Question Problem sharing wireless connection between three buildings

[16speedster]

I have fiber internet / router in Building A . I have a TP-Link AC1200 wifi router in Building B which connects wirelessly to building A and works fine. If I connect a laptop to the LAN port of the AC1200 I have a good internet connection. Between building B and C, I have Ubiquiti Nanostations creating a wireless bridge. If I connect a laptop to the wireless bridge in Building C, I do not get an internet connection. For testing, I have a TMobile cellular internet router that I can connect to the wireless Bridge in Building B and then the internet works like it should in Building C. Can anyone explain why the wireless bridge works fine when I connect it to LAN port on the TMobile router, but does not work when I connect it to the LAN port on the AC1200 router. Thanks!

 

[lantis3]

TP-Link AC1200 wifi router

Exactly which model? Running in what mode?

 

[16speedster]

It is listed as Archer A54. Let me know if you need more info.

 

[bill001g]

This is likely all related to the problems with using wireless repeaters.

From what I can tell the cases that work always have something connected via a lan cable.

It seems what you want to do is connect from a-b wireless and then run b-c also via wireless.

Basically this is a wifi repeater. The issue is wifi is intentionally designed to prevent this. The mac address is used as part of the encryption standard to prevent man in the middle attacks....which is exactly what you are attempting.

There are a number of so called hack/solutions. The most standard one uses a field called WDS to pass the mac addreses. Although not part of the wifi standard most device now do it the same way. Problem is WDS is considered a security exposure and many times you must turn the feature on in the main router.
It might still be messy because your building C might also need to run as a repeater. You generally can't run repeater to repeater with WDS. You might be be able to run building C as a wifi bridge and then hook a AP to the bridge to provide another source of wifi.

Pretty much what you are trying to do is MESH. Because the problem with the wifi encryption still exists all the implementations of mesh are proprietary so you can't mix and match equipment.

In addition TPLINK has some other speical bridge modes one of which is called universal repeater.

Hard to say what to recommend it is messy since nothing is standard.

Maybe buy another wifi device/bridge and connect that to the lan in build b and the that device will pair with the wifi in building c. Might be worth the $50-$75 rather than deal with the hassle of mulitple repeaters.

 

[lantis3]

Yep, you are running A54 in repeater range extender mode, which only supports wifi connection for clients.

The video is for C54, but should work the same.

3:38

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v4lIzNyNnI

 

[lantis3]

Possible solution: WISP router

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wisp+router

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=wisp+router

Of course you should choose the one with bigger/larger antennas.

Clients that connect to WISP router will have a different IP range than your fiber connection though (double NAT)

 

[lantis3]

I have Ubiquiti Nanostations creating a wireless bridge. If I connect a laptop to the wireless bridge in Building C, I do not get an internet connection.

Was the nanostation uplinked to the fiber router through ethernet?

For testing, I have a TMobile cellular internet router that I can connect to the wireless Bridge in Building B

You probably was using T-Mobile's dada plan if nanostation was not uplinked via ethernet to fiber router.

 

[lantis3]

Intro to Ubiquiti PtP and PtMP Radios​

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/pekq0m/intro_to_ubiquiti_ptp_and_ptmp_radios/