WDS Setup Issue

[hishetty]

I am attempting to setup a WDS connection between the RT-AC66U and ZTE MF29 router
(4G LTE Internet connection). The challenge is although the MF29 is connecting to the Internet, i would like to use RT-AC66U as the Primary router (the powerful one of the two) running DHCP and turn off DHCP on MF29. So RT-AC66U should direct all internet traffic to MF29. Need advice on how do i do this.

Currently with DHCP disabled on the MF29 and default gateway on RT-AC66U set to IP of MF29, clients do not have internet access. I tried setting up RT-AC66U in repeater mode but this is same as making it a secondary router and DHCP and lot of other stuff gets disabled. Any help is highly appriciated.

 

[bill001g]

I am going to suspect it is not going to be possible although it might be if you load dd-wrt on the asus but I suspect it will still be tricky.

So lets look at the steps in the way that does work. You first must either change the ZTE to run as modem or tolerate the problems of running 2 routers. In either case you disable the wireless on the ZTE and cable from the lan port of the ZTE to the WAN port of the ASUS. This is a pretty standard install since it treats your ZTE device as the internet.

So now a way that works using the wireless is to buy a client bridge unit and connect it to the wan port of the ASUS and then let it connect to the ZTE via wireless. To the asus it is still looks like its is getting its internet from the ethernet. You of course have to spend more money for another box

Now the problems. You can of course use the ASUS as a client-bridge with the default software. It will in effect connect the wireless to the lan port but do little else. This is still WDS based but it is a simple wireless to ethernet bridge all wireless and routing is disabled. You can run in repeater mode but again it disabled the router part and you will likely have issues getting the 802.11ac to run when repeating a 802.11n signal.
The final mode it runs in (dd-wrt for sure) is it can run the WAN port as wireless and run as a router. This is sorta like the client bridge mode but with the routing turned on. The bit problem is the wireless is only used to talk to the main router not to the end clients so you have lost any wirelees from this device.

You might be able to force the router with DD-WRT to use one of its radios to talk to the main router and then allow the other radio to talk to the end clients with the routing enabled. You would have to choose to use the 2.4 or 5g to talk to the main router and the second to talk to the end users. I would suspect you will use 2.4 to talk to the ZTE and 5g to talk to your clients since you cannot use 802.11ac on the 2.4g band.

If at all possible use a cable to accomplish this it is much simpler