MikroTik

Hello experts!
I am struggling since two weeks to get a wireless Network with 4 nodes running properly in a 3 floor living building.
I have one hap (10.3.1.1), which is connected to the Internet, 2 wap (10.3.4.1 and 10.3.4.2), and 1 map lite (10.3.4.3), where the last 3 (10.3.4.x) are not connected by wire, they should get all the traffic by wifi from the 1st node (10.3.1.1). I can setup a Network according the "partial wds mesh" paper from Reza Moghadam, which works, but the Performance and connectivity is very poor. Ping times are between 4ms and 3.8s (often == 23% --> I get an timeout of the pings. The throughput changes between some few kbit/2 and up to 10Mbit/s.

I created on all Routers the same Network (same SSID, same encryption, same Password, etc.) and enable the WDS mode to dynamic mesh (as written in the paper).
The WDS channels shall connect to the Default Bridge as well as the wlan Interface (like written in the paper).

all Routers are running on RouterOS 6.36.2, Firmware upgraded to the latest one

I hope somebody can help me to improve the network

Stefan

PS: Every router has a 2nd virtual AP with a different SSID (without WDS) for connection of special clients

PS: Every router has a 2nd virtual AP with a different SSID (without WDS) for connection of special clients

Ruling out interference, which could make performance worse (and be the source of lost packets), what do you expect? You're using a single radio to perform these tasks:

- Connect as station to other AP
- Be an AP for other WDS stations
- Have yet another AP (virtual) to serve other clients.

When the radio acts as AP, it cannot act as station at the same time. Throughput will be cut in half, as it has to switch back and forth between AP/station modes. Add the fact that when a packet from AP 3 needs to travel to AP1 it has to pass through AP2, so to receive the packet AP2 has to switch to AP mode, making impossible to send data to AP1 as station at the same time.

These features have their uses, but laws of physics are unavoidable.

Possible Solutions:

1.- Best one: wiring all APs.
2.- f wiring is not possible, get dual radio/band APs, use one of the radios (5Ghz for example) to create the "backbone" network, and setup the 2.4GHz radio to serve clients.
3.- If you can at least wire to middle floor (2), setup AP2 there so that AP1 and AP3 connect to it in 5GHz, and setup the 2.4GHz for the clients (much better performance than WDS)

Suitable routers: Hap ac, Hap ac Lite, wAP ac...

If wiring is absolutely impossible, then use WDS, but don't leave it in dynamic mode, your APs are going to be always on the same place, isn't it? Make WDS entries static making sure they're the optimal ones (i.e. AP1 doesn't connect to AP3 for example).

Hello pukkita,

thank you for the quick answer.

I purchased the wAPs for this special reason, so I don't want to change to a different type now.
The virtual APs were not used when I performed my ping and throughput tests, so they should not influence the values significantly.
Is it necessary that the signal strength between the nodes is above a certain value, otherwise it will work that bad?
If I understand you correctly, a big improvement will be to change from dynamic mesh to static mesh (although the topologyin the tutorial paper is handling something like my problem -hmmm).
This I will try, but I can give feedback after the coming weekend only.

Just to be sure... The setup I did, was - in general - ok? Or did I forget to enable a checkbox or a special setting, which is mandatory for WDS networks?

lg

Stefan

Hello pukkita,

I changed now to static WDS and the performance increased dramatically - thanks for the information.
but...I had to reboot the APs to start to talk to each other.
...and this morning the accesspoints lost connectivity completely. A reboot of the "master" node (the only one where I have access to from the internet) solved the issue partially (2 out of 3 (the wap) are reachable, one - a map lite - remains silent).

Current setup:
All APs have same frequency (2422), WDS set to static with WDS bridge set to default bridge (where the Wifi network is attached to, too).
The master node (connected to the internet) has 3 WDS, one to connecto to each of the single satellite nodes: wds_341, wds_342 and wds_343
the satellite nodes have only one single wds (node 341 has wds-341, node 342: wds-342 and node 343 wds_343)
After reboot of all nodes the APs were talking to the master node and I could ping from each AP the internet and the other APs (and devices attached to other APs)

I would really appreciate help to get the network up and running stable.

lg

Stefan

Did you actually set all wds interfaces on all APs as static? Try helping them by adding a Wireless > Connect List entry for the interface.

Yes, the involved Interfaces are set as static. Do I have to set the virtual AP as static, too? (Does not makes sense according my understanding)
I added now in the connect list all peer nodes (AP at 10.3.1.1 has 3 peer APs, the AP 10.3.4.1, 10.3.4.2 and 10.3.4.3 have only the 10.3.1.1 as peer node entered)
Whenever I disable the WLAN Interface on 10.3.1.1 (the only one, where I have Access via a VPN tunnel to, no WLAN necessary to connect for admin), wait a couple of seconds and reenable the Interface again, the complete Network starts to work as expected. But after a couple of hours the nodes stop communicating (the WDS is sometimes active, but only Transmission Bytes are notices, nothing received).
I will let you know tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, what happend.

Thanks so far

Stefan

2 out of 3 are lost during the night, so the connect list did not solve the issue (same behavior as before).
Again after switch off and on of the WLAN interface the connections to all 3 was again enabled.

What can I do to no lose the connectivity to some nodes?

lg

Stefan

Hello experts!

I am now running the system for some month, the only help I got was to add a watchdog, by trying to ping the google-dns server (8.8.8..
I checked now the uptime of the nodes and it seems that they are resetting in approx. 10 to 20 hours (less than a day).
How can I find out what is the root cause why they lost connectivity to the main router? The log files don't show any useful (to me) - BTW, is the log file deleted every reset?

lg

Stefan

If you're logging to memory (check System > Logging), you'll lose logs on each reboot. Change (or add an action) to action=disk.

OK! I changed all logging types to disk now. I will come back in some days, with the important information about the lost connections

Thanks!

Hi,
take look to this guide, there are some hints to avoid connection loose.

http://harry.subnetworx.de/2014/02/21/r ... ion-guide/

May be it helps.

Regards
Marcus

Hello Marcus,

thanks for the hint!

The only difference I found so far compared to the given guide is that I use static instead of static mesh (According the Mikrotik manuals the static should be the correct version. Nevertheless I will try to change)

As mentioned on a sidenote in the guide I have similar problems with log entries like:
wlan1: data from unknow device XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX ... for several times until the watchdog resets the system.
(XX::XX:XX:XX:XX:XX is the MAC address of the other WDS node)

lg

Stefan

That seems to point to interference...

Have you tried cts-to-self?

I have the same setup and see the same issues!
I use different devices, all of mine have 2 wifi-interfaces (2 and 5 GHZ) and I'd like to use both frequencies for the mesh aswell.
I hope we find a good working config. I will test the hints found in this thread aswell.

I previously used "dynamic" and had latency and loop issues (with only two APs!). I read something from Mikrotik that said "use dynamic-mesh, it is better" and that fixed my problem. But I do not understand the difference, only that mesh worked better.