The situation:
My router is set up in the basement and doesn't cover my house well. I've elected to add an Access Point device (located on the second floor) to create WiFi network instead of using the onboard capability.
Additionally, I don't like various IoT devices handging about on my home network, so I wanted AP to brodcast guest WiFi. Ideally it would do both both guest and home, but I couldn't figure how to do this (suggestions welcome), so I settled on AP broadcasting Guest and my Flint router broadcasting Home. To do this I moved ETH4 port, which AP is connected to, from the LAN interface to the GUEST interface.
Not ideal, but so far so good.
The problem:
If I disable the guest WiFi on the router, it kills my guest network completely. AP stops working. The guest gateway (192.168.9.1) stops responding to pings.
It's a minor issue, but I'm annoyed. So far I've worked around by renaming Guest WiFi on the router and making it hidden, so that it doesn't interfere with AP. Not sure if there is a better solution.
Did you mean the Flint as the AP and the ETH4 as the LAN connected to the primary router?
I assume the Flint can switch to AP mode (Network -> Network Mode), and enable the Guest WiFi for the iot devices and the Main WiFi as same as the Home WiFi.
No, Flint is my primary and only router on which I have modified the ETH4 port to be on the guest network.
Additionally I have bought TP-Link EAP650 as a dedicated AP device, but we can safely ignore it for the purpose of this conversation.
The problem is: if I disable Guest WiFi on my Flint, then ETH4 stops working, because it also disables the guest network gateway through some magic. I'd like it to stop doing that.
In the default wireless configuration, guest WiFi only exists on the wireless interface (named guest) and will not be associated with any Ethernet interface.
I don't quite understand what you configured. Is the guest wifi bound to someone Ethernet interface?
Please show /etc/config/network and /etc/config/wireless
All I did was to move eth4 from the br-lan device to br-guest. I might've created br-guest if it didn't exist already and pointed the Guest interface to it, I don't exactly recall now.
I assume your configuration of the network have problem, like this 'br-guest' is not bind the Eth or bridge, since the 'br-guest' only bind the wireless 2.4G and 5G guest wifi radio.
I moved eth4 from br-lan to br-guest deliberately because I want a wired guest connection. The deeper reasons explained in my original post. Although I am open to alternative suggestions.
Yes, I understand that enabling guest wifi attaches additional devices to the guest interface. But why does disabling guest wifi also disables guest interface?
Would disabling home wifi also disable the lan interface? Obviously not. I just want the same behavior on the guest.
Your suggestion did the trick. The enabled state sticks even after the router reboot, which is good, as I was mildly concerned about it.
However if I re-enable guest wifi via UI and the disable it again then the guest interface gets disabled again. It's not a problem just something of note. I assume UI action hardcodes disabling interface on disabling wifi.
I knew that it should work!
Yes it's persistent setting until UI-related script changes it again.
I don't understand why the Guest Network is completely disabled when just turning the Guest Wi-Fi off, anyway I noticed and minded it. And yes it's hard to prevent to tamper the value when turn the Guest Wi-Fi off, without modifying system files.
I knew that it should work!