OpenWrt Project: Wi-Fi extender / repeater / bridge configuration

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docs:guide-user:network:wifi:relay_configuration

Table of Contents

Wi-Fi extender / repeater / bridge configuration

Required packages
Compulsory
Optional
Setup with LuCI Web Interface
LAN Interface
Wi-Fi
Repeater Interface
Firewall
Setup with CLI
Accessing the OpenWrt device
Adding IPv6 support
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OpenWrt Project: Wi-Fi extender / repeater / bridge configuration

Using relayd as instructed in this article isn't guaranteed to work.

The most common problem is that the client router cannot pass the
DHCP message between the main router and the client connected to
the client router. Currently it seems to be the hardware/SOC limitation
(related to MAC cloning?)
You may also consider to use WDS or mesh networking.
Instead of relayd it should be possible to use kmod-trelay, the only
information about using it can be seen in its source code, if you
used it successfully please add a section for it in this article.

In this article you will see how to configure your device to become a Wi-Fi extender/repeater/bridge.

Since opensource wireless drivers used in OpenWrt do not support bridging in client mode, the traffic
between LAN and the wireless client must be joined by routing it.
The relayd package implements a bridge-like behavior complete with DHCP and Broadcast relaying. This
configuration can be done through SSH (remote terminal) or through Luci GUI.
For the sake of simplicity, I'll call the device we are working on “Wi-Fi extender” from now on.

This image shows an example setup. LAN interface of the Wi-Fi extender device MUST be on a different
subnet for relayd to work (since it is routing traffic, it expects 2 different subnets).

Since both ethernet ports and Access Point Wi-Fi network are on the same LAN interface, all clients
connecting to the Ethernet ports and to the Access Point Wi-Fi network of the Wi-Fi extender device will
be routed by relayd and will be connected to your main network.

The LAN interface subnet will be used only as a “management” interface, as devices connecting to the
Wi-Fi repeater will be on the main network's subnet instead. You will have to set your PC with a static
address in the same subnet as the LAN interface (like 192.168.2.10 for our example) to connect again to
the Wi-Fi repeater's Luci GUI or SSH.

Required packages

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OpenWrt Project: Wi-Fi extender / repeater / bridge configuration

Compulsory
relayd package

Optional
luci-proto-relay - for LuCI Web Interface

Setup with LuCI Web Interface

LAN Interface
As shown in the image above, the LAN interface must be set in a different subnet than the Wi-Fi network
you are connecting to.

Begin by configuring and enabling the normal Wi-Fi network and configure it as you want it.
If you are making a simple Wi-Fi repeater (a device that extends the same Wi-Fi network's coverage) it's a
good choice to set this Wi-Fi network to be the same as the one of your main router, same name,
encryption, password, and so on. This way, devices connected to your (wider) network will automatically
stay connected to the best Wi-Fi network.
But you can also choose to have a different name/encryption/password if you prefer to.
Setting up a Wi-Fi network at this stage is not necessary if you want a “Wi-Fi bridge”, a device designed to
connect ethernet-only devices to your existing Wi-Fi network.

Set LAN protocol as static address

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Assign an IP address in a different subnet (e.g. 192.168.2.1)

Disable DHCP for the LAN interface (as it does prevent relayd from working).
(May be required in certain case) set Gateway address and Use custom DNS servers using IP
address of the primary router (e.g. 192.168.1.1)
Save and Apply.

Set your PC's ethernet or Wi-Fi settings at static IP 192.168.2.10 and default gateway 192.168.2.1, then
connect again to the wifi repeater (through ethernet or wifi). When you finish all of the following steps,
remember to reset your PC's IP address back to the original address (or DHCP), otherwise you won't
have Internet access. The repeater won't route traffic from the 192.168.2.0/24 subnet.

Wi-Fi
We will now set up the client Wi-Fi network, the configuration needed to connect to another Wi-Fi network.
Once you are connected again to the Wi-Fi extender, go in the wireless networks page, and click on Scan
button.

Choose the Wi-Fi network you want to connect to from the page and click “Join Network”.

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Enter the Wi-Fi password, leave the “name of new network” as “wwan” and select lan firewall zone. Click
Save.

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You will land in the client Wi-Fi settings page, set other things as needed.
The most important settings are on the Operating Frequency line.
Set the Mode to Legacy if you are connecting to a Wi-Fi g network (like in my example) or N if you are
connecting to a Wi-Fi n (and so on).
Set the Width to the same value that you set on the Wi-Fi you are connecting to (to avoid bottlenecking
the connection for no reason).

Repeater Interface
Go in the Interfaces page, we will now add the relayd interface that will join the lan and wwan interfaces.
Click on Add New Interface.

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Write a name for it (repeater_bridge is the name I used in the example), and then choose Relay bridge
in the Protocol of the new interface field. Click Submit.

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OpenWrt Project: Wi-Fi extender / repeater / bridge configuration

In this new interface's setting page, select both lan and wwan in the Relay between networks list.

This “Local IPv4 address” (empty in above screen shot, sorry, I don't have enough rights to upload a new
screen shot) needs to match the IP address assigned by the Wifi-network (eg. from 192.168.1.0/24 range,
but do not enter the netmask here!) otherwise this bridge will not be accessible from the clients connected
directly to the primary router and the relayd-daemon will not start. It makes sense to either fixate the IP in
the DHCP servers MAC-IP mapping table or configure then WWAN interface of OpenWRT to a fix IP
which is not being used in Wifi-networks DHCP-range (I used 192.168.1.2, as my DHCP server only
serves IP addresses higher than 192.168.1.100).

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Move to the Firewall tab of this interface settings page and select lan. Click on Save and Apply.

After you have done this, it might be necessary to reboot the Wi-Fi extender.

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This is the final result. Note how the client network has a ? instead of a IP address.

Firewall
The following part of the configuration should not be necessary (already default options or changed
automatically), in case something isn't working check this too.

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Under the Network tab, click on the Firewall tab. Under Zones, change the forwarding for lan and wwan
to accept

if you are doing this with a device that has a single radio, both Wi-Fi networks will stay on the same
channel, and total bandwidth will be halved as the same radio is used for 2 different Wi-Fi networks.

Setup with CLI

Before doing any actual configuration, the Wi-Fi interface must be enabled in order to be able to scan for
networks in the vincinity:

uci set wireless.@wifi-device[0].disabled="0"

uci commit wireless
wifi

Set the disabled option to 0 (to enable wireless)

Save changed configuration file
Start wireless using the wifi command

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Now we can list networks in range using iw dev wlan0 scan, substituting your actual wireless interface
for wlan0 if different (ifconfig lists all available interfaces to find how your wlan is called)

iw dev wlan0 scan output example:

# iw dev wlan0 scan

BSS c8:d5:fe:c8:61:b0(on wlan0) -- associated
TSF: 24324848870 usec (0d, 06:45:24)
freq: 2412
beacon interval: 100 TUs
capability: ESS (0x0411)
signal: -72.00 dBm
last seen: 140 ms ago
Information elements from Probe Response frame:
SSID: Violetta
RSN: * Version: 1
* Group cipher: CCMP
* Pairwise ciphers: CCMP
* Authentication suites: PSK
* Capabilities: 1-PTKSA-RC 1-GTKSA-RC (0x0000)
BSS f8:35:dd:eb:20:f8(on wlan0)
TSF: 24225790925 usec (0d, 06:43:45)
freq: 2457
beacon interval: 100 TUs
capability: ESS (0x0431)
signal: -90.00 dBm
last seen: 1450 ms ago
Information elements from Probe Response frame:
SSID: GOinternet_EB20FB
HT capabilities:
Capabilities: 0x11ee
HT20/HT40
SM Power Save disabled
RX HT20 SGI
RX HT40 SGI
TX STBC
RX STBC 1-stream
Max AMSDU length: 3839 bytes
DSSS/CCK HT40
Maximum RX AMPDU length 65535 bytes (exponent: 0x003)
Minimum RX AMPDU time spacing: 4 usec (0x05)
HT RX MCS rate indexes supported: 0-15, 32
HT TX MCS rate indexes are undefined
HT operation:
* primary channel: 10
* secondary channel offset: below
* STA channel width: any
RSN: * Version: 1
* Group cipher: TKIP
* Pairwise ciphers: TKIP CCMP
* Authentication suites: PSK
* Capabilities: 1-PTKSA-RC 1-GTKSA-RC (0x0000)

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In the example, there are two networks, a Wi-Fi g one called Violetta and a Wi-Fi n one called
GOinternet_EB20FB. The device was configured to connect to the one called Violetta.

These are the uci values that were added or changed by the configuration procedure.
For SSID, BSSID, and encryption you must use the info you got from the Wi-Fi scan above.
For an explanation of why these values were changed, please read the luci tutorial above.

network.lan.ipaddr='192.168.2.1'
network.repeater_bridge=interface
network.repeater_bridge.proto='relay'
network.repeater_bridge.network='lan wwan'
network.wwan=interface
network.wwan.proto='dhcp'
firewall.@zone[0].network='lan repeater_bridge wwan'
dhcp.lan.ignore='1'
wireless.radio0.hwmode='11g'
wireless.radio0.country='00'
wireless.radio0.channel='1'
wireless.radio0.disabled='0'
wireless.@wifi-iface[0]=wifi-iface
wireless.@wifi-iface[0].device='radio0'
wireless.@wifi-iface[0].mode='ap'
wireless.@wifi-iface[0].encryption='none'
wireless.@wifi-iface[0].ssid='OpenWrt'
wireless.@wifi-iface[0].network='lan'
wireless.@wifi-iface[1]=wifi-iface
wireless.@wifi-iface[1].network='wwan'
wireless.@wifi-iface[1].ssid='Violetta'
wireless.@wifi-iface[1].encryption='psk2'
wireless.@wifi-iface[1].device='radio0'
wireless.@wifi-iface[1].mode='sta'
wireless.@wifi-iface[1].bssid='C8:D5:FE:C8:61:B0'
wireless.@wifi-iface[1].key='myWifiPasswordHere'

Please note that the Wi-Fi network generated by the device in this example (the one called OpenWrt) has
no password nor encryption.
This was done because the focus of this article was getting the relay bridge up and running.
You will likely want to set up your device's Wi-Fi network in a more secure way, as explained in the Wi-Fi
setup page here.

Accessing the OpenWrt device

With this setup your OpenWrt device itself may only be accessible from those computers directly
connected to the W-LAN AP, not from the ones connected to the OpenWrt W-LAN client only, when in the
192.168.1.0 subnet. It is however still possible to access the OpenWrt box via its 192.168.2.1 address,
when you are in that subnet. One way of being in both subnets at the same time with a Linux client is by
adding a second, a virtual network interface to /etc/network/interfaces:

iface eth0 inet dhcp

gateway 192.168.1.1

auto eth0:1
iface eth0:1 inet static

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address 192.168.2.102
netmask 255.255.255.0
broadcast 192.168.2.255

[If someone can describe a solution without modifications to the client network configuration that would be
appreciated!]

Adding IPv6 support

Activate IPv6 support on your Internet box, this will get you a public IPv6 prefix. We will now activate IPv6
on our Wi-Fi extender to allow for Stateless Address Autoconfiguration (SLAAC) of your public IPv6
addresses and IPv6 traffic.

1. Go to Network / Interfaces and create a new interface. Name it WWAN6, using protocol DHCPv6, cover
the WWAN interface. In the Common Configuration of the new interface, configure: Request IPv6
address: disabled. In the Firewall settings: check that the “lan / repeater bridge…” line is selected. Leave
the other settings by default, especially, leave the “Custom delegated IPv6-prefix” field empty. On the
Interfaces / overwiew page check that the WWAN interface gets a public IPv6 address.

2. Edit the LAN interface settings, DHCP server / IPv6 settings: check/modify the following settings: Router
Advertisement Service: relay mode, DHCPv6 service: disabled, NDP-Proxy: relay mode.

3. Open a SSH session on your OpenWrt device. Issue the following commands:

uci set dhcp.wan.interface=wwan

uci set dhcp.wan.ra=relay
uci set dhcp.wan.ndp=relay
uci set dhcp.wan.master=1
uci commit

We suppose that you created a wwan interface when you joined to the other Wi-Fi network as suggested
earlier in this guide; otherwise, change the dhcp.wan.interface=… line accordingly.

That's it. Restart ophcpd (LuCI System/Starup page, or /etc/init.d/odhcpd restart) and your IPv6-
network should begin to configure itself. Connected IPv6-enabled devices should get their public IPv6
addresses, derived from your public IPv6 prefix, and IPv6 traffic should go through your Wi-Fi extender.

Wi-Fi extender with NAT (or what to do when all else fails)
This method basically puts a second Wi-Fi router in cascade on the first.
It's like connecting with a cable the WAN port on the Wi-Fi extender to the LAN ports of the main router,
the Wi-Fi extender creates a new network for itself and the devices connected to it, that can go on the
Internet and reach devices in the LAN network of the main router. But in this case we are doing it with
wireless networks instead.

prerequisites: - router with two initial interfaces (LAN, WAN)

Setup with WebUI:

Go in the Network → Interfaces page, click on edit lan interface,

Set LAN as static IPv4 address as 192.168.x.1 (with x different from the network to which you will
connect via Wi-Fi),
Go in the Network → Wi-Fi, click on scan and choose the “network” link and click “Join Network”.

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Enter the Wi-Fi password, leave the “name of new network” as “WWAN” and select WWAN (or
WAN) firewall zone. Click Save,
Go in the Network → Interfaces page, click on edit wwan interface,
Move to the Firewall tab. Click on Save and Apply.
Go in the Network → Firewall, click edit in wan zone and check WAN and WWAN in “covered
networks”, click save and apply,

Now you've correctly bounded WWAN with WAN, and consequently WWAN with LAN.

docs/guide-user/network/wifi/relay_configuration.txt · Last modified: 2019/11/05 22:46 by targa

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