Bridging and roaming on my home wifi

2022-08-27 - OpenWRT with ethernet/wifi bridging and transparent roaming
Tags: OpenWRT WiFi

Introduction

This article is the third in a series about my home network:

If you try to follow this as a guide and something is not clear do not hesitate to shoot me an email asking for clarifications or screenshots!

Bridged wan

From the network/interfaces menu, go to the devices tab:

select Add device configuration
for the Device type field, select Bridge device
for the Device name field, select br-wan
for the Bridge ports field, select wan
return to the interfaces tab
click edit the wan interface
for the Device field, select br-wan
save, then do the same for the wan6 interface
save and apply your changes

Bridged wifi

I restrict this network to the 5GHz frequency range for performance reasons. All my laptops and phones support it and I do not want one to fallback silently to the 2.4GHz range. Therefore I will only configure the radio1 for this wifi.

From the network/wireless menu:

click the scan button next to radio1
- take note of the channel numbers you see here that have a significant signal strength
- in order to chose the best channels, it is important you do this for all the access points you plan to setup: it will avoid reconfiguration in the future that way
click the edit button under radio1
in the Device configuration section at the top:
- select the operating frequency this access point will use. I keep to AC mode and 80MHz width for the best performance.
- 5GHz channels go from 36 to 64, 100 to 144 and 149 to 173 with 20MHz between two channels
- choose wisely non overlapping 80MHz bands for each of your access points, that also do not overlap with the strong signals you scaned with each device at the beginning of this section. For example, I use 36 on my first access point and 56 on the second.
- go to the advanced settings tab
- for the Country code field, enter the designation of the country where the access point is located. If you do not do it, your wifi will not work at all!
scroll down to the Interface configuration section for a second set of tabs
- for the ESSID field, enter the name you want your wifi network to have. I use Adyxax because I am an original!
- for the Network field, select wan and maybe wan6 if your ISP supports it.
- go to the wireless security tab
- for the Encryption field, select the strongest encryption mode supported by all your devices
- for the Key field, enter a strong password or passphrase
- check 802.1r Fast Transition
- for the NAS ID field, enter a number which needs unique among the access points on your network
- for the Mobility Domain, enter a four characters hexadecimal string which needs to be the same on all the access points on your network
- for the FT protocol field, select FT over DS
- check Generate PMK locally
save and apply your changes
click the enable button under radio1

If all went as expected, you should be able to connect wirelessly with your phone and laptop.