Thanks Almahadeus. I apologize for asking again: Do the users need to connect to the repeater device specifically, or does the repeater like almost become ‘invisible’, leaving behind only a stronger signal with the same SSID?
- I ain’t your friend, dear or otherwise.
- If one can’t comprehend the basic concepts in that video, never mind the docs, then merely mimicking their actions is a user’s last resort to connectivity.
All the users and devices will need to connect to the repeater’s (GL.iNET) SSID. This will act just like your home router to which you connect all the network clients (like laptops, phones, tablets…etc.) with the only difference being that your new home (or in your case campervan) router will be getting its internet traffic from the parent (e.g. starbucks) wifi rather than from your ISP if you were at home. Hope this makes sense.
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There is one point of confusion, I think, at the root of these questions, and it is in the difference between “repeater” and “extender”.
Many routers have a repeater mode, in the sense that they receive a wireless signal from another AP (broadcasting an SSID), and then rebroadcast that signal using the same SSID (or a different SSID). Devices connecting to the repeater get their DNS/DHCP, etc from othe first AP, so it is all one subnet. This is referred to in this thread as “invisible”. I think of this as an “extender”, and you would really only use this within your house, like, sorta, a mesh network. DD-WRT referred to this as “repeater-bridge” mode. Asus called it “media bridge”. For a GL-inet router, go into network and change the mode to “extender” to do this.
Travel routers specifically and unusually have a WISP mode, in which they receive the wireless signal from the first AP, which they treat as their WAN, and then rebroadcast that signal to their LAN using a different SSID and in the case of a dual band router maybe even a different radio channel. In this case the travel router is acting as a router, and the WAN side and LAN side are different subnets with a firewall in between. Devices connecting to the travel router get their DNS/DHCP from the router, not the first AP. GL-Inet refers to this as “repeater” in its default mode. Among other benefits this means you can form a VPN tunnel from the travel router to encrypt everything over the first AP path. All the GL-Inet documentation is built around this mode, which makes a lot of sense to me.
The OP and the other guy are asking, I think, whether the travel router is in the first mode or the second mode, and the answer is, in the second mode.
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@elorimer thanks for the detailed explanation!
Is it possible to disable the GL-A1300 SSID in WISP mode? (ie. only use the LAN ports)
Is it also possible to disable the router and allow traffic to pass directly to the first AP?
I’m trying to use the GL-A1300 as a simple wireless-to-wired bridge adapter.
What dd-wrt referred to as “client-bridge”.
For that I think you need to get under the hood with luci and relayd:
Never tried it. Report back, I’m curious.
Try setting up the GL-A1300 in WISP mode, then log into LuCI and go to the Network → Wireless tab and disable the Master SSID.
I do not work for and I do not have formal association with GL.iNet
Thanks everybody…
Where can I request this as built-in option for the GL.inet firmware?
It would be great if an additional Network Mode called “Bridge” was added for this purpose. It should be the same as Repeater mode just w/o the Wi-Fi AP enabled, right?
That should work … thanks much!
Thank you @ Almahadeus. for your patience, understanding, and very clear explanation. Later @elorimer addressed this dilemma directly to clarify the confusion I was having between a Repeater function and Extender function. Thank you @Almahadeus. Armed with the new understanding of the basic Repeater operation, I was able to setup and start using this very capable device, precisely as I needed. Back when I was teaching electronics and networking technologies in another life, a ‘Repeater’ was always a device that worked at the physical / data link layers of the network.
Incidentally, when I went through my initial training as a college teacher, the first and the most significant rule our trainer hammered into our brains was: “There are no stupid questions; only stupid answers. Listen with your brains, not only with your ears.”
Thank you for listening with your brain and with your heart.
Ciao.
Omer.
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Very glad that you have got it working the way you wanted it to.
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Does this work? I assumed this turned off the radios, so the device couldn’t receive or send. Does the device still receive, but not send?
No. it just disables SSID WiFi broadcast in my case.
Sorry to be dense. Turning off the broadcast of an SSID is an entirely different thing, And I realize I asked two questions, to both of which “no” means that when “enable wifi” is “off”, the device doesn’t receive a signal from an AP.
My AXT1800 receives WiFi signal from parent AP with no issues regardless of whether the “wireless switch” on the GL.iNet is on or off.
Thanks!! Fascinating. My assumption was completely wrong.
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TL;DR: ITT no one looked at GL GUI → Network → Network Mode … or reads docs.
“Those who can, do. Those that can’t, teach.”
Guilty as charged. I went back and edited my post to reflect that. Still, it wasn’t clear to me from the documents that setting “enable wifi” to off just affected the broadcast side.
uci show wireless . Have fun.