how to prevent repeater from associating with another repeater

[chiwalfrm]

I have three Asus RT-N16. One is a standard wireless router running ASUSWRT-Merlin "RT-N16_3.0.0.4_374.32_0".

The other two are repeaters running the experimental "RT-N16_3.0.0.4_374.32_0-dwrpyd" and bridged to the main router's SSID.

The problem is that one of the repeaters (call it repeater #2) will sometimes bind to the other repeater (repeater #1) rather than the main router. I can see this when I go to System Log -> Wireless Log.

This would be OK if repeater #1 is closer to the main router but it is not, so performance is actually much worse than if I can get repeater #2 to bind only to the main router.

How can I force repeater #2 to bind only to the main router?

 

[PrivateJoker]

I have three Asus RT-N16. One is a standard wireless router running ASUSWRT-Merlin "RT-N16_3.0.0.4_374.32_0".

The other two are repeaters running the experimental "RT-N16_3.0.0.4_374.32_0-dwrpyd" and bridged to the main router's SSID.

The problem is that one of the repeaters (call it repeater #2) keeps binding to the other repeater (repeater #1) rather than the main router. I can see this when I go to System Log -> Wireless Log.

This would be OK if repeater #1 is closer to the main router but it is not, so performance is actually much worse than if I can get repeater #2 to bind only to the main router.

How can I force repeater #2 to bind only to the main router?

I don't have an RT-N16 running that f/w, so I can't eyeball this, but can you filter/block Repeater 2 by its MAC address from connecting to Repeater 1?

 

[chiwalfrm]

When in Repeater mode, the "Wireless" option on the left side of the web interface is gone, so there is no way that I can see to do Wireless MAC filtering.

Thanks for the reply.

 

[PrivateJoker]

When in Repeater mode, the "Wireless" option on the left side of the web interface is gone, so there is no way that I can see to do Wireless MAC filtering.

Thanks for the reply.

Sorry that idea didn't help.

Have you tried finessing your channel assignment manually? I've been in environments with multiple repeaters and what may be a certain RF situation between your AP & R1 might be very different if you were standing between R2 & AP. So one idea would be to take your laptop and survey near both R areas and see how the AP looks and also see what channel looks most free of interference and neighboring networks.

Sometimes everything on auto actually does screwy stuff.

I have an N16 sitting here in a box to go back to Amazon that I'm about to unbox and mess around with, just cause I'm real curious myself what the solution is!

 

[SjoerdNLD]

Just a thought, you can add one ssid "A" to the main router and hide it.
Then set the repeaters to connect to "A" and broadcast your normal ssid

 

[thiggins]

If the repeating is being done by WDS, each WDS link is specified using MAC addresses. So the only way that the repeater 2 would be able to set up a link to repeater 1 would be if repeater 2 has repeater 1's MAC address entered in the WDS link table.

But you said that your repeating links are being established by SSID, which leads me to believe that you are not using WDS.

 

[chiwalfrm]

To: PrivateJoker

There doesn't appear to be any way to modify channels in the repeaters. If the main router is using channel 1, all repeaters are also using channel 1. In repeater mode, the web admin interface is much simpler than before, and the "Wireless" option on the left side of the web interface is gone.

To: SjoerdNLD

If I understand you correctly, the main router would have SSID "A" and the repeaters would bind to it but they would broadcast SSID "B" instead so other repeaters won't bind to it. But this is not possible from what I can tell in ASUSWRT-Merlin because the "Wireless" option is gone from the web interface (when in repeater mode).

To: thiggins

It is not done via WPS. With WPS in the Asus RT-N16 router, only WEP or no-security is supported so this won't work for most people. Asus calls this Bridge mode and it would have been great if it worked with WPA2 security.

My hope is that there is a way to tell the ASUSWRT repeaters to bind to SSID "A" at BSSID "xx:xx:xx:xx:xx" rather than just SSID.

 

[PrivateJoker]

To: PrivateJoker

There doesn't appear to be any way to modify channels in the repeaters. If the main router is using channel 1, all repeaters are also using channel 1. In repeater mode, the web admin interface is much simpler than before, and the "Wireless" option on the left side of the web interface is gone.

To: thiggins

It is not done via WPS. With WPS in the Asus RT-N16 router, only WEP or no-security is supported so this won't work for most people. Asus calls this Bridge mode and it would have been great if it worked with WPA2 security.

I will play around w/ the N16 I have sitting here if you can give me a day or two. . .

 

[thiggins]

To: thiggins

It is not done via WPS. With WPS in the Asus RT-N16 router, only WEP or no-security is supported so this won't work for most people. Asus calls this Bridge mode and it would have been great if it worked with WPA2 security.

My hope is that there is a way to tell the ASUSWRT repeaters to bind to SSID "A" at BSSID "xx:xx:xx:xx:xx" rather than just SSID.

i was not referring to WPS. WDS (wiFi Distribution System) does exactly what you describe and that I previously described.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...ut-wireless-bridging-and-repeating-part-1-wds

 

[chiwalfrm]

To: thiggins

The ASUSWRT (either stock or Merlin) doesn't support security higher than WEP when in WDS mode so it won't work for most people unless they want mediocre security (I believe WEP is very easy to hack).

To: PrivateJoker

Thanks!

 

[thiggins]

To: thiggins
The ASUSWRT (either stock or Merlin) doesn't support security higher than WEP when in WDS mode so it won't work for most people unless they want mediocre security (I believe WEP is very easy to hack).

Thanks for the information. Even worse, however, using WEP limits link rates to 54 Mbps.

 

[RMerlin]

This is a technical limitation of the WDS technology. It cannot work with encryption schemes that involve a rotating key - this is why WPA and WPA2 are not possible.

I suspect that those firmwares that claim to support WPA/WPA2 over WDS are probably setting a key rotation of 0, which means you are lulled into a false sense of security - the key rotation is part of what makes WPA better security-wise.

 

[thiggins]

This is a technical limitation of the WDS technology. It cannot work with encryption schemes that involve a rotating key - this is why WPA and WPA2 are not possible.

I suspect that those firmwares that claim to support WPA/WPA2 over WDS are probably setting a key rotation of 0, which means you are lulled into a false sense of security - the key rotation is part of what makes WPA better security-wise.

That may be how they are doing it Merlin. But there are products that allow at least WPA for the WDS link.

WPA or WPA2, both are susceptible to today's more sophisticated attacks when the key is weak enough.

 

[PrivateJoker]

That may be how they are doing it Merlin. But there are products that allow at least WPA for the WDS link.

WPA or WPA2, both are susceptible to today's more sophisticated attacks when the key is weak enough.

Steve Gibson has a really nice maximum entropy random WPA key gen on his site (and if you question the security of using his keygen he probably has addressed any concern you have in his podcasts, which are fully text searchable on his site).

https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm

And on the repeating topic, I've noticed Apple went from using WDS up through a few years ago and now it's different and they call it "802.11n extended wireless network," and it supports WPA. I'm casually kind of interested how it works, I've used it in the past personally and was impressed with its throughoutput.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4259

 

[chiwalfrm]

I actually don't want the "repeater" function as I am only using these as a bridge to connect wired devices at two locations to the main router. Is there a way to prevent the repeaters from 'repeating' the SSID signal? Some parameter that can be set in NVRAM?

 

[PrivateJoker]

I actually don't want the "repeater" function as I am only using these as a bridge to connect wired devices at two locations to the main router. Is there a way to prevent the repeaters from 'repeating' the SSID signal? Some parameter that can be set in NVRAM?

The n-16 doesn't have a plain bridge mode? With stock f/w, or other?

 

[chiwalfrm]

With the stock or Merlin firmware, the RT-N16 has:
Router mode, AP mode, WDS (Bridge) mode

But WDS mode can only use WEP security or no security at all.

With the experimental "RP" Merlin firmware, it adds:
Repeater mode

 

[PrivateJoker]

With the stock or Merlin firmware, the RT-N16 has:
Router mode, AP mode, WDS (Bridge) mode

But WDS mode can only use WEP security or no security at all.

With the experimental "RP" Merlin firmware, it adds:
Repeater mode

But all you want is bridges (wifi to Ethernet)? If so DD-WRT can do that very reliably, although it's sort of a pseudo-bridge, it doesn't handle MAC address visibility that well, but it works ok for me, I have 3-4 devices each on two dd-wrt bridges

 

[chiwalfrm]

To: PrivateJoker

I was intimidated by DD-WRT and wanted to stay with the Merlin ASUSWRT because Merlin's was very similar to stock firmware and I had gotten familiar with it.

But your suggestion turned out to be the right one.

DD-WRT has two modes that turned out to be just what I needed: "client" (wired devices are on separate subnet) and "client bridge" (same subnet).

The repeaters are now running DD-WRT in "client bridge" mode and this mode is exactly what I wanted. Thank you PrivateJoker!

 

[PrivateJoker]

To: PrivateJoker

I was intimidated by DD-WRT and wanted to stay with the Merlin ASUSWRT because Merlin's was very similar to stock firmware and I had gotten familiar with it.

But your suggestion turned out to be the right one.

DD-WRT has two modes that turned out to be just what I needed: "client" (wired devices are on separate subnet) and "client bridge" (same subnet).

The repeaters are now running DD-WRT in "client bridge" mode and this mode is exactly what I wanted. Thank you PrivateJoker!

Sweet because I had to send back my N16 yesterday to Amazon, whoops, forgot about that! Glad it worked out though.

I run 2 x DD-WRT instances on Linksys hardware in client bridge mode. It has a slight disadvantage of not transparently passing MAC addresses through them (at least not on the surface), but I've assigned all my stuff static IPs and things work behind them just fine (Apple AirPlay, TiVos seeing each other, etc). And you get the benefit of having bridges that connect using 802.11n w/ WPA2 to your main AP in this setup too (vs WDS).