DIY WI-FI MESH with OpenWrt

Thanks a lot for this video. I have an issue setting up mesh in 5ghz with TP-Link Archer C7 and TP-Link Access Point RE650. mesh says not associated. It works well in 2.4ghz but the I have an issue with some clients not 5ghz capabilities.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Maybe check that on 5 GHz you are on the lower channels (36,44,52) because those do not have dynamic frequency selection DFS

@@OneMarcFifty thanks for your reply Marc, I'll check that tonight

[@pauldurand2]

I had the same problem. Solution: Replace: ath10k-firmware-qca988x-ct with: ath10k-firmware-qca988x Good luck!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Good point, many thanks!

@@pauldurand2 Thanks a lot, i'll try this evening if my wife does not use the wifi :-D ;) many thanks for the help guys!

[@jason123w4]

These vids should be used in place of the official documentation. The OpenWrt forums make us feel like we shouldn't even *think* about posting unless we've completed our Cisco certifcation beforehand. These vids are very accessible and consumer grade and could help the project reach a much larger userbase.

[@anton_rotanov]

Dude, that comprehensive material and for free? Thank you so much, its basically leading by the hand across all steps of setting up real working decentralized mesh. Keep up the good work!)

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks Anton!

[@saadabdullah4245]

@@OneMarcFifty hello what do you think of the new easymesh standard?

[@seth2389]

Marc, You just keep getting better! This is as detailed a tutorial as most users would need - my compliments! The way you have outlined common noob mistakes/gotchas shows your commitment to quality - awesome!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thank you very much;-)

[@stefanh.9089]

Hi Marc, I have recently started watching your excellent videos on OpenWrt. Being pretty new to the OpenWrt project I'm really grateful for your comprehensive and detailed explanations. Following your step-by-step instructions in this here video I have been able to build a 4 node mesh system based on Zyxel Multy M1 (WSM20) devices, whose stock firmware is not even beginning to unfold the potential that these pieces of hardware offer (to put it very euphemistically). I'm still experimenting with a couple of tweaks: - I have additionally installed the mesh11sd daemon for dynamic configuration hoping to improve roaming behavior for my older devices (the newer ones do roam as expected). - Also, I had to disable the "802.11r Fast Transition" option in the wireless settings since some of my devices would not connect at all in WPA2/WPA3 mixed mode with that option enabled. Disabling fixed that problem immediately Next topic I will look into is VLANs for network segregation and BATMAN adv. Thank you so much for your work and for the effort you are putting into your channel! Keep up the great work!

[@NgocLaMinh]

You did a fantastic project for OpenWRT community. Thanks, really appreciate it!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks !

[@JosiahLuscher]

I ran into a small (?) problem setting up the mesh on a Ubiquity UniFi AP AC PRO. Your suggestion to SSH into the device and use the "logread" command was perfect. After a little searching on the OpenWRT forums I found the problem and the solution. I documented everything on the forum for future Josiah and hopefully other people. Thank You So Much!!! I've tried several times to setup a wireless Layer 2 link between my shop and the house, and this seems to have done the trick. I'm looking forward to adding more mesh nodes, wireless user devices to the mesh, and VLAN support. - So much done, so far to go!

[@ukgreg]

Great video. I used an Archer A7 as the main router and tried another A7 and an Archer C7 as access points. I set up the mesh on 5 GHz because I have IoT devices that only connect to 2.4 GHz. I also ran into the issue with mesh not working on 5 GHz until I replaced ath10k-firmware-qca988x-ct with ath10k-firmware-qca988x. Many thanks!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Greg - many thanks for sharing this!

[@cbara568]

These videos are gold. Extremely high quality and well thought through.

[@heiaheiaheiahei]

Your tutorials always deliver solid information for setting things up and running, great job!!!!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks Alex!

[@jimcarroll9738]

This is a superb tutorial, thanks! A bit of an old-timer here; I've avoided mesh/roaming until now. Now that I see how you've spelled it out, I'm pretty sure I could have set up mesh/roaming in our last home; a roaming-over-wired-connectivity solution would have required an electrician to fish the wires. Also wanted to add that this was so tantalizingly well done that I had to double-check whether I could run client AP connectivity over 5 GHz while still using 2.4 GHz for the backhaul. The answer was easy to find, based on your video chapters. For anyone else wondering, jump directly to 16:22 for the answer. (The answer is 'yes' btw 🙂)

[@johnscamera]

It's been a little over a month since I committed my internal home network to 802.11s, and I haven't looked back. I use the 5GHz band for the back haul and this is fine. I think the hardware choice makes a difference as I can get the back haul extended to my shed about 50m from the house, albeit at bit on the edge with about 4% packet loss and a couple of walls.. My mesh nodes are made up of repurposed equipment: ASUS RT-AC58U as my gateway. Netgear WNDR3700 (old but works a treat) TP-Link Archer C20 v5 (cheap purchased especially for this purpose - great range) 2x Raspberry Pi Model B Plus Rev 1.2 I followed this video and the batman-adv one. I now have 3 subnets running over the mesh. Everything is stable and provides all the throughput I need. Thanks for the videos. They made the process way easier.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi, that's really great to hear - 50m is REALLY far for 5 GHz - I'll have to try out some of the hardware you suggest (especially the Archer C20 - I see this one sells for roughly 25 EUR). Many thanks for sharing!

[@johnscamera]

@@OneMarcFifty You're right about the 50m for 5GHz. If anyone else is in the same position, the 5GHz on the C20 seems to be pretty good, and on the remote end I have fashioned a parabolic reflector behind a USB WiFi adaptor on the raspberry pi. I don't use it for multi-media but it syncs my files between house and shed fine. Still waiting for 802.11ah HaLow to become mainstream.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Superb! Been looking for tutorials on this forever! thank yo so much for your clear, concise instructions, and all of the accompnying "why" of what it is you are having us do.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hey Brian, didn't know you were watching here - many thanks for the feed-back. Love your channel !!!

[@tip1810]

Wow! I was surprised how easy it was to setup the mesh. In my case I have a few buildings with IOT devices. Therefore, I don't need very fast internet, but I need a better signal coverage instead. I use the 2.4ghz band and iperf3 says that I have 40 mbits/s on the farthest AP. The solution is quite stable: IOT devices (esp8266 based) report no disconnects, no package drop. Thank you a lot for the guide!

[@BetreutesSchrauben]

Dude, why can't one just upvote this with more than one thumb?! Awesome video and guide to success with the realization for a mesh Wifi, need to sit tight until my hardware arrives. Thanks a bunch!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Awesome - many thanks! Btw - cool name for a channel ;-)

[@ismailelayachi9337]

Thanks Marc for your video. I’m testing a mesh network with 1 tp-link Archer C50 as a main router and 1 Xiaomi 4a Gigabit and 2 Xiaomi 4a 100M as acces points. I followed your instructions and until now it’s working fine. Thanks again for your effort and keep up the good work

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Ismail, many thanks for the feedback!

[@vijishmannor]

Thanks for the quality content. You possess the gift of explaining complex concepts in a simpler language, making them accessible to a broader audience. You should make more videos. And your voice is truly captivating. I wonder why you have only 47k subscribers 🤔

[@hkfuertes]

Marc, Thank you for these tutorials... topics are advanced enought that I have never tried them on my own, but simple enought to follow. Just finished playing and puting toghether a mesh network with 3 GL-Inet travel routers... really simple, looking forward to test them in a real scenario on my parents home. Thank you for your time and effort.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks for your feedback Miguel ;-)

[@hkfuertes]

@@OneMarcFifty btw and for your información the TP-Link RE200 from v1 to V4 are OpenWRT and mesh compatible ... And preowned (second hand as we say in spanish) are about 5-10€ each, they can make a cheap/great mesh setup 🤓🙂

[@OneMarcFifty]

@@hkfuertes Oh - I haven't thought about those ones yet - true - a bit weak on the Wi-fi side (one Antenna) but great form factor and presumably an awesome solution for a small room / remote PC !

[@markshaz8691]

These are by far the best videos in openwrt and networking in general. Thank you.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Mark - Thank you very much ;-)

[@UlfLeichsenring]

Hi Marc. I use mesh with two Linksys EA8300, OpenWRT 20.02.1 and WPA-SAE3 encryption with the wpad-openssl packet. As Fernando already stated the mesh sometimes freezes about every 2-3 months. Then a reboot is needed, in some cases it even needs a cold restart to get the wifi-mesh connecting again on both nodes.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks for sharing Ulf!!!

[@glevii]

This tutorial is awesome. There was still a bit of learning curve as I was connecting my mesh to an existing router and there were some conflicts in the beginning. But it's running and we'll see how long it stays that way. I'm using three D-Link DIR-6240's (As per one of your other videos). I'd say the D-Links made the process easy, and the ease of flashing them made them worth the purchase. I learned a lot along the way. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I can now ditch the proprietary (Just download our App) bullshit that comes with commercial mesh products. I have full control over my network and hopefully strong, stable wifi for a long time to come.

[@OneMarcFifty]

That's awesome ;-) Thank you so much for your feedback!

[@Kyrylo_Borovyk]

Thank you for comprehensive tutorial, I've used it with minor modifications to configure two Archers C6 v2 EU. So far so good

[@OneMarcFifty]

Awesome, many thanks for sharing.

[@0scarcalderon]

Hi Marc, thanks for this video! I want to try this at home. One question, is it possible to keep connected both routers via lan cable instead of wifi? for more reliability or if the second router is too far from the first one to catch the wifi signal of the first one

[@labods7891]

Hi and thank you for your excellent video. Here is my experience with free wifi mesh. I am using a wifi mesh system since about 4 monthes with 2 Xiaomi 4A gigabit edition with openwrt 21.01 on 5GHZ band, hardware acceleration activated. The system is pretty stable but with some random and short micro disconnects, not very problematic for me as they don't accur very often and are not very long ( just some seconds) In the main node, which acts also as a router, I installed DOH , wifi scheduler, UPNP and activated the NTP server. In the second node, I just disabled DHCP server, DNSmasq and firewall, and installed wifi scheduler and put the adress of the 1st node as NTP server . By the way, when I activate fast roaming as described in your video, a dlink router DIR-1665 acting as wifi client is not being able to connect to wifi anymore, so I disable this option. I am happy with the global performance, but I have to restart the hole system periodically ( 2 to 3 times per week ) because I notice some drop in performance after a long period of use. The performance return to normal immediately after restart.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks for sharing your experience here !!!

[@lgrullon854]

This was pretty good, please post more videos regarding openwrt...many of us are very interested in learning more about this great open source project.

[@OneMarcFifty]

More to come ;-)

[@joec00]

Thank you for this video. It helped me finally get everything working after spending hours trawling through forum posts and various online docos.

[@lossfound]

Marc, this tutorial was fantastic and I ran right out to buy a bunch of Archer C7 v2s from eBay (wow - CHEAP!); I'm trying to get our house meshed up with them this weekend. One issue I've run into: The C7 wireless radios may not behave very well until the country code is set (through the Advanced Settings tab in Wireless). If users are getting "Device is not active" errors that won't respond to any LuCI commands to enable wireless, etc., it's worth checking the country code and rebooting. Just about any individual setting change seemed to immediately "break" my 5GHz radio, requiring an ugly hard wipe of the complete wireless config ('rm /etc/config/wireless' or similar), until I set the country code. This quirk may only affect the US version / image of OpenWRT v21 for the C7, can't be sure, but it was a suggested solution I ran into several times while trying to diagnose. Cheers, thank you, and subscribed!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks for sharing with us ! It might be worth noting that some channels also need a minute to get associated due to DFS / weather radar regulations. Country code is important as well !

[@crosssouth6553]

thank you, this trick works for me in New Zealand!

[@rvanwaay]

Many thanks. 5 years ago I did almost the same with the B.A.T.M.A.N mesh protocol on 2.4GHz. This worked great. We had the best performance with the default transmit power.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks for sharing!

[@sugataahad4078]

Hey Marc! Excellent video. I just used two Archer C6 V3.2 and the fast roaming and mesh works great! The performance is also very good.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Awesome - thanks for sharing this !

[@bekim137]

Did you have any problems with wifi disconnections i have the same router like you with openwrt ?

[@sugataahad4078]

@@bekim137 Sorry for the late reply! Use the snapshot versions. They solved the disconnection issue for me

[@christophebert6404]

Hello Marc, I have installed 802.11s at m'y parents house. They have a quit great house with large wall. The wifi dis not reach the kitchen and it was not possible to use a LAN cable to put a 802.11r Access point. So i install an AP in the kitchen with 802.11s. it works great

[@christophebert6404]

And it is stable.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Awesome - many thanks for the feedback!

[@GRODT_TWH]

WOW, great video with so much detail. I love how you answered potential questions before asked. Fantastic. I currently have an OPENWRT NetGear Nighthawk X6 AC3200. I still need to check if it supports mesh and also need a second router.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Traviss - many thanks, glad you liked it ;-) Let me know how things go !

[@dwi2k]

this might be the best tutorial video i have ever seen

[@MateuszRumocki]

Wow, your videos are the best! I wanted to buy proprietary mesh system, but now I start looking for OpenWRT supported hardware. Thanks a lot! Best regards from Poland :)

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thanks Mateusz! Let us know how it goes!

[@emmarrem]

Hi Marc, i have set up my home wifi using the beautifully explained method here using 3 Xiaomi Mi 4a Gigabit routers flashed with the latest Openwrt. However the dumb nodes have taken a performance hit and is extremely slow. I used to get better speeds by using WDS connection. I do have to mention that the connection is solid but the performance is poor for the dumb nodes

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi, many thanks for your feedback. What exactly is the performance hit, i.e. what speed did you get before and what after ? Presumably if you got speeds above 100 MBps and you use the 2.4GHz as the mesh backbone then of course you would be limited to the 802.11n speed on 2.4 GHz. Alternatively you could run th mesh backbone on the 5 GHz.

[@lixxus-m]

most comprehensive tutorial and saved me loads of money

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thank you very much - I am glad that it was useful to you.

[@henning7801]

Marc, great video again. As always :) Can'r wait for the VLAN follow up...

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thank you very much

[@MiguelRodriguez5]

How to do a mesh network with wan ports connected at the router? I think that should be faster isn't it?

[@wifiadmin8463]

Thank you SO much for this! I do have a question that I would like to verify: 1) Setting up a mesh on 2.4 doesn't prevent you from serving different SSIDs on that same radio, correct? 2) I'm assuming that all that's happening is the mesh is just a hidden SSID network used for AP-AP traffic?

[@OneMarcFifty]

1.) correct 2.) it's not hidden but running in a different mode - the effect from a STA device is the same in the sense that it wouldn't see it. It would be visible on a Wifi analyzer though

[@wifiadmin8463]

@@OneMarcFifty Thanks so much for the confirmation, that makes it much easier for me to understand!!!

[@philipecoelho1]

Thanks for another great tutorial! BR's from Brazil!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thank you very much;-)

[@Budderb0yloves]

That bit about how to include the wan port in the lan network is exactly what I was looking for yesterday but couldn't find. OpenWRT is very confusing for a newcomer, but I am sure is very powerful. I wanted a dumb access point with wpa3 security, but my device is EOL according to the OEM, and they haven't provided firmware for years, so this seemed like the next thing to do.

[@antonyhebin]

I was confused whether a normal mesh router (not using openwrt) would extend primary and guest network. I was searching through a lot of stuffs including VLAN support, interoperability (easy mesh) etc. Couldn't get precise answers. But all those answers are available in your videos, and they are well presented. Many thanks! I have subscribed. I have a question. Can we connect one router with 2 access points at a time, one over mesh, and the other over wired backhaul (using openwrt)?

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks for subscribing and for the feedback ! Yes, you could have that type of config. At some point in the network you would need to bridge the Ethernet VLAN and the batman VLAN (e.g. bat0.56 and eth0.56)

[@adrian4jc]

Thanks Marc for this video. I am your new subscriber. I have 3 Questions. 1.Should I plug the AC1750 router to my existing modem? 2. I have a existing lan cable on my first floor. Should i plug the XIAOMI router. I have a weak signal to my loft room and don’t have LAN cable. 3. Can I put another XIAOMI router there wirelessly? Many thanks.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Jose, how you connect the routers really depends on what you want to achieve. Generally speaking - if you can use Ethernet then do so. If not, then use Mesh. In this video we are using ethernet : kzbin.info/www/bejne/oX7KpGWOe6ifl68&lc=UgzDI2HlxScEJtmh5aJ4AaABAg

[@Tgspartnership]

really cool that you explain so clearly. its nice when content is a bit easier to follow 🎯

[@Zerzayar]

Great tutorial. Every step explained and not too fast. Thank you!

[@jaumemotje7396]

For some reason, when disabling services, the AP hangs and does not work (10:45). If we avoid these steps it works! We are working with a Xiaomi Mi 1G (Master) and Xiaomi Mi 100Mb (AP) Besides this all good! Thanks Marc we love you!!

[@CustomRideOns]

This is the best video I found on the topic. Thanks for sharing!

[@emersonalves3864]

Very good, it clarified many doubts, I can't wait for the next video, could you talk more about the different open-mesh protocols like batman-adv and others?

[@francocastilloAR]

He already said that he is going to talk about them in the following chapters.

[@emersonalves3864]

@@francocastilloAR I'm sorry, I didn't pay attention, my English is very bad.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Yeah - no worries ;-) next episodes ;-)

[@soynerdito]

Thanks for the video. Followed and was was l able to configure a mesh. Different routers probably different openwrt version and still worked. Your videos are very useful and well explained

[@ignasnarbutas5645]

Great video as always! You are my go to source when it comes to OpenWRT. My backbone is 5Ghz, same routers - Archer C7 and Mi R4A. I am able to get max 100Mbit of speed. During speed test I noticed cpu go to 70% on both routers. Do you think it's CPU limitation?

[@wawabaobao]

Thanks for your great video. I followed your steps and everything was OK until I did an attended upgrade on the mesh point which blocked my access to it. After some investigation, I suspect that it was due to the fact I removed the firewall rules, while the attended upgrade enabled the firewall service by default. So I suggest you to skip the removing firewall rule part, since in any case you will stop the firewall. In this way, attended upgrade won't break the access.

[@mikeh6286]

Thanks for the video. I'm unclear about one thing. After joining the 2.4Gside and getting that up and running, does that second router broadcast that same SSID or is it just a client for your 5G ap config?

[@OneMarcFifty]

All APs participating in the mesh will broadcast the mesh SSID. But that mesh SSID can not be used to connect to them with a client. For this you need to add an SSID in access point (AP) mode on every AP serving Wifi. Plus you may use the same band for this or a different one.

[@link-87]

Gute Anleitung, die auch gleich Fragen beantwortet hat, über die ich stolperte. Hab's trotzdem noch nicht hinbekommen 😂 ich üb dann mal noch mit OpenWRT... Ich wollte ein Mesh Netzwerk mit 3 EX3700 von Netgear aufbauen, bei denen einer der Access Points eine LAN-Verbindung zu einem Router hat. In Ermangelung eines WAN-Ports ist das gar nicht mal so einfach 😉

[@OneMarcFifty]

Ah jetzt ja - ich musste erstmal nach EX3700 googlen. Klar - die sind ja als repeater konzipiert. Ich würde da wirklich einen zusätzlichen Wi-fi router benutzen, der den Internet Zugang bereitstellt. Hat Dein Router kein Wi-fi ? Oder ist er proprietär ?

[@link-87]

@@OneMarcFifty Es sollte eigentlich allgemein nur ein kleines Experiment sein und dann möglichst einfach umkonfigurierbar werden, damit man das bei jedem der sich mal über Netzwerkprobleme beschwert als Ersatz geprüft werden kann, also ob's ggf. nur am WLAN liegt, wenn die HomePods aussetzen, auch wenn die Verbindung bei anderen Geräten soweit funktioniert. (lag in dem Fall am WLAN des FRITZ!Box Mesh) Und ich würd gern gleiche Geräte verwenden und per LAN einfach an den vorhandenen Router gehen. Mittlerweile läuft die MESH-Verbindung schon, aber der AP am Router gibt noch nix zwischen LAN und WiFi weiter, aber das sollte nicht mehr lange dauern 😁

[@markpelayo]

Hi Marc, I am wondering if Fast Roaming is much faster than Mesh? As you said in the Fast Roaming video all access points are connected through Lan cable?

[@SantaRosaBmx]

Hi guys! Im currently using a Tp-Link C20 v4 as dumb ap and a Tp-Link Archer C60 as main router and ap. No issues so far and im using it with over 20 devices connected in total. The best part is that I got them for around $8 each (second hand, im not joking). So, ULTRA CHEAP!

[@OneMarcFifty]

8$ - wow - that's REALLY a lot of bang for a buck ;-)

[@ivantenev2694]

I am using Xiaomi Mi Router 4A Gigabit Edition as main router and Xiaomi Mi Router 4C as access point. Both works great with OpenWRT and mesh.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks for sharing!!

[@АртемМолодов-в6в]

Great video, thank you! It's a pity that with today's consumer degradation trend, this video will not be in the TOP

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thank you - we’ll see ;-)

[@mlsokol]

Marc, the content on your channel is awesome! What is the difference between a mesh system with fast roaming capabilities and a system which utilizes only fast roaming? I'm mainly interested in a good coverage at my apartment and seamless transition between AP's with all of them connected by air. Which option you would think best meets my criteria?

[@guilmm]

Same doubt here!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Actually - they are both the same. The access points are configured for fast roaming. the only difference is that the back bone is a wire in one case and over the air in the mesh case. So in a nutshell - if you have a wire then use it, if not then you can go for the mesh. Either way use fast roaming for faster hand-over from one AP to the other.

[@nashooali7667]

but irrespective your experience and knowledge is really at the edge and i can say if you are not an inventer then you are second in line nothing less. your broad experience in fequency, routerboards, deep knoweldge of openwrt aqnd networking. thank and know that i appreciate the info you provide please don't stop

[@haraldsauer728]

Thanks a lot for the video. Does mesh only work with some routers or with all routers running openwrt?

[@OneMarcFifty]

Your Wifi hardware needs to support it - you can run iw config or the like to see if it is supported

[@chrisarmstrong2721]

This is fantastic, can you do an updated 2023 version of this please, perhaps include travel/battery operated routers that can be part of the mesh as well as vpn travel routers. Ive seen the mango vpn with open wrt router, but cant find out if i can add the mesh function? My plan is to have a large mesh thought my home and then transmit it several miles to wards my place of work and towards the local park so i do not need to use data. Its a fun project im investing time and at this point a little money into as i now have about 6 of the routers from your video, 2 tp link 1975 and 4 mi 1g routers from your video. It would also be great to find out if the routers memory can be expanded by adding a usb 4gb stick so i can do en-mass over the air updates over time. Is it also possible to use a raspberry pi, 1,2,3,4 or zero as a mini server as i wish to add them into the mesh for self hosting content, from a wordpress site on the pi 4 to video and database data and vpn protection across the others. It would be wonderful to get a little feed back on this and amazing to get a video of you just talking about the above as a point of interest video on what can be done and roughly how to go about it as best advice for getting started. Many thanks in advance, Chris

[@cattivello]

Thanks for this great video again. Question: Using Mesh network, would it be similar than using small wifi bridge devices? Why i am asking? Well, bridging wifi generally takes 50% of the wifi connection off the equation. Resulting in loss of speed. So the question eventually is: would Mesh network also cone at the expenses of the speed and bandwidth? (Hance slower internet)? I do understand that sometimes is not possible to use wires along the house, but maybe power line could supply to the issue? I like the idea of mesh a lot. Could i say it depends from the actually delivered ISP speed if Mesh network is actually functional in your house? And again, i can be very wrong. Thanks for letting is know. Regards

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Cattivello, You are totally right. If you have a mesh with two nodes and you are using the same radio for mesh and AP then this will half the bandwidth very much like a repeater would. Possible solution would be to use tri-band devices. I just got my hands on a bunch of ASUS Lyra MAP AC2200 which I bought cheap on eBay - those can do 5 GHz on two separate radios plus 2.4 GHz - just the switch and VLAN is a bit of a challenge :-)

[@TheClembo]

Wunderbar . As always a very succinct and informative video. Looking forward to the next in series.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thank you very much!

[@syruce76]

Hi Marc, thks for this amazing tutorial, Just one question does this technics work when the archer c7 is in acces point only .? when the dhcp is before it, do you know if a client catch the dhcp through the archer, do you know to if we need absolutly to plug all mesh on it, can they pass through a switch .? ok sorry it's not just one question ... :) so nice you have an other fan

[@michaelcooper5490]

Your links for the routers are incorrect now, Can you update them please? Thank you sir. Great Video again.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Michael, many thanks - I have replaced the product ID of the Archer C7 - still - the way I link to Amazon is not ideal (as I have viewers around the world and the ASINS could be different) - but Amazon needs a national setup for each of them. Anyhow - many thanks for the feedback !

[@TismoGaming]

I noticed @11:50 that you disabled dns , dhcp and firewall. I have archerA9 running openWRT and would like to use it as a dumb AP that sends vlans to another AP and repeater upstairs . I already have my main router running firewall and dhcp,dns etc. Should I disable firewall, dhcp and dns like you did in this video on the ArcherA9 that’s running luCi?

[@OneMarcFifty]

You should disable DNS and DHCP. You can still run the firewall, but not with zones (as there is no routing on this device) but you could use it to block services etc.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Also make sure you disable IPv4 and IPv6 forwarding on the AP!!!!

[@soubinan]

I wish more subscriptions for your channel, you deserve it! It is an amazing work to explain things clearly, detailed and very efficiently Thank you

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thank you very much!

[@crazypict]

What about backhaul, I mean how to ensure that transition back to the router from the differens AP and between the different AP:s will be stable. Via cable or via a dedicated channel? How to handle that problem? Nice video!😊

[@Benz-z5f]

I'm new to openwrt. Would the routers have to be the same brand/model to do the mesh? Or not necessary, and they can work together as long as they all run openwrt?

[@igor6201]

Hello Marc, thank you very much for the tutorial. Could you advise, does mesh connection between routers should have the same radio channel as the access point? When I try to switch mesh connection radio channel between routers, the access point changes itself for the same channel and frequency.

[@kapurar]

Great tutorial! Clear and concise instructions. Thank you!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thank you very much!

[@109nik]

@OneMarcFifty, does openWrt supports D-Link DIR 3060? I couldn't find it in the firmware selector page.

[@volkervitt]

As always a awesome tutorial! I really like your way of describing things. One question is left: At what point would you recommend mesh over ethernet? I think, most people realize their over means like powerline etc.

[@OneMarcFifty]

I always prefer hard wire over radio if possible - if there is no way to pull a wire then use mesh

[@warrenkarlbriones2629]

Hey Marc! Great video, always admire your tutorials, was thinking about this last night and boom you have one already! One question though, was gonna use Openwrt + Ubiquiti u6, could this mesh work? Or should i go with 802.11r fast roaming?

[@francocastilloAR]

They are two different things.

[@warrenkarlbriones2629]

@@francocastilloAR Yes, I realized that now. 😅 apologies, a bit of a noob.

[@OneMarcFifty]

There you go - great minds think alike ;-)

[@dusscode]

Do I create two mesh points each for the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz bands? I'm willing to do the practice of making the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz bands have the same SSIDs so clients can automatically pick the stronger one.

[@OneMarcFifty]

You will have to have all mesh points in one given mesh on the same channel and SSID. Therefore, if you want to have your _mesh_ cover the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz band then you need them on one bands. You can of course have the mesh only on let's say 2.4 GHz and serve Wifi as access point in both bands. For this you'd use 802.11r (fast roaming).

[@maxvanderpuij484]

Brilliant video, after trying to change the firewall zones something seems to have happened and i can not reach my second router anymore... i can see it in the network, while accessing the first router, but am in no way able to connect to it... any tips?

[@hiyoshi177]

this works if I have the main node and two others by cable? is that in my case I live in an apartment and I have too many nearby networks, so cable is the only option since I have almost 30 networks nearby and I capture them with enough signal, in 2.4 I have all the spectrum saturated, in 5 I have 2 free channels without overlap, but with bandwidth of 40 MHz, so I would not give all the speed, the best in my case would be by cable, I imagine that if it works well, but I need to buy the slave nodes, but I would like to know your opinion about it marc.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Luis, if you have cable then you don’t need mesh. Just set up fast roaming on the access points

[@hiyoshi177]

@@OneMarcFifty thanks marc

[@MAN-pp4qg]

Would this work or could it be altered to work in a daisy chain? In my house, I am looking to set up three routers all connected via mesh, but router1 connects to router2 which connects to router3 which connects to the internet. I do not have the option to physically move router3 between router1 and router2. Also, router3 is way more powerful and has 3 radios and my other two have 2 radios. Would I want router3 to be connected to the internet in this chain, or, in the middle between the other two routers?

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi - yes, you can daisy-chain those (i.e. have a chain of APs connected with mesh and your router at the end - or in the middle). Whether you put it in the middle or at the end really depends on where you position everything.

[@GP-SEA]

Thank you for creating this guide! Wish it was easier to create mesh 'nodes' - perhaps making a config save file would help, being able to save that to identical routers now being mesh-only access points.

[@Neo198431]

I have the Dlink Dir-2660 I as think about getting the Dlink dir-2640 which supports mesh and is on openwrt compatibility list. As long as both routers support openwrt and 802.11s should this should work I assume?

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi, afaik they are both identical. Maybe consider the Belkin RT 3200 as well.

[@cnimrod]

@OneMarcFifty - great video. thanks! I was wondering - is there a way to configure a LAN backbone for the Mesh (or fast roaming)? or if I have eth cable for all APs I don't need mesh?

[@OneMarcFifty]

Both are possible. You can use a wire with batman-adv (see this video kzbin.info/www/bejne/qmWkYZ6cnJeiotE ) or - if you have a wire then you would not need mesh at all - see this video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/oX7KpGWOe6ifl68

[@steffen192]

Hello Mark, great your tutorials! Does openwrt now (2022/09) working in mixes 2,4GHz and 5Ghz meshes under the same SSID name?

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Steffen, you mean have the same SSID for clients or for the mesh backbone? For clients no problem, but for the backbone I would use different SSID s

[@danielandross]

Very nice tutorial. Using the scripts someone with little network skills can setup a mesh. The scripts also worked (only updating system time was missing otherwise the packages for wpad cannot be downloaded). Could you give me an advice on what I need to configure so both mesh access points may be connected to the same physical ethernet network? Currently this creates a loop with the mesh wifi. Is disabling the mesh-wifi the best option?

[@adrian4jc]

Is this ok with 200mbps broadband? I live in UK with virgin media router which is not good. Should I throw away the cirgin media router and replace it with Tp-link c7 and XIAOMI router?

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Jose, presumably you would need to keep the ISP's router - it heavily depends on how you get to the internet (Fiber with Ethernet at your home - yes, you may throw it away if you have credentials etc. --- DSL - you would need a DSL modem still)

[@MRLGM07]

Love your work thank you for this got this up and running with 4 x Xiaomi Mi Router 4A Gigabit Edition and 2x Xiaomi Mi 4C and its working well.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Awesome- many thanks for your feedback and sharing!

[@LampJustin]

Since both of you have R4A Gigabit routers, did you ever encounter problems with wifi just not sending packets? Both of my R4AG's are connected via ethernet and one of them just always ends up starting to make some trouble with long website loading. It's really weird and I can't really debug it... Maybe one has a hardware problem or sth

[@MRLGM07]

@@LampJustin Question and the dns firewall ect turned off ?? With a laptop ping google dns for a while and watch if you get any spikes. Install htop and check the logs. I have an issue try ingto solve my self with one of mine I changed the port 1 to 4 I do know it's from the storm we had as the ehernet cable is in the roof since then has not been stable. SNMP i want to install next and then see what it dose i use prtg and ping it and see times out alot want to reload it but could be hardware.

[@LampJustin]

@@MRLGM07 hm yeah I'll probably need to run a logging agent since during the "problem" the ap is completely unreachable no packet is going anywhere and it happens at random times... :(

[@IrfanKamil]

i didnt realized that this could applies on xiaomi router 4c too, omg just 40 bucks for 3 mesh system, thanks fyi!

[@dharunpazhanivel4727]

Awesome!!! Waiting for the next episodes!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thank you!

[@ianliu88]

My ISP's modem is also a router and has a DHCP server enabled. How should I configure the first router in this case? In my scenario right now, I have my ISP's modem/router with DHCP server, and another router in "Bridge mode", providing wifi, but the cable goes from LAN to LAN. How do I setup a router that goes from LAN to WAN?

[@OneMarcFifty]

You would only need this if you wanted to create a "DMZ" between your ISP's router and the first OpenWrt router. If you want to have that then just use the default settings of OpenWrt, connect your ISPs router to the WAN port and the other APs to the LAN port.

[@pauldurand2]

Mark, Great tutorial. After viewing your video I tried to duplicate your results. Unfortunately, I could not get it to work - error " wireless is not associated". I loaded my router with version 21.2.3 and the configuration does not match yours. What version of openwrt did you use. Many thanks!

[@OneMarcFifty]

You might need to wait up to 10 minutes on a 5GHz channel if it has radar detection / DFS

[@adrian4jc]

I have bought the Belkin RT3200 and now looking for 2 Access points. Which one is the best to buy to make access points? TP-LINK Archer C7 or the XIAOMI MI A4 Gigabit edition? Please help!!!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Jose - you may use either one of those. You may as well use the RT3200 as an access point or use many of those. It also depends on the budget and on what is available at the moment due to the hardware shortage. I'd just check the OpenWrt table of hardware and see what you can get with decent CPU, ath10k and/or mt7615/mt7915 hardware

[@MAN-pp4qg]

At around 11:44, you delete the firewall zones and then remove firewall from the startup. Are both of these steps necessary or would just doing one be sufficient?

[@OneMarcFifty]

Disabling the firewall would be enough. the firewall config file is not read if the service doesn't start and hence the zones don't get created.

[@MAN-pp4qg]

@@OneMarcFifty Many thanks! :)

[@MoyeenShariff]

Hi, i see archer c7 as discontinued.. do you have any recommendations for newer routers.. also both archer ranger routers to get higher coverage.. thank you

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Moyeen, definitely the Belkin RT 3200 if you can get hold of it (Xiaomi AX3200 has similar hardware). I am currently testing a handful of others. Please see my Github Repo for status: github.com/onemarcfifty/mu-mimo-test#test-progress - Video to follow soon.

[@novaleary4488]

Thank you for the tutorial!! I just finished getting this working and I put my smart TVs on the IOT network, however they can't talk to my devices on lan (i.e. phone can't cast content to my smart TV). I heard it's related to mDNS but I'm not sure how to get it working, have any possibly solutions for this? Thanks! :D

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Nova, have a look at mdns-repeater. You could replicate the mdns packets over network boundaries. However, for airplay and the like you would need to open a lot of firewall ports….

[@anilgarg57]

Marc, I also don't use mesh since I have a cat6 to my garage and that gives me full coverage. However, what good is an afternoon without trying something new? So I tried but WPA3 does not work with mesh and luci does not allow using wpa2. So I ssh'ed into both routers and then changed the encryption to psk2 and voila the mesh was up. Once again, great tutorial.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Anil, great feedback, many thanks! So basically you just did a uci set wireless.wifinetx.encryption='psk2' followed by uci commit ? Did you do this on the mesh Wifi itself or on the AP wifi ?

[@anilgarg57]

@@OneMarcFifty I wasn't sure if UCI will also force validation to WPA3 like luci, so I just used line editor to edit it to psk2 and qw! to save and reboot.

[@anilgarg57]

@@OneMarcFifty I changed to psk2 using vi editor on the AP (802.11s) and on the mesh (also 802.11s).

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thanks for sharing - I’ll try that out.

[@nautaki]

So does this mean that my WiFi client will jump from OpenWRT AP to OpenWRT AP as I move around the house even if the AP I am connected to is still reachable? Or will it stick to the AP it has seen first until the signal disappears completely? I just want to make sure this is not like 2 APs with the same SSID but more rather a typical mesh solution like the ones from TP-Link and Netgear

[@OneMarcFifty]

The client will roam when the AP it was on falls under a certain signal strength. With or without Mesh, fast roaming or anything else. What makes the roaming long and disrupt transmission is the fact that it needs to re-negotiate keys. Fast roaming makes that part faster. Also, re-negotiating DHCP addresses if your APs are on different subnets makes that part longer. If you put both APs on the same subnet and activate fast roaming then they will roam faster. A mesh solution typically uses that very same mechanism. But mesh or not is not related to the speed of roaming. It just means that a Wi-fi mesh uses a Wifi as backbone rather than Ethernet. So to sum up - it is not mesh that makes the roaming fast but 802.11r - be there mesh or not.

[@nautaki]

@@OneMarcFifty Interesting, thank you for clarifying. TP-Link for example claims that as you move around your house their mesh solution will move you from one AP to another almost transparently with a switch time of 0.3 sec (if I read this correctly somewhere). Can this be achieved with 2-3 OpenWRT installations? Right now I have random appliance APs with the same SSID but the client won't let the AP go for as long as there is some signal even if the same SSID from a different AP is present with a much stronger signal. I'll need to do some more reading on this.

[@MarkSt.]

Can I use the mash function also over cable? Because I have 2 Routers connected over cable (lan) and another only over wifi. Thanks😊

[@bachmagiao]

I built a 5GHz home mesh connection with two old Xiaomi routers that I got from a guy on the internet. The powerful router has 256MB of ram, 128MB of flash, and an 880GHz dual-core processor. I tested the home mesh on 5GHz with a Redmi note 10 and iPhone 13. The iPhone passed quickly but the Redmi failed. The Home-mesh works fine on 2.4 GHz with both.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi, when you say home mesh - is that using the stock firmware or OpenWrt? I am asking because whether it's mesh or not should not affect client connectivity. 802.11s is back bone only.

[@bachmagiao]

​@@OneMarcFiftyHi Marc, I am using Openwrt on two Xiaomi 3G routers. I agree with you about 802.11s so the hardware of Redmi is low speed

[@franzpleurmann2585]

Can I add a 5GHz mesh backbone as well as a 5GHz WLAN AccessPoint on the same openwrt router or will this break the mesh? What is the reasoning behind not adding both a 5GHz and 2,4GHz mesh backbone while also adding 5GHz and 2,4GHz WLAN AcessPoints for the wireless interfaces?

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Franz, you may of course use 5 GHz as a backbone and have access point on 5 GHz at the same time. the reason I used 2.4 GHz is because I have walls between the mesh points and also I have a 100 Mbps Internet line, so 802.11n is enough for the backbone for me.

[@the80scyborgninja39]

Excellent content! Your depth on the subject and clarity of instruction is perfectly executed. I wonder if there is a way to set up mesh with 2 dumb access points off a switch off a pFsense firewall that handles routing, DHCP etc? One access point is wired while the other one needs to be unwired as I'm moving it to another location. If anyone knows please inform me. Thanks!

[@OneMarcFifty]

That should work.

[@balldavida]

It should work, just turn off the DHCP server on the access points.

[@the80scyborgninja39]

@@balldavida@OneMarcFifty FWIW I did try this, but the access point unwired was unable to hit the default GW ( firewall ). I'm not sure how I would work that out. From my understanding of mesh, the AP wired to the switch acts as a GW for the other APs that are unwired. Currently all my APs are dumb, so how would I be able to make the unwired AP hit the firewall and be mesh?

[@OneMarcFifty]

@@the80scyborgninja39 you would need to bridge mesh and ethernet on one of them

[@lcbdias]

I was wondering the same. Did you manage to achieve that set up? I have a pfSense firewall handling DHCP, VPN etc and would like to keep it that way

[@MvTCracker]

Cool video but what if I wanted to use an outdoor POE point to point bridge or point to multipoint bridge ? like a TP-Link 2.4GHz N300 Long Range Outdoor CPE for PtP and PtMP Transmission | Point to Point Wireless Bridge

[@OneMarcFifty]

Well, if you want to use a specific hardware then you would need to check if it supports OpenWrt. If it does not, then you would have to go with what they offer you. If you wanted to do VLANs over such a config then you could try and tunnel point to point with some L2 protocol such as gretap which I show in the second episode kzbin.info/www/bejne/jXquqIKGrNmHgLc

[@PatalJunior]

I setup mesh between 2 Xiaomi AX3600 on 2GHz band (40Mhz), and one near the other they do 210Mb/s which is quite impressive for 2GHz band, didn't test further away or with 5Ghz, since that band is the one used for devices and is more occupied. Reliability can't speak about it since I just got it setup.

[@DaiCLy]

great vid. Is there a comprehensive website listing routers with mesh capability?

[@OneMarcFifty]

Not that I would be aware of - it really depends on the Wifi hardware. I think a good starting point though is one of the table of hardware (TOH) views on the OpenWrt site: openwrt.org/toh/views/start If you select one of the "Ideal for OpenWrt" views then that should be quite close to what you are looking for.