After a couple of rounds of nightly builds stomping out bugs, we have a working PtP ↔ Mesh Station on a live network link.
- Here are the basic steps:
- Bring both ends to latest nightly builds.
- Get far end / Station MAC address (click on the Radio section - the MAC address will be shown at the top of the dialog)
- Copy the MAC address.
- Configure far end node as a Mesh Station (requires Commit & Reboot)
- Switch the near end node to PtP mode - a field will appear to paste the far end MAC address in.
- Commit & Reboot.
- The link will come up PtP ↔ Mesh station
Notes:
- The nodes can take almost 4 minutes to come up; be patient.
- A quick and dirty before & after test of throughput (802.11ac devices on both ends):
- Before: Ad Hoc mode: 10-12 Mbit/sec
- After: Infrastructure mode: 20-21 Mbit/sec; a nice bump in throughput (obviously YMMV!)
- 802.11n links show little or no improvement in throughput (again YMMV).
- This is Experimental - if the user community finds it's not all the useful, it may be removed. Feedback desired!
I would like to see functionality for point to point links, I'm maintaining 2 long (20, 40 miles) right now. A node at each end to form a backbone connecting repeater sites.