WDS between AirPort Express and OpenWRT Kamikaze

I wanted to stream music with AirTunes to my AirPort Express, as well as, use the AE as an ethernet bridge for my Neuros OSD. I don’t really care too much about WDS except that the AirPort Extreme won’t bridge the ethernet when it’s in simple client mode, only in Wireless Distribution System mode (Good ol’ Apple flexibility)! So off I went trying to get the AE (Firmware 6.3) to play nice with my Asus WL-500W (Kamikaze installed).

Contrary to what I expected, the AE actually played nicely. The problem turned out to be the OpenWRT documentation. It describes the needed parameters, but neglects to mention, you need two wifi-iface configuration blocks; One for the Access Point conf and one for the WDS conf. Once I figured that out, the rest was gravy.

The config in Kamikaze (Configuration using Webif² worked as well):
config 'wifi-device' 'wl0'
option 'type' 'broadcom'
option 'channel' '5'
option 'disabled' '0'


config 'wifi-iface'
option 'device' 'wl0'
option 'network' 'lan'
option 'mode' 'ap'
option 'ssid' 'ssidname'
option 'encryption' 'wep'
option 'hidden' '0'
option 'key' '1'
option 'key1' 'xxxxxxxxxx'
option 'wds' '0'


config 'wifi-iface'
option 'device' 'wl0'
option 'network' 'lan'
option 'mode' 'wds'
option 'ssid' 'ssidname-wds'
option 'encryption' 'none'
option 'bssid' 'Airport Extreme's mac address'
option 'hidden' '0'
option 'wds' '0'

The AE settings were as one would expect:
Wireless Mode: Participate in WDS network
Channel: 5 (Same channel as the OpenWRT router)
Wireless Security: Wep (Also works with none)
WDS Mode: WDS remote
WDS Main: The wireless mac of the OpenWRT router

That’s all. The rest of the settings should be fine with the default.

As I said, I tested this with no security and WEP. I’d be interested to hear if the other security methods work so please post a comment. Cheers.

OpenWRT on Asus WL-500W

OpenWRT does not yet support the Asus WL-500W although there is some info in the developers blogs about how people got it working. Being a fan of this great project, I gave it a shot and updated the documentation with my efforts. I’ve been using it for about 2 weeks now and it works like a charm.

The 802.11n networking does not yet work. There is a new version of the proprietary broadcom driver in the Asus firmware. It hasn’t been included in the Openwrt CVS but I think this could be the ticket. I’ll give it a shot if I have some spare time in the future.

If you would simply like me to send you the version I complied, give me a quick email at
guarddogit-wordpress (at) yahoo (dot) ca

Update:
I updated the docs to include building of the Webif² package. Works pretty well but not perfectly. I still couldn’t get the wireless working with anything other than the wl_mimo driver which means only 802.11g works.