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Setup LAN/WLAN Bridge with

OpenWrt (LuCI)
Posted on April 3, 2017 by Nerd Admin — 2 Comments ↓

Recently I had to connect a device to my network that could be only connected via network wire.
Unfortunately there was no access to a switch or something similar nearby. But my network (of
course) has a wifi access point that my device could connect to if it would have a wifi adapter.

So how could I connect my device to the network as if it was connected by wire? It should behave
just like a normal network client and for example get an ip address via DHCP, have the ability to
connect to other LAN clients etc.

Solution is easy & very cheap. A (almost) transparent LAN/WLAN bridge!

Read on to see how you could setup such a bridge easily even using a GUI (LuCI) most of the times.

Notes
What we setup here is basically a routed client as described here:
https://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/recipes/relayclient. It is called a pseudobridge in the article because
technically it is a router pimped by some software to act like a bridge.
Whenever I refer to the ‘router’ I mean the TP-Link TL-WR841N device we are working on and not
some router that may exist in your network.

Hardware
For my solution I use the very cheap and simple router TP-Link TL-WR841N. On this device you
can easily install the custom firmware that we will need.

Prerequisites
In order to be able to do the setup you need a few things:

A working access point that has access to the internet

 A desktop/notebook with an SSH client (e.g. PuTTY)
A network cable to connect desktop/notebook to the router
Find the link for the LuCI relay protocol we need in step 7 on https://downloads.openwrt.org/.
For me it was
https://downloads.openwrt.org/chaos_calmer/15.05.1/ar71xx/generic/packages/luci/luci-
proto-relay_git-16.018.33482-3201903-1_all.ipk

1. Install custom firmware (OpenWrt) on router

There are many very good tutorials how to install the custom firmware OpenWrt on a TL-WR841N.
Therefore I am not describing this step.
I recommend sticking with the install instructions on the OpenWrt-Website, which in my case was:
https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr841nd#installation

2. Reset (optional)
If you just installed the custom firmware you may ommit this step. But if you already twiddled with it
or need to reset because you messed something up, just do this:

Power off the device

Remove all cables (except the power cable of course)
Press the reset button and keep it pressed
Power on the device (keep the reset button pressed)
Watch the status LEDs (keep the reset button pressed)
The lock LED turns on (keep the reset button pressed)
The lock LED turns off (keep the reset button pressed)
The lock LED starts blinking (keep the reset button pressed)
The lock LED starts to flash constantly
Immediately release the reset button
The device now resets to OpenWrt default configuration. During this process all LEDs may
blink
Wait till the lock LED flashes constantly again

Now your device is reset to OpenWrt defaults and we can start to configure our LAN/WLAN bridge.

3. First steps
Connect your desktop/laptop via network cable to the router using port 1
Ensure, that your computer isn’t connected to any other network, e.g. via WLAN
On your computer enable DHCP for your ethernet device
On your computer open a browser window and visit http://192.168.1.1 which is the
GUI/frontend of your OpenWrt router
Initially there is no password set, so be sure there is no password in the password field and
click Login

4. Set your password

In the menu go to System/Adminstration
Choose a password and enter it in the fields Password and Confirmation
 At the bottom of the page press Save & Apply

5. Set the ip address of your router

Your router needs to have an ip address that is outside of your LAN. Otherwise the bridging will not
work. This will also be the address you have to use when you need to configure your router. So just
choose an ip address that you normally never would use and you are save
I chose 192.168.15.1 for my router as the whole subnet 192.168.15.0/24 isn’t yet used. If you choose
another address remember to replace 192.168.15.1 in every part of this guide.

In the menu go to Network/Interfaces

For the interface LAN click on action Edit
In the field IPv4 address enter your new ip address, in my case 192.168.15.1
Because the bridge should be transparent, we have to disable the DHCP server. Therefore
find the DHCP section and check the Ignore Interface option
Click Save & Apply

From now on your router is reachable with its new address 192.168.15.1. Because we disabled the
DHCP server your computer will not get a new ip address automatically. You have to set it manually
now:

Give your computer a new ip address that belongs to the new subnet. I gave the ethernet
adapter of my notebook the ip address 192.168.15.2

To resume configuration you have to reconnect to the router now.

In your web browser go to http://192.168.15.1 which is the new URL of the router frontend
Login in with username root and your password

6. Connect router to your WLAN

In the menu go to Network/Wifi
Click Scan in the upper right
When the scan is finished choose the network you want to join and click Join Network
In the appearing dialog enter the passphrase of the WLAN you want to join
Click Submit
Click Save & Apply

If everything went well, your router should now be

connected to your network have access to the
internet now. This can be checked easily:

Go to Network/Diagnostics
Click on Ping

If the ping was successful it should result in

something like shown on the right.

7. Install relayd on router

 With the SSH client of your choice (e.g. PuTTY) connect to your router using ip address
192.168.15.1. Rember to connect as user root. In linux for example you would have to
connect like

# ssh root@192.168.15.1

Enter the password you set for OpenWrt in step 4

Do an pkg update:

# opkg update

Install the LuCI package for the relay protocol so we can use it in the web frontend.
Important: Please note that the URL has to use http:// instead of https://

# opkg install http://downloads.openwrt.org/chaos_calmer/15.05.1/ar71

Activate relayd:

# /etc/init.d/relayd enable

End SSH session:

# exit

8. Configure
bridge via web
GUI
Open your browser and
visit http://192.168.15.1
again.
Login in with username
root and your password
In the menu go to
Network/Interfaces
Click Add new device
In the Name of the new interface field enter stabridge
In the Protocol of the new interface dropdown choose Relay bridge
Click Submit
In the Relay between networks section check lan: and wwan:
Click Save & Apply

9. Adjusting firewall rules

In the menu go to Network/Firewall
In the Zones section Add
In the Name field enter bridgezone
In the Forward dropdown choose accept
In the Covered networks section check lan: and wwan:
Click Save & Apply

10. Restart router and test

 In the menu go to System/Reboot
Click Perform reboot

Your setup is now finished. Any device that is connected to a port of

the router (except the WAN port) should now behave like it would
be directly connect to the LAN by wire.

To test this with my notebook I did the following steps:

Disabled my wifi adapter

Set my ethernet connection back to DHCP

The result is that my central DHCP server gave me a new ip address and I have full access to the
internet and all devices in my local network.

Exactly what I wanted. This way I can extend my network to wire-only devices even when there is no
network socket available.

Mission complete

Closing remarks
Remember that the configured router has the static ip address 192.168.15.1 which is very likely not
reachable in the local network, e.g. because it has subnet 192.168.1.0/24. If you want to access the
router itself, e.g. to make changes to the configuration like connecting to a different wifi network you
would have to set the ip of your computer to 192.168.15.2 so it would be able to connect to
192.168.15.1. Additionally the router is configured to ask for an own ip address via DHCP. So you
may lookup the address and connect to that ip. This works from any device in the network but the
ones that are connected directly to the ports of the router.

‹ rm: delete files before (or after) a specific date

Posted in Hardware, Networking Tagged with: bridge, LuCI, network, OpenWrt, WLAN

2 comments on “Setup LAN/WLAN Bridge with OpenWrt (LuCI)”

Philipp says:
November 4, 2017 at 8:45 pm

Thank you for the clear and concise explanation.

I’d like to have a wired instead of wireless bridge. I have network jacks upstairs and would like
stronger wifi there. The wifi there should be the same SSID as downstairs.

So the main wifi cable modem downstairs is the DHCP server and the access point upstairs is
transparent. Kind of like being in a company or hotel with the same wireless network everywhere.

Reply
 Nerd Admin says:
November 6, 2017 at 3:27 pm

This should be basically just a plain setup of an access point like described in the openwrt
wiki: https://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/recipes/dumbap

Because it should work as an extension of your existing wifi be sure that

– SSID is exactly the same for the new access point
– wireless security values are exactly the same (e.g. encryption, cipher, key)
– if possible a different channel is used so access points don’t interfere too much with each
other

I use this configuration at my home, too. Depending on the devices that use the wifi
handover may not be perfectly seamless but for me it is a good and cheap solution to cover
my whole house with good wifi.

Reply

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