Greetings to the forum and thanks for the steady stream of new hardware and firmware. I am somewhat technically challenged and ran into a problem on the weekend.
In the past, if I was installing 2 nodes at a site, such as a Ubiquiti NSM5 and a NBrM2, I would simply run the cables down to the shack and connect them to an unmanaged, simple switch. To ensure that I did not lose control of a device, I left dhcp turned 'on' in both nodes and it all worked. I relied on the dhcp hierarchy to sort itself out and I usually had a dtd connection between the nodes (i thought) and they saw each other just fine via the switch. I also used the old WRT54's, converted to provide POE and dtd. That provided a connection between the 20 MHz channel devices on channel 4 (for example) and the Ubiquiti devices on channel -2 set for 5 MHz bandwidth.
This weekend I decided to test out a similar configuration (to above) using a TP-Link CPE220 and a CPE610 via a simple switch, a D-Link DSS5E. To my surprise, the nodes did not see each other via dtd. I'm glad I checked before heading up to a remote site with this configuration. They do see each other via a test pair of remote Ubiquiti nodes but I don't think that this is a good arrangement.
Can someone sort me out, what am I doing wrong? Do I need to load dtd into the TP-Link nodes or do I need an external smart router? or something else.
Thanks in advance for any help.
73.
Rick (VE3CVG)
In the past, if I was installing 2 nodes at a site, such as a Ubiquiti NSM5 and a NBrM2, I would simply run the cables down to the shack and connect them to an unmanaged, simple switch. To ensure that I did not lose control of a device, I left dhcp turned 'on' in both nodes and it all worked. I relied on the dhcp hierarchy to sort itself out and I usually had a dtd connection between the nodes (i thought) and they saw each other just fine via the switch. I also used the old WRT54's, converted to provide POE and dtd. That provided a connection between the 20 MHz channel devices on channel 4 (for example) and the Ubiquiti devices on channel -2 set for 5 MHz bandwidth.
This weekend I decided to test out a similar configuration (to above) using a TP-Link CPE220 and a CPE610 via a simple switch, a D-Link DSS5E. To my surprise, the nodes did not see each other via dtd. I'm glad I checked before heading up to a remote site with this configuration. They do see each other via a test pair of remote Ubiquiti nodes but I don't think that this is a good arrangement.
Can someone sort me out, what am I doing wrong? Do I need to load dtd into the TP-Link nodes or do I need an external smart router? or something else.
Thanks in advance for any help.
73.
Rick (VE3CVG)
Rick, Trying to remember, so many revisions and models, your device has 2 physical ports? If so, then dtdlink is only functional on the 2nd port. LAN on one, DtDLink/WAN on the other. This was resolved in the Ubiquiti hardware, still on the list for tp-link.
Joe
I also notice that when I look at the Mesh Status of a NanoBridge in a similar configuration with a NanoStation or a second NanoBridge, I see the small letters 'dtd' after the node name, but I do not get this with the TP-Link devices. This is consistent with what you said.
Thanks again.
Rick
"the CPE210 is indeed a 2 port device"
Just to clarify: I have a version 2 of the CPE210(US) in front of me and it's a single port device. Guess there's a big difference in the hardware configurations between versions even with the same model name. My impression of TP-LINK just suffered a major hit.
- Don - AA7AU
My typo. Very sorry. I was talking about a CPE220 NOT a cpe210.
Rick
Rick
All newer hardware versions ~2.x and 3.x of the TP-Link hardware we have seen in the 210, 510, 220, models consolidated from 2 ports to 1 port and this became a non-issue. Given this trend, they may be doing the same with 520 and 610 models.
Joe AE6XE
I have a CPE220v3 that I would really like to install with another node using DtD. Sure would be great if this gets resolved in one of the upcoming nightly builds.
TIA,
- Don - AA7AU
Hi, Joe,
I think we talked about this when I was getting the firmware working for the WBS series (TP-Link WBS210/510). So, am I to understand that the PoE/LAN0 port is the DtD/WAN port and the LAN1 is the "LAN" port? Or the other way around? I should have time this Summer to play around with the project, so I'll try to find the code that ties the two ports together in the Ubiquiti routers, and see if I can get it to work on the TP-Link ones as well. In the end, it would be nice if we could use either port for DtD/WAN/LAN, but I think that'll be biting off more than I can chew. Mainly because you would have to come up with a way to determine what traffic is coming through the port (or a way to manually assign the port). Plus, you have the issue that the PoE adapters have two ports on them. So, in theory, you're dealing with three ports.
Have a great day. :)
Patrick.
Joe AE6XE
Orv W6BI
The reason it was original split on 2 ports, is because there is a limitation or failure. In openwrt or linux open-source on all devices, both untagged and tagged traffic on the same port fails, when configuring an internal switch. If you never had live LAN and DtDlink traffic on the same port, maybe you didn't notice it.
I have the NSMS XW devices configured, which has an internal switch, but there are no switch vlans configured. I tricked it into thinking there is simply a single interface and was then able to change the switch driver to act like a dumb switch, thus it never configures the switch itself to know about vlans. This worked around the problem.
I may be able to do the same for tp-link devices.
Joe AE6XE
I'm starting to wonder if I can rig some sort of cable adapter to extract/strip POE off *one* cable and plug just POE into LAN0 with the data continuing on to plug into LAN1. Sounds like a horrible solution but I'd like to use this CPE220v3 on a mast with another node and only two cables.
- Don - AA7AU