Wireless Bridge - simplified. Part 1. The "sending" side of a Bridge.

A simple Wireless Bridge - Sending side.

Initially I though I had to use a WDS (Wireless Distributed System) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_distribution_system to make wireless bridging work, but then after some playing and reading I realized that with the distance between access points I don't really care about the number one WDS advantage (maintaining MAC address across access points) and it will hurt the performance of my wifi network.  WDS is great (and necessary) for a college campus or a large office building where people roam around while using devices, but with 1/4 mile between buildings I wouldn't expect someone to steam a video while traveling between buildings, so the MAC address preservation will never be needed.

In the interest of simplicity this guide will show how to setup a wireless bridge between two MikroTik devices. This setup assumes you have a DEDICATED device on one end just for doing the bridging, in my case on the "recieve" side. Note that I also assume you are using routerOS 6.23 or better.  I'm also assuming you have setup a simple access point as detailed here.  I'm using a RBSXTG-2HnD device to do my sending.

Add a VirtualAP (virtual Access Point) to the "sending" device:
#1. use Winbox and navigate to Wireless, click the Security Profiles tab, add a new Security Profile. (click the plus button)
#2. on the general tab enter a name for the new profile (I called mine Wireless-Bridge-Security) click the box for only WPA2 PSK and enter a password in the WPA2 Pre-Shared key box. (must be 8 characters or longer)  I recommend copy and paste from notepad to prevent mistakes. All other settings are fine at the defaults.  Click Apply and OK when done.


#3. Navigate to Wireless, Interfaces, Click the + and add a VirtualAP
on the general tab give it a name and enter a MAC Address. For the MAC Address good place to start is to just add one digit to your wlan1 MAC Address. You can make one up to if you wish, but that could cause problems later.

#4. Click on the Wireless tab put in a SSID (I used the same name as the interface name) choose the Master Interface (probably wlan1), choose the Security Profile you created in Step 2.  Leave the "Hide SSID" check-box unchecked for now, we will come back later and turn that off.

Note that you can change the default AP TxRate here. This would be a good place to limit the bandwidth for just this link. For a first try I would leave it alone though.

















We are done for now on the "sending" side.  Next we have to configure a dedicated "receive" device.
see the next post, Wireless Bridge - Simplified, Part 2.