I am not really a programmer, but I needed to solve an issue related to having multiple APs setup to cover approx 10000 sq feet of land. Wanted to post what I am using to share since most (if not all) I was able to gather and paste together via forums like this.
Overview:
5 non overlapping APs (not all Asus hardware), all same SIDDs
4 of them are setup in a square layout and are wire connected to a central switch
and 1 is isolated off in a corner of the property
this 1 alone AP is set up in (asus merlin) repeater mode and connects up to the main AP cluster. I get excellent bandwidth and signal from my directional antenna.
Problem:
The repeater mode AP works great on first association with an AP that I manually point it to and joined, however after some time, something happens and the manual AP that I joined drops the repeater AP. I do not loose network connection since the repeater mode AP connects up to one of the remaining 3 AP automatically keeping my connection available (due to same SIDD), however the result of this is a very slow speed.
Solution:
1. restart the repeater AP, or just restart its wireless service. It joins back up to the AP with the strongest signal again (the one i originally joined for repeater mode)
2. I pieced together a script to check the connection every hour and if needed restart the wireless service on the asus router.
SCRIPTS:
created a service-start script via this (found in another thread on this site) to check every hour. Needed this so upon router reboot the schedule would not be lost
cat << EOF > /jffs/scripts/services-start
#!/bin/sh
/usr/sbin/cru a AP-check "0 1 * * * APCheckLink"
EOF
My script checks the return value from a ping command. I noticed when I was not connected to the preferred AP that pings were over 100ms++, but on usual connections were 35ms and less, so I just picked 50ms to check against. I just drop a note in the syslog so I know that the script is running
/jffs/scripts/AP-check:
total=$(ping -c 4 www.stackoverflow.com | awk -F '/' '{print substr($5,0,2)}'); if [ "$total" -gt 50 ]; then echo "$(date)" " " $total"ms - restarting wireless" >> /tmp/syslog.log ; /sbin/restart_wireless ; else echo "$(date)" " "$total"ms - Connection is good" >> /tmp/syslog.log ; fi
Had to change the file access flags for my service start script as well as my AP-check script
chmod a+rx /jffs/scripts/services-start
chmod a+rx /jffs/scripts/AP-check
And this one was just to start the scheduling. Or could just issue the cru command manually
/jffs/scripts/services-start
So I though I would share. I am sure there is plenty of great minds out there that are scratching their heads on why I went about it the way I did, but like I said, im not a programmer.. lol
comments are always welcomed..
Cheers all!!
Overview:
5 non overlapping APs (not all Asus hardware), all same SIDDs
4 of them are setup in a square layout and are wire connected to a central switch
and 1 is isolated off in a corner of the property
this 1 alone AP is set up in (asus merlin) repeater mode and connects up to the main AP cluster. I get excellent bandwidth and signal from my directional antenna.
Problem:
The repeater mode AP works great on first association with an AP that I manually point it to and joined, however after some time, something happens and the manual AP that I joined drops the repeater AP. I do not loose network connection since the repeater mode AP connects up to one of the remaining 3 AP automatically keeping my connection available (due to same SIDD), however the result of this is a very slow speed.
Solution:
1. restart the repeater AP, or just restart its wireless service. It joins back up to the AP with the strongest signal again (the one i originally joined for repeater mode)
2. I pieced together a script to check the connection every hour and if needed restart the wireless service on the asus router.
SCRIPTS:
created a service-start script via this (found in another thread on this site) to check every hour. Needed this so upon router reboot the schedule would not be lost
cat << EOF > /jffs/scripts/services-start
#!/bin/sh
/usr/sbin/cru a AP-check "0 1 * * * APCheckLink"
EOF
My script checks the return value from a ping command. I noticed when I was not connected to the preferred AP that pings were over 100ms++, but on usual connections were 35ms and less, so I just picked 50ms to check against. I just drop a note in the syslog so I know that the script is running
/jffs/scripts/AP-check:
total=$(ping -c 4 www.stackoverflow.com | awk -F '/' '{print substr($5,0,2)}'); if [ "$total" -gt 50 ]; then echo "$(date)" " " $total"ms - restarting wireless" >> /tmp/syslog.log ; /sbin/restart_wireless ; else echo "$(date)" " "$total"ms - Connection is good" >> /tmp/syslog.log ; fi
Had to change the file access flags for my service start script as well as my AP-check script
chmod a+rx /jffs/scripts/services-start
chmod a+rx /jffs/scripts/AP-check
And this one was just to start the scheduling. Or could just issue the cru command manually
/jffs/scripts/services-start
So I though I would share. I am sure there is plenty of great minds out there that are scratching their heads on why I went about it the way I did, but like I said, im not a programmer.. lol
comments are always welcomed..
Cheers all!!
Last edited:
