three-way WDS, how to?

[VirtualLarry]

I asked this once before in this forum, and I never got a good answer.

The question is: When setting up a three-way WDS link, do you configure the routers as a line, or a triangle? IOW, do you enter the MAC of the other two routers, into each of the three routers (so that every router has a path to every other router), or do you enter the MAC of the middle router into the MAC of the first router, and in the middle router you enter the MAC of the first and last router, and in the last router you enter the MAC of the middle router?

Does anyone know best practices for this? Will the triangle configuration result in a packet loop? How does spanning-tree work into this? And if I enable spanning-tree on DD-WRT, will it prevent a loop, effectively turning the triangle configuration into a line anyways?

 

[mikeyes]

I have not done this before with DD-WRT but:

It depends on your physical configuration. If all three routers can see each other with good signal strengths then I would go with the three-way option. If router 2 is physically in the "middle" where it can see router 1 and 3 but router 1 and 3 have low signal strength when talking directly to each other then you want to use the man in the middle approach.

If you setup the triangle and use spanning tree it should prevent the packet loop. Basically spanning tree will look at the available routes and when it sees the "triangle" it will dynamically disable one leg in the loop to prevent the packet loops.

Personally I would run with the man in the middle config to make things easier to troubleshoot unless you really need the redundancy.

Hope that helps.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, I had the opportunity to test this out. I used the "line" method, one main router, and two secondary routers. I put the MAC of the primary router into each of the secondary routers, and then I put the MACs of the secondary routers into the main router.

 

[Ichinisan]

How did it work?

I've been curious about trying WDS myself, but I want to know if I can eliminate the bandwidth impact by wiring them all to a switch. Can they still operate as a single network with 1 SSID? ...or do I have to create separate networks?

The second option would suck because the computer would go by a priority list instead of automatically using the one with the best signal.

 

[VirtualLarry]

If you were to wire each one to a common LAN switch, then you would have no need for WDS mode. You would be better off setting them up as just APs instead. You can still have them broadcasting the same SSID either way.