Today, we tried to install a MikroTik CPE with a 6th-gen Atheros card in it running in station-wds mode. It was set to connect to a MikroTik AP with a Prism card and Dynamic WDS enabled.

The CPE would never associate to the AP with this setup. If I set the CPE to wds-slave, it connected fine. If I set it to plain station mode, it also connected fine.

Here on our test bench, I set up the exact same scenario, and encountered the same problem. I searched the forums here and read the wireless section of the RouterOS documentation (focusing specifically on all references to WDS), and found nothing which indicated anyone else had asked about this before, nor did I find anything in the documentation which either explicitly stated or even merely suggested that this would not work.

I suspected that the mismatch of wireless chipsets between the AP and the CPE was to blame, and so to test this, I installed a Prism card in the test CPE and tried to set it to station-wds. I was greeted with this message from RouterOS:

"Prism devices can not run station-wds"

This tells me what the documentation did not mention: that station-wds mode can only be set on Atheros interfaces. And I believe that it also hints at the reason for my earlier problem. However, a few questions remain unanswered:

a) Can an Atheros client set to mode=station-wds communicate with a Prism AP with WDS enabled?

b) If so, what am I missing in my configuration of either the CPE or the AP that is preventing this from working?

c) If not, is station-wds truly "industry-standard WDS", or is it strictly a proprietary MikroTik feature? In other words, can I not set a MikroTik CPE to connect via station-wds to a non-MikroTik AP running WDS, regardless of the AP's chipset?

I suspect that the use of "WDS" in "station-wds" is a misnomer (or at best misleading/confusing) since the use of the term "WDS" implies that no special support is required on the AP's part above-and-beyond standard WDS support (since it's WDS, the AP should be none-the-wiser if the WDS "client" simply doesn't send regular broadcast beacons or accept associations), and yet it would seem at this point that station-wds does need special support on the AP side in order for it to work.

If some of the confusion resulting from the use of "WDS" in station-wds could be clarified, that would be much appreciated. It would also be nice to see this clarification make it into the official RouterOS documentation.

Thanks!

-- Nathan

Hi NathanA,

I have similar problem .
With a AP ( no MT ) Prism 2.5 chipset and WDS active , only in wds-slave mode i can connect a CPE ( routerboard 112 with 2.9.24 ) .

Also you , i have read all forum and documentation , but no one have resolved .

Bye

Marco

I am pretty sure I read another topic in the forms about this issue, and a link was provided to the mirkotik documentation that said that Prsim 2.5 cards could not do station WDS. There was an issue how it handles SSID i belive.

-Michael

p.s. Here's the link http://www.mikrotik.com/Documentation/nstreme_spec.pdf
look at prism says no for station wds

I am pretty sure I read another topic in the forms about this issue, and a link was provided to the mirkotik documentation that said that Prsim 2.5 cards could not do station WDS. There was an issue how it handles SSID i belive.

Hmm...can't find that discussion. So, it went both ways? A Prism cannot be in station-wds mode AND it cannot take station-wds clients?

p.s. Here's the link http://www.mikrotik.com/Documentation/nstreme_spec.pdf
look at prism says no for station wds

That's certainly buried quite nicely. I would argue that it would be nice to see this in the main documentation, in the wireless section of the manual where it talks about WDS and station-wds.

-- Nathan