On Fri, 16 Mar 2018 13:13:30 -0000 (UTC) Dan Purgert <d...@djph.net> wrote:
> Joe wrote: > > [...] > > I'd have thought that hardwired hubs are long gone, that all devices > > with multiple Ethernet ports are switches and therefore software-based. > > Indeed, many routers can be configured as VLANs. > > Hubs pretty much are. Not entirely sure where you're thinking switches > are "software-based" though. Switching is typically done in ASICs these > days ... > > > > > I had a different problem recently, trying to work out which of a few > > high-bandwidth 802.11ac routers could be configured in pairs as wireless > > point-to-point links, which also uses the term 'bridging', and no, they > > can't all do it. But documentation is usually very poor for the > > lesser-used functions of most things. 'Bridging' is also used to mean > > wireless repeating, which is a different thing again. > > Honestly, I'd never trust an "all-in-one" consumer router for that (even > if it "supports" it on the box). Pair of purpose-built radios (e.g. > Ubiquiti AirMAX) would probably do best for that situation. FWIW, I recently followed these directions: https://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/recipes/atheroswds to use an old Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH to bring network connectivity to a server in a location without ethernet cabling and lacking wireless hardware. The Buffalo is configured as a wireless client connecting to the main switch / router / AP (a TP-Link Archer [A]C2600), and the Buffalo's wired switch is bridged to the rest of the network. The TP-Link and Buffalo are both running OpenWRT [LEDE]. I'm not sure if I'm using the terminology correctly, but what this means in practice is that I have one big network, with all wireless and wired clients of the main AP [except those on the guest wireless network, of course], as well as the wired clients of the Buffalo, on the same network. [I haven't enabled access point functionality on the Buffalo, since I don't need it.] Works flawlessly, once I managed to follow the directions correctly ;) This is the opposite of common multi-ap solutions, that use wired backhaul and provide wireless connectivity to clients. In my configuration, I use the 2.4 GHz wireless band for the "backhaul" (my main wireless clients are using the 5 GHz band), and the server is wired to the Buffalo. Celejar
