Using WDS to Bridge Wireless Interface

GJS · Sat Jun 11, 2005 12:53 am

Can anyone tell me how to do this? It is mentioned in the bridging section of 2.9 manual but the link is broken. Even if it worked I suspect it would take me to the WDS section of the wireless manual page, but this doesn't help me either.

I want to bridge an Atheros interface (which connects to an AP) to an Ethernet interface on an RB500 runing 2.9rc5.

Thanks.

hitek146 · Sat Jun 11, 2005 1:10 am

I believe that WDS only works with MT equipment, so if your AP is not MT, if probably would not work, anyhow. Do you specifically need WDS, or will standard bridging work? RouterOS supports bridging an AP client interface to an Ethernet interface, so you could try that, if it would be a workable solution for you....

Hitek

GJS · Sat Jun 11, 2005 1:27 am

All I want to do is use RouterOS 2.9, with one atheros interface and one ethernet interface, as a transparent layer 2 bridge.

When you say "...RouterOS supports bridging an AP client interface to an Ethernet interface...", how do I make an "AP client" interface? As far as I can see the availble modes for an atheros interface are:

station
station wds
ap bridge
bridge
alignment only
nstreame dual slave
wds slave

Thanks for your help.

hitek146 · Sat Jun 11, 2005 1:49 am

Sorry... "AP Client" is "Station" mode.....

You would remove any IP addresses from the two physical interfaces, and then create a "Bridge" interface. Then in the Bridge menu, you would assign the two interfaces to the new bridge as "Ports". You would then assign an IP address to the bridge interface for management....

GJS · Sat Jun 11, 2005 2:08 am

Trying that now...

GJS · Sat Jun 11, 2005 2:35 am

Hmm...OK, the setup is two routers (2.9rc5 on RB500), call them MT-AP and MT-CPE:

MT-AP
- 1 ethenet interface (public) connected to Internet with public address
- srcnat masquerading to public interface
- 1 Atheros interface (wlan1) in AP bridge mode, with address 10.0.53.1/24

MT-CPE
- 1 Atheros interface (wlan1), configured to connect to wlan1 on MT-AP (shows in MT-AP registration table so must be connecting OK)
- 1 ethenet interface (local) no configuration at all, just shows as running.
- 1 bridge interface (bridge1) with local and wlan1 interfaces added as ports, assigned with 10.10.10.1/24
- 1 PC connected to local

With the PC address set to 10.10.10.2, I can access MT-CPE, no problem. I then set the PC to 10.0.53.2, GW 10.0.53.1. I can't ping 10.0.53.1 from the PC. When I do the ping there is TX and RX activity on MT-AP wlan1 so the ping is getting through to there but apparently not back through MT-CPE.

Have you actually had this working yourself, hitek146?

The reason I thought it would not work is because of this:

http://www.mikrotik.com/docs/ros/2.9/interface/bridge

hitek146 · Sat Jun 11, 2005 3:01 am

I'm pretty sure that I have tried this myself, but I have tried so many different configurations(and yours is not one that I use, I tunnel and route everything) that I do not recall....

I was already familiar with the note about bridging a wireless interface, but I'm almost certain that it still works with the correct settings. If memory serves, I think you need to set your CPE's wlan1 interface to ARP - "reply-only".....

Hitek

jarosoup · Sat Jun 11, 2005 4:34 am

You can't create a usable transparent bridge unless both the AP and client are running in WDS mode. I still haven't seen an explaination as to why this doesn't work on MT, but it doesn't (where you are bridging the wlan card set as a station and the ethernet port). If you set both ends to ap-bridge mode, add wds interfaces for each other, and bridge those with the ethernet ports, they work fine.

GJS · Sat Jun 11, 2005 4:41 am

So, this can only be done if both the AP and the client are MT.

Does an MT with AP interface with a WDS interface accept connections from regular 802.11 clients?

hitek146 · Sat Jun 11, 2005 6:34 am

The only place that I partially use your scenario in my system is for my backhauls, when only one link is involved. In this case, I tunnel over the wireless interface with an EoIP tunnel, and then I bridge the EoIP interface to the Ethernet interface. I know that this works.... It seems like you might also be able to configure such a scenario using PPPoE instead, to be more easily able to accomodate multiple clients, rather than creating an EoIP tunnel for each client in your situation.

I still seem to recall someone getting the transparent bridge thing to work... Something about special ARP configuration and maybe the configuration of some sort of MAC NATting... I know I saw it somewhere...

Hitek

jarosoup · Sat Jun 11, 2005 6:54 pm

Does an MT with AP interface with a WDS interface accept connections from regular 802.11 clients?

Yes. If you want to prevent this, you can use the access list and set default authentication to no.

Hitek, I haven't tried messing with arp and the transparent bridge...hmmm. Please let us know if you find that info/link/person who got this working

hitek146 · Sun Jun 12, 2005 5:31 am

Read the posts by forum member "wisp-equipment.com" in this thread:
http://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php ... highlight=

Unfortunately, he says it has always worked just fine, but is broken in version 2.9....

Hitek

GJS · Sun Jun 12, 2005 1:24 pm

It seems like the problem revolves around MAC addressing. Comparing the 2.8 and 2.9 manuals, 2.9 has a section on bridge NAT which was not in 2.8. There seems to be comprehensive NAT translation facilities in 2.9 so I wonder if it's just that a different setup is required?

hitek146 · Sun Jun 12, 2005 8:20 pm

I don't know how much more simple you could configure a transparent bridge than to simply create a bridge and add interfaces to it. If station bridging is still supported, but is now configured differently, then it would seem that the station bridging setup has only been made more difficult to configure than it was before. I don't know why MT would make something more difficult to do than it once was.....

Hitek

jarosoup · Tue Jun 14, 2005 3:07 am

Thanks much for this bit of info Hitek. I never thought to try Proxy ARP...just figured it was a MT limitation and wrote it off long ago. I'm blown away that this isn't in their documentation (!?). Hopefully they will fix this in 2.9 soon.

GJS · Fri Jun 17, 2005 4:39 am

Hmm...the topic you linked to, hitek146, seems to have disappeared and the contributor wisp-equipment.com is showing in the member list as having 0 posts.

What could have happened here ????

jarosoup · Fri Jun 17, 2005 6:22 am

That sucks...I was going to copy/paste that thread too, but hadn't done it yet.

It was there 4 or 5 days ago.

hitek146 · Fri Jun 17, 2005 6:24 am

Based upon my experience as a moderator over at TV-Cards.com, I would suspect that the "wisp-equipment.com" account has been frozen or removed for some reason, and the topic quarantined to this board's hidden moderator forum for private discussion or review by the moderators.... If this is the case, the reasons can vary greatly, but usually have something to do with a questionable post added to the topic, or a subject matter discussed that could cause confusion or problems for the patrons of the forum. It is also possible that the thread suddenly went out on a tangent that was unsuitable for this site.... Unfortunately, in these situations, the reasons are rarely let known to the general forum population, unless the topic is just edited by a moderator and un-quarantined for everyone to see again. Also unfortunate is the fact that Google did not have a chance to cache the topic before it was removed....

Hitek

stephenpatrick · Fri Jun 17, 2005 10:26 am

Too much censorship on this site, IMHO.
Everyone here loves Mikrotik, so there should be no need ...
(except removing spam posts)

GJS · Fri Jun 17, 2005 1:22 pm

Yes, censorship is now very common on this board. It's happened on quite a few threads I've been in and normally just for the mention of someone else's equipment. Draconian.

No doubt this post will be removed but there is a mikrotik mailing list over at part-15.org. If mikrotik don't want to facilitate free disscussion someone else will.

hitek146 · Fri Jun 17, 2005 6:59 pm

Since that other topic is missing, I seem to recall(correcting the possible misstatement in my post above) that someone in that missing thread said that the ARP Reply-Only setting was actually to be applied to the bridge interface, and not the wlan1 interface. I may be recalling incorrectly, though, so whomever gives it a try might want to try it both ways

.....

GJS · Fri Jun 17, 2005 7:38 pm

Yes, I think that was said. I'll be trying it over this weekend.

wildbill442 · Fri Jun 17, 2005 9:30 pm

All 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g client wireless interfaces (ad-hoc, infrastructure or station mode) do not support this because of the limitations of 802.11. However, it is possible to bridge over the Prism and Atheros based links using the WDS feature (for Atheros and Prism chipset based cards) or Ethernet over IP protocol.

That is the only way to create a transparent bridge with MT, always has been from my experience with these devices. You can't just add a station interface to a bridge, it doesn't work.

This never worked any differently in 2.8 than it does in 2.9... You cannot add a wireless station adaptor to a bridge unless you use EoIP or WDS.

BTW that quote was taken directly from the MT page you linked to in a previous post, GJS.

http://www.mikrotik.com/docs/ros/2.9/interface/bridge

wildbill442 · Fri Jun 17, 2005 11:36 pm

To correctly create a transparent wireless bridge go here - http://www.mikrotik.com/docs/ros/2.8/ho ... to.content and scroll down to "transparent wireless bridge using EoIP/WDS". They give an example for a Point to Point solution.. In a Point to Multi Point configuration it will be slightly different, using the station-wds mode on the RU and ap-bridge on the MU with wds enabled (dynamic/static). At least that would be my best guess for a PtMP setup. I've yet to use WDS in PtMP situations.

hitek146 · Sat Jun 18, 2005 1:24 am

The point is, I think, that several of us have successfully created and used station bridges in version 2.8.x , regardless of what the documentation says...

Maybe that is why the thread was removed... It may have been the only written and explained testament to the fact that it did work well at one time, without WDS or EoIP(which I use). Sure WDS and EoIP work, but the idea that some of us have is to create a bridge that doesn't require an MT on the other end(I know, shame on us)......

Hitek

wildbill442 · Sat Jun 18, 2005 1:50 am

I don't know how to answer that other than to say its not possible per the documenation. This has not changed since 2.9 so I don't understand how you claim you did it before, do you have any MT's that are currently running with the station adaptor being part of a bridge? I personally have had no success using 2.8.xx or 2.9 to create a transparent bridge by adding a wireless station adpator to a bridge. I will confirm this weekend if I can get my hands on some of our older RB200 series...

You have to remember this is when the wireless card mode is set to STATION not AP Bridge.. AP bridge can be added to a bridge port and work fine.

jarosoup · Sat Jun 18, 2005 4:17 am

wildbill, please read the whole thread...unfortunately, the other thread that mentions this is no longer available, but people have gotten it to work - in station mode.

john2 · Sat Jun 18, 2005 9:03 am

You can not use a station as a standard bridge (IEEE 802.1d) with 802.11 protocol because the protocol does not support that. If you add something like EoIP, then you can bridge the EoIP tunnel with another interface (Ethernet for example).

WDS wireless links can bridge traffic supporting the standard 802.1d. I am not sure what you will get with proxy-arp, but you could not consider it 802.1d bridging.

There is no witchcraft here. Don't waste your time trying to make a station bridge 802.1d. You can get the IEEE 802.11 and 802.1d protocol docs at the IEEE site for free -- you will have to do a little searching.

John

hitek146 · Sat Jun 18, 2005 2:30 pm

You are correct, using Proxy-ARP would not give you true 802.1d bridging, as there would be MAC address translation involved. I think to serve the needs of some people, though, it would suffice.....

GJS · Tue Jun 21, 2005 4:02 pm

Don't waste your time trying to make a station bridge 802.1d.

So how do smartBridges, OSBridge, D-Link, Linksys do it?

Thanks,
Guy

isabido · Sun Jun 26, 2005 11:15 pm

Work with Smartbridges, models (Xo2, Xo, ProTotal), I believe that these in mode "wireless bridges" do it in WDS.

In mode "Client Wireless" It associates with other AP vendors, but it does not do ping nor pass packages.

At least with the AP that I have been able to prove: Zyxel, UsRobotics.

jarosoup · Wed Jun 29, 2005 3:12 am

So how do smartBridges, OSBridge, D-Link, Linksys do it?

Plus others such as Senao, Cisco (WGB340/350), Tranzeo, or any other standard trasparent bridge.

I have been and still am very curious about the answer to this question...

wildbill442 · Sat Aug 06, 2005 8:48 pm

Have you tried using WDS to create your transparent bridge, GJS? It works perfectly, and theres less overhead than EoIP.

Is the AP you're trying to connect to a MT AP? or other brand? I'm not clear no that.

jarosoup · Sun Aug 07, 2005 7:12 am

I tried to do this with 2.8.28 a few weeks back and couldn't get it to work. This was with a Senao Prism card. Anyone else have any luck?

wildbill, the whole idea is to use Mikrotik as a transparent bridge on *any* standard AP, which means not relying on WDS, EOIP, or routing...a Mikrotik version of the CB3+ if you will

GJS · Mon Aug 08, 2005 5:59 pm

Wildbill - both devices I am using are RB523 with Atheros cards. I am trying to set up one as the AP and one as the client.

So, back to the original question, how to use WDS mode to bridge a wireless interface to ethernet. As far as I can make out, this would be the set up:

MT1 (access point)=AP bridge mode, WDS enabled, routed to ethernet interface.

MT2 (client)=AP bridge mode, with WDS enabled, added to bridge along with ethernet interface, associated to WDS interface of MT1.

If that is right, can a regular (non-WDS) 802.11a client still associate to the AP bridge interface of MT1?

On a side note, what the hell is station-WDS mode???

Thanks.

wildbill442 · Mon Aug 08, 2005 7:13 pm

If this is a PtP setup you would use mode=bridge on both ends..

If you're trying to do PtMP then the AP would be on mode=ap-bridge and the station adaptor would be set to mode=station-wds..

Also you want the WDS mode to be set to Dynamic (unless you want to manually create the WDS bridge then use static) everything else should be done as you said.

on a side note: WDS is not a proprietary MT protocol it's part of the IEEE 802.11 standard and should be interoperable with other WDS compatable devices.

Here's a MT example for creating a WDS bridge using mode=station-wds:

http://www.mikrotik.com/docs/ros/2.9/in ... #4.13.21.2

mgravity · Tue Aug 09, 2005 5:48 pm

So how do you do it, mgravity?

It is so simple. If you setup as client mode, put the wireless card into station mode. Then go under interfaces menu, you will see all interfaces with the mac. Go to one of the ethernet that will be in the bridge. Set the ip address, on the bottom there Ethernet Bridge Number assignment. So put 1 (first list of ip). Next the wpci0 and do the same thing like the ethernet interface (same ip address but there would be * signed means disabled) but it will be bridge into this ip.

That's it!!!

advantz · Sat Dec 31, 2005 4:44 am

Mikrotik manual stated that station-wds can be bridged??

[admin@WDS_Station] > interface bridge
[admin@WDS_Station] interface bridge> add
[admin@WDS_Station] interface bridge> print
Flags: X - disabled, R - running
0 R name="bridge1" mtu=1500 arp=enabled mac-address=11:05:00:00:02:00 stp=no
priority=32768 ageing-time=5m forward-delay=15s
garbage-collection-interval=4s hello-time=2s max-message-age=20s
[admin@WDS_Station] interface bridge> port
[admin@WDS_Station] interface bridge port> print
# INTERFACE BRIDGE PRIORITY PATH-COST
0 Local none 128 10
1 wlan1 none 128 10
[admin@WDS_Station] interface bridge port> set 0,1 bridge=bridge1
[admin@WDS_Station] interface bridge port> /interface wireless
[admin@WDS_Station] interface wireless> set wlan1 mode=station-wds disabled=no \
\... ssid=wds-sta-test band=2.4ghz-b/g
[admin@WDS_Station] interface wireless> print
Flags: X - disabled, R - running
0 R name="wlan1" mtu=1500 mac-address=00:0B:6B:34:5A:91 arp=enabled
disable-running-check=no interface-type=Atheros AR5213
radio-name="000B6B345A91" mode=station-wds ssid="wds-sta-test" area=""
frequency-mode=superchannel country=no_country_set antenna-gain=0
frequency=2412 band=2.4ghz-b/g scan-list=default rate-set=default
supported-rates-b=1Mbps,2Mbps,5.5Mbps,11Mbps
supported-rates-a/g=6Mbps,9Mbps,12Mbps,18Mbps,24Mbps,36Mbps,48Mbps,
54Mbps
basic-rates-b=1Mbps basic-rates-a/g=6Mbps max-station-count=2007
ack-timeout=dynamic tx-power=default tx-power-mode=default
noise-floor-threshold=default periodic-calibration=default
burst-time=disabled fast-frames=no dfs-mode=none antenna-mode=ant-a
wds-mode=disabled wds-default-bridge=none wds-ignore-ssid=no
update-stats-interval=disabled default-authentication=yes
default-forwarding=yes default-ap-tx-limit=0 default-client-tx-limit=0
hide-ssid=no security-profile=default disconnect-timeout=3s
on-fail-retry-time=100ms preamble-mode=both
[admin@WDS_Station] interface wireless>

jober · Sat Dec 31, 2005 7:39 pm

I believe that WDS only works with MT equipment, so if your AP is not MT, if probably would not work, anyhow. Do you specifically need WDS, or will standard bridging work? RouterOS supports bridging an AP client interface to an Ethernet interface, so you could try that, if it would be a workable solution for you....

Hitek

I'm not sure if I understand what you are saying! But I have a RB230 with 2x prism 2.5 200mW cards and the OS is 2.8.28. I have WDS on that AP and it work fine with the Deliberant DLB2300-a in WDS mode.