Unusual wireless request

[rhester72]

Some things I'd like to quickly get out of the way:

- I was one of the Tomato developers for many years - I know my way around a router
- I know what I'm trying to achieve can't be done via the GUI, and may not be possible at all, but ideally could be scripted

My basic setup is that I have a Dark Knight in my basement connected via CAT5 directly to my Ethernet-enabled FiOS 75/75 ONT with both radios disabled on the router (because there's no way it can offer any reasonable coverage throughout 3 floors). There is a gen 3 PowerLine wired adapter connected to one of the LAN ports, bridged to a WAP on the second floor, that is providing wireless signalling for the entire house (which is actually working surprisingly well).

However, the WAP does fall over every now and again, and I'd very much like to know when that happens. Since I don't have any permanent wireless devices on the network (it's all transient laptops, gaming systems, and the like), I'd like to use a wired server to periodically monitor the state of the wireless connection...which, of course, it doesn't have.

I was thinking I could spin up the radios on the router, but have it act as a wireless _client_ to the WAP on the second floor (the signal isn't great, but adequate for this), and have the wired server periodically ping the WAP's IP address. This would cause the packet to go over Ethernet to the router, then hit a custom static route rule forcing it to be forwarded over the wireless interface, such that it basically acts as an unrouted wireless 'bridge' purely for the purposes of hitting the WAP from wired machines to verify connectivity is good. If the ping fails, it's assumed wireless connectivity is down and alerts as such by e-mail.

The problem is that I don't know how to "hand-connect" AsusWRT Merlin to an AP via script. The connection is WPA2-AES, so I'm assuming I'll need to hand-start a WPA supplicant prior to actually trying to handshake, and store the the AP SSID and password in NVRAM somewhere (but again, as a client, not an AP!).

Anyone have a clue how this might be done?

Rodney

 

[RMerlin]

You could try restarting the entire wireless subsystem:

service restart_wireless

 

[rhester72]

That would no doubt, have the effect of restarting wireless - what I'm trying to understand is how I'd go about manually (i.e. in a script) setting up the wireless connection in the first place. Setting up the routing is no issue, I just don't know how to set up being a wireless WPA2 client *on the router itself* (since the router normally acts as a server, not a client from a wireless standpoint).

Rodney

 

[RMerlin]

No idea there. Asuswrt doesn't support wireless clients (beside the repeater and WDS modes), and I have no idea as to what would be involved in manually configuring it.

Since you are familiar with Tomato, one possibility would be to use Tomato. I don't know however if Shibby/Toastman/Victek (the Asus-compatible forks) support Wireless Client mode.

 

[rhester72]

No idea there. Asuswrt doesn't support wireless clients (beside the repeater and WDS modes), and I have no idea as to what would be involved in manually configuring it.

Since you are familiar with Tomato, one possibility would be to use Tomato. I don't know however if Shibby/Toastman/Victek (the Asus-compatible forks) support Wireless Client mode.

I went with your build for the performance above what Tomato can deliver on this specific hardware - doing it with Tomato is ugly for entirely different reasons. =)

Thanks for the input re. wireless clients on AsusWRT.

Rodney