I have tried several configurations and I cannot find out how to make the AP a bridge instead of a router, I see how to do this in the OpenWRT document but I see no way to do this using the command line. My other unit is set up as an Extender and appears as a bridge device. All documentation says that using the HaLow link as a virtual wire requires on device to be an AP and the other an Extender.
From a basic config, you need one HL1 as AP (with WDS) mode and the other as Client (with WDS) mode. Assuming youâre using your AP as just an AP and not as a NAT router, then on each device, you need to bridge a wired connection to the wireless. I then remove any firewall zones and set the 3 default rules to Accept. If this nudge doesnât help, let me know and I can show you sshots of my working config.
The wizard supports bridging ethernet your HaLow AP and this is introduced in the user guide as the recommended mode. If you can use the UI, Iâd strongly recommend going to the Wizard page then selecting âHaLow Wi-Fi devices will get an IP on your existing routerâs networkâ, as discussed in Section 1.2 and 2.3.1 of the guide. If youâre interested, you can then go back to the Home page to see how your interfaces are configured (i.e. look at the âNetwork Interfacesâ card, hovering over the interfaces for details).
One trick is that it will bridge your WAN port to the HaLow AP, NOT the LAN port (so you donât lose access to your device).
Is there a reason you do not want to use the UI for this?
If you want to see how to do it using the command line instead of using the UI, you can click âAdvanced Configâ, go back to the wizard page, then click âSaveâ rather than âSave & Applyâ. If you then go up the top to âunsaved changesâ it will give you a list of commands to use (admittedly, more firewall commands than are strictly necessary, as it will remove your existing firewall and recreate it). Note that you must have changed the mode to see the changes - if you just click âSaveâ on the same mode, it wonât show you what to change as itâs already in the right mode.
The basic idea, as @dwrice0 mentioned, is that you need to put your HaLow AP on the same network as one of your ethernet ports (which you can achieve via the Quick Config page if you want) and make sure that this network is set to DHCP client. If you lose access to your device, you can reset it, or use the special recovery IP (refer to the FAQ in the User Guide).
In my case, I wanted to use usblan on the client radio end to bridge a raspberry pi connected to the USB C port onto the rest of the network. I actually forgot I originally used the wizard because I then had to the manually add the usblan into the bridge later on.
Please send screen shots of the AP side only. What I do not find is how to put all interfaces into br-lan on the AP. Thanks.
You can email screen shots and other details to me if you donât want to clutter the forum: rm271828@gmail.com
Iâll post here in case others have the same question. I know I did when I first got them out of the box. In my setup, I went with static IPs on the AP and client radios because I was doing some scripting against them and didnât want to have to chase down the IPs when they changed. So, where you see the static IP, you can still use DHCP client.
I believe the Wizard creates a new bridge under Advanced Config â Network â Interfaces â Devices tab called br-wlan and then associates the wan port with it. Screenshots:
(going to separate my screenshots into separate posts about the various sections)
It then creates a wlan interface under Advanced Config â Network â Interfaces â Interfaces tab and associates it with the bridge device created above:
Then it associates the WiFi HaLow wireless interface with that wlan interfaces created above under the Advanced Config â Network â Wireless section:
Finally, but maybe not required, I remove Firewall Zones and change the Input/Output/Forward all to Accept under Advanced Config â Network â Firewall:
Thanks..I will study these screen shots. When the HL1 is in extender mode, it does this a different way. It just adds the wlan interface to br-lan.
I did the client side manually because I didnât understand the wording of the Wizard options to accomplish what I was doing which is basically a workgroup bridge (WGB) in traditional WiFi. I can confirm that if the AP and Client do not use the â(WDS)â modes that it wonât work.
Hereâs what I mean by that under the Quick Config section:
Thanks everyone! The key to making this work was understanding that the AP does not bridge the LAN port, which was confusing to me. Now I have extended my local LAN through HaLow down to a Raspberry Pi 5 connected to the Extenderâs LAN port. Now to try some distance tests with IPERF.
@El_Colorino great you got it working.
@dwrice0 thanks for all those screenshots - awesome! And youâre right, you shouldnât need to change the general firewall settings if youâve used the wizard, as it will setup wlan to be accept all on that particular zone. With the WGB terminology (Ciscoâs words for this, AFAIK), my apologies for the confusion. We had/have the problem that everyone talks about this differently (e.g. bridge, WDS, 4 address mode, extender, mesh (!)), and weâve struggled to get people to read long explanations, so we tried to go with âhere is a simple description of the effect of what will happenâ.
By the way, it should be possible to do most of the changes/see most of the stuff on the Quick Config page as well. Ok, Iâm personally attached to this one 
(I wrote the Quick Config page, and I just want people to like it!).
i.e. after configuring as âget an IP on your existing networkâ, you should see:
As @dwrice0 said, itâs put wan and wlan0 on the âwlanâ network (implicitly creating a bridge). If you want to bridge more/different things, itâs a matter of changing your âNetwork Interfacesâ section to move ethernet ports around, or your wireless sections to move them on wlan.
Another way of understanding the changes the wizard has made is to look at the uci config files in /etc/config/wireless and /etc/config/network, which the Quick Config page should correspond to quite closely.
Finally, since I canât help myself offering yet more answers, if you really just want a setup like an Extender @El_Colorino, you could switch it to extender mode then just change the mode of the HaLow interface to AP (WDS) and everything will be bridged on the lan network. Just plug the Extender into your router so it will get an IP and you can get to the web interface.
James thanks for the additional details. One further question, which I can sort out eventually but you probably know the answer: the shell command âbrctl showmacs br-wlanâ gives the Macs by port number. How do these numbers map to interfaces, physical and virtual?
I donât actually use brctl for this purpose (thatâs one way of saying âI donât knowâ ); I would use brctl show to see which interfaces are on which bridges, then use ip. e.g.
ip -c a
Or you could try:
ip -br -c l
(one of my most frequently used commands on our devices is ip -br -c a)
Ah, what I also forgot to mention is that we have an App Note on this topic: How to Configure Virtual Wire (App Note 37) - Morse Micro
You might be interested in Section 4 for some discussion of how it works. Section 5 has manual configuration instructions.
This is great documentation. I need to explore the App Notes. Here is a pairing question: Once paired, should not the devices remain paired even if I relocate the Extender 200 meters from the AP? I also noticed that my laptop does not join the 2.4 WiFi on the Extender if it is not HaLow paired.
Because the Extenderâs 2.4 WiFi is bridged to the HaLow interface, which is turn is connected to your HL1 AP, when you connect over 2.4 it relies on connecting to a DHCP server over HaLow.
If your Extender is not connected, there is no DHCP server, so your laptop cannot get an IPv4 address. This will usually mean that it refuses to connect (in my experience, it will associate, then complain about not having an IP). However, you can set it to use the static recovery IP if you just need to access the extenderâs web UI.
I am using an iPad to access the extender side. In my experience with other systems, one can associate with an access point and then there may be a message like you said about no IP or the IPv4 link local address 169.254.x.y is used by the client. In this case the association never happens. However, of more importance is relocating the extender further away (involves a power off and on) seems to drop the HaLow link for good. I had them impression that, once paired, the extender would try to bring up the HaLow link without any further actions on my part. The pairing info seems to be written in /etc/config/wireless.
Yes, once paired you should be able to turn off the extender and turn it on again and it will re-establish the connection. You can confirm this on the AP side (with the association list) or just look at the purple LED on the Extender, and I would suggest testing this in close range before moving away to confirm that itâs working as you expect.
Assuming it is a range issue, are you updated to the latest version (go to the âUpgrade pageâ when you have internet access)?
Also, you mentioned that the units are 200m away; is there anything obstructing the signal? You may need to experiment and see at what range the units drop out. A useful way to do this is to attach a laptop or tablet to the HL1 over USB-C (so it will be powered) and see what happens to your signal as you walk away.
Also, you should still be able to associate with the Extender if the HaLow link is down. So you can see the SSID, but then the association fails? Do you get any messages about this on your iPad? Have you tried another device (e.g. a laptop) connecting to the 2.4, making sure to specify that youâre using a static IP? My suspicion is that the iPad is just trying to be âsmartâ about not having any network access (i.e. it associates and then figures out that the association was pointless), but I donât have an iOS device on hand to confirm.