to log the BW usage just in case someone abuses the system, hindering everyone else's surfing experience)
Re: WDS multi-ap nightmare
Did you create a loop in your WDS? e.g. from your diagram, on the master router, you should only put MAC addresses of slaves #2, #3, and #6. And on slave #1, only put in MAC of #2, and on slave #2, only put in MAC of #1 and Master, etc.
If you want to create loops for backup purposes, you need to enable STP.
Re: WDS multi-ap nightmare
You shouldn't have to set routing for WDS, I don't think. It'll help if you put IP information in your diamgram - taking the numbering scheme in:
http://coova.org/wiki/index.php/CoovaAP/WDS" target="_blank
should work with more APs (in the example, AP1 is the master).
Re: WDS multi-ap nightmare
MMM, I see...
The problem is I can't reach all the AP's from a single one so I think I should chain some of them, and them make a star with the master AP, sth like this:
What I see then is that some virtual lans are created on the master AP and also on slave APs. In a configuration like this, should I set static routes 'by hand' or traffic from slave1 will flow to master as part of the WDS system?
Re: WDS multi-ap nightmare
First of all, I wouldn't call WDS a mesh as it doesn't figure out any routing. I haven't tried a single WDS network with so many APs, but I suspect that you probably don't want all of them to know about all the rest of them. Meaning, you should have one AP being the "master" and configure it with the "slaves". I don't think it helps much to have all the slaves configured with WDS links between them.