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I am trying to use my router as an extension to my existing wlan. The connection seems to work fine, because I can ping the internet router from the tp-link. Also the status page of the tp-link shows an ok status.

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If I am connected to the internet router, I can access the admin page of the tp-link. But when I am connected to the tp-link, I just can access this host and nothing else. The routing table of the tp-link looks like this:

enter image description here

The ip address of my internet router is 192.168.1.1, the address of tp-link is 192.168.1.99.

I need to have DHCP on tp-link on, otherwise I don't get an ip address.

Any ideas what is wrong with this setup?

Hennes
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Dominik
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2 Answers2

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WDS is not standardized. Additionally, it was originally designed for WPA security, not WPA2. That means it’s not suitable for modern WiFi networks. Some manufacturers create proprietary derivatives of WDS that can be used with WPA2. Naturally, these implementations are not compatible with other manufacturers. This is also why it’s not working here.

The connection seems to work fine, because I can ping the internet router from the tp-link.

[...]

But it's strange that it works in one direction (laptop connected to internet router can access extension router) [...]

Neither of these requires WDS. If the TP-Link router pings the Huawei router, it acts as a regular WiFi client. The opposite direction is of course the same.

The OpenWrt wiki has a great explanation on why WDS is great for bridged clients or repeating. The gist: IEEE 802.11 is designed with the assumption that a wireless client (station) has nothing “behind it”. There is no concept of packets coming from or going to a station that don’t originate from/are destined for the station itself. This is unlike Ethernet. WDS (4-address mode, really) introduces a method of making it work like Ethernet.

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user219095
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If the Internet router does DHCP, you need to turn this function off in the tp-link and also give it an unused static IP address that cannot conflict with other devices. You could reduce the range of IP addresses on the Internet router to ensure no conflicts.

The tp-link needs to be connected to the Internet router using an Ethernet cable as Lan-to-LAN. See this answer of mine for how the cabling should go.

For a detailed description of what you need to do, see the article
How To Convert a Wireless Router into an Access Point.

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harrymc
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