Hello,
I thought I would post here and ask this as I am more active here vs. smallnetbuilder, openwrt, ddwrt, etc. If someone has another good site I would welcome suggestions.
The TLDR version is does anyone have a link to a good set of instructions for OpenWrt for creating a good transparent Ethernet WiFi bridge that they have had success with?
I want to setup a simple bridge so that an Ethernet-only device can be put on a WiFi network in a plug & play fashion, such as a UPS, printer, or something that has WiFi and Ethernet, but the WiFi is broken, etc.
I tried some of the off-the-shelf solutions, and I was very disappointed. I don't like the one's that plug directly into an outlet, some of them get extremely hot, are very large, and I actually don't see too many of them, so I am actually using a WiFi extender than also has an Ethernet port to get this done.
So, I bought one of these: GL-MT300N-V2 / Mango - GL.iNet
These are really nice, quite small, USB powered, run very cool, and actually quite versatile in it's use cases. It is also the fastest, I was getting around 50Mbits/s up and down even in the crowded 11n bands in my area.
It runs OpenWRT (says it doesn't have firmware for DD-WRT), it ships with OpenWRT + their own gui that is optional, so I started with that out of the box to start.
I followed the instruction here: OpenWrt Project: Dumb AP / Access Point Only
Which seems very short and straight forward. Technically this is for creating a bridged AP, but these are very similar use cases. I want a bi-directional bridge, not NAT or routing or anything. My network is Gigabit FiOS with a pFsense router, and Ubiquiti access points.
So, the short version is it works, but only with static IP and some other issues. As in, a device connected to the bridge Ethernet port will work but not with DHCP, only if it has static IP config. This is usable, but not ideal. I can see and reach the device from other devices elsewhere on the wired or wireless network, so at least a partial success. I use things like angry IP scanner with my laptop connected through the device to test. The laptop needs to be statically configured because as I said it won't get it through the bridge.
The other issue is that I completely lose access to the device for configuration after this setup is enabled. I can also live with this, but if I can, it would be nice if I could reach the management page from the wireless side in case I need make changes or troubleshoot something and so on. It is a bit odd, I don't see any of it's management interfaces after this, I haven't gone and scanned for it's MAC and troubleshooted it further, hoping that someone might have a suggestion.
Much appreciated.
-JCL
I thought I would post here and ask this as I am more active here vs. smallnetbuilder, openwrt, ddwrt, etc. If someone has another good site I would welcome suggestions.
The TLDR version is does anyone have a link to a good set of instructions for OpenWrt for creating a good transparent Ethernet WiFi bridge that they have had success with?
I want to setup a simple bridge so that an Ethernet-only device can be put on a WiFi network in a plug & play fashion, such as a UPS, printer, or something that has WiFi and Ethernet, but the WiFi is broken, etc.
I tried some of the off-the-shelf solutions, and I was very disappointed. I don't like the one's that plug directly into an outlet, some of them get extremely hot, are very large, and I actually don't see too many of them, so I am actually using a WiFi extender than also has an Ethernet port to get this done.
So, I bought one of these: GL-MT300N-V2 / Mango - GL.iNet
These are really nice, quite small, USB powered, run very cool, and actually quite versatile in it's use cases. It is also the fastest, I was getting around 50Mbits/s up and down even in the crowded 11n bands in my area.
It runs OpenWRT (says it doesn't have firmware for DD-WRT), it ships with OpenWRT + their own gui that is optional, so I started with that out of the box to start.
I followed the instruction here: OpenWrt Project: Dumb AP / Access Point Only
Which seems very short and straight forward. Technically this is for creating a bridged AP, but these are very similar use cases. I want a bi-directional bridge, not NAT or routing or anything. My network is Gigabit FiOS with a pFsense router, and Ubiquiti access points.
So, the short version is it works, but only with static IP and some other issues. As in, a device connected to the bridge Ethernet port will work but not with DHCP, only if it has static IP config. This is usable, but not ideal. I can see and reach the device from other devices elsewhere on the wired or wireless network, so at least a partial success. I use things like angry IP scanner with my laptop connected through the device to test. The laptop needs to be statically configured because as I said it won't get it through the bridge.
The other issue is that I completely lose access to the device for configuration after this setup is enabled. I can also live with this, but if I can, it would be nice if I could reach the management page from the wireless side in case I need make changes or troubleshoot something and so on. It is a bit odd, I don't see any of it's management interfaces after this, I haven't gone and scanned for it's MAC and troubleshooted it further, hoping that someone might have a suggestion.
Much appreciated.
-JCL
