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.

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

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?

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

Hello dear Marc, first of all congratulation for your videos, very good content, with good preparation, sometimes I have to search along the video, and the chapters you split helps a lot. But I hvae a question, I have 2 TP-Link C6 v4, not yet supported by openwrt (and may take too long as the specs doesnt fit the needs of the firmware), but they support mesh natively by TP-Link firmware with WPA3 authentication. Is it possible to connect their native mesh to batman adv openwrt mesh protocols? thanks in advance, br.

Using mesh, are the ethernet ports on the second router accessable? I would like to plug in a switch and provide netwok access to a few devices.

Thanks you for your videos. Can you do 1 update on wifi 6 adn openwrt?

Do these support BATMAN as I'm looking to create a large mesh network across Singapore.
Thanks in advance.
O and is there any portable routers like the pi or the mango but can they do mesh and use a battery such as 18650?

Thanks

does this work with archer c6v3?

great content!

Is it possible to create the mesh network with both working as access points?
i have pfsense as my DHCP server and i was wondering if i could use create a mesh network to expand the coverage using 2 OpenWrt devices as access points

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!

Thanks for this video - excellent tutorial!

By the way, I'm using two Linksys E8450 running OpenWrt 22.03.5 :)

Teach me monitor mode via Ethernet?

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

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

i already had a ethernet backbone with fast roaming.. so it means i can mix with a mesh?

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?

My Buffalo AG300H lost wifi radio when choose 802.11s

Hello everyone! Maybe anyone could explain me the difference between off-the-shelf solutions (Keenetic, TP-Link and etc.) and OpenWRT (Xiaomi Mi Router 4A Giga Version)?
Thank you!

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.

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!

hi sir, how to run a script in ssh openwrt

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?

I want to do this on my Xioami Wifi Range Extender AC1200, lets see how this turns out. Also, I have the C7 and the above Xiaomi, I can use them too as secondary AP's.

But with all that, I guess the Mesh with WPA3 is the backbone, and on that backbone, we build a Wifi AP. Now I know why it did not work for me at first, I did not create the AP.

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

WPA3 doesn't work so..... RIP Mesh :(

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.

Any specific reason that you change from wolfssl to openssl?

Hi, thanks for great video! I plan to setup mesh with 3 OpenWrt routers, but third router will be connected to main router via LAN cable, is it possible? I want the third router to use wired LAN and re-broadcast internet via WIFI, to be part of my mesh network. Thanks in advance

Many thanks for a great and informative video. However, I could not get this working. I have a Linksys WRT3200ACM and a TP-Link Archer A7 both have the latest 22.03 software and are configured on the mesh interfaces identically. I was trying to use the 2.4G radio as the backhaul. But could not get any association between the 2 even in the same room. I configured one AP on the 5ghz radio.

I even reflashed the devices with a clean image of OR 22.03 and clean configs.

Currently I am back to roaming with the 2 devices at opposite ends of the house with wired backhaul. I just need to figure out how to liberate them from the wire!

Any help appreciated.

Cheers

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?

I'm having a few issues that I just don't understand. I configured everything via the GUI, checked it 3x, no joy. Switched to the scripts and did everything manually using the EXACT SAME INFO and somehow that worked. So that's something but here's the few things I'm still struggling with... #1, under the wireless tab where it says associated, it never populates the host, always stays "?" on both routhers. #2, on router number 2 802.11r Fast Transistion isn't available under the WISEC tab. Any idea what would cause this? To make it more confusing both pieces of hardware are identical, openwrt is same version flashed from same file... any ideas?

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

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.

whats is defferent betwen mash and access point?? reply

Could we setup 1 mesh dumb AP, then save configuration and import that into the second dumb AP? Just changing the host name afterwards? or?

my problem is that i dont want to loose either frequency/band, i want to use both 5ghz and 2.4ghz in our house. However, when i follow your tutorial on a radio that already has a access point (SSID) there, both mesh and the access point are disabled with the errors "Wireless is not associated". When i disable either protocol, the other one starts.

Hi @marc and thanks for your video. Unfortunately I'm experiencing problems with the Xiaomi MI Router 4A. Download speed is drop to less than 1Mbps while the upload speed is working fine. It happens both if I set the backbone to the 2.4Ghz or to the 5Ghz band. I've tried many possibile solutions found on the internet and also tried to switch to wpad-mesh-wolfssl but I can't sort it out.
Finally I've found on the OpenWrt forum an user experiencing the very same problem and he says he solved by "installing the OpenWrt SNAPSHOT r21379" but I'm not able to do that.

Any advice? Thanks!

Kool

im try many time on TPlink 1043nd but the wifi not showing, in luci status : wifi on.

@marc Have 2 Belkin RT3200 routers and followed your guide to the T, and just can't seem to get it work. Any pointers?

Nice video. Thanks. But what can I change when I want all routers wireless? I have a Telekom router and I want a wireless connection to Xiaomi router nr 1. this router should then extend the Wi-Fi and should also create a mesh system that connects to Xiaomi router nr. 2 which then also acts as an wireless access Point.

Hi. i installed mesh wifi on my router including 1 xiaomi r3g and 2 xiaomi mini and it feels ok even though my router is very small but it's a good experience with openwrt rom and i noticed if maybe you should connect by cable instead of mesh because wireless speed is not as responsive as cable thanks

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.

Thanks Marc, great tutorial. Hope will be easy for me to implement.
Q: how can I tell in advance if a router support Mesh?

Thanks for this great tutorial! What if I wanted a 'dumb' AP to have a WAN source as well, for loadbalancing/failover purposes? What would be needed for that? This could be useful if you want to share your mobile data plan with the home network using the hotspot functionality of your smartphone to whichever mesh router is in range.