If you’re planning an upcoming vacation or a business trip, taking your laptop, tablet or smartphone give you the ability to connect with friends or complete work on the go. But many hotels don’t have a secure wireless network setup or you’re limited on using a single device at once. Investing in a portable, mini travel router is a great way to connect all of your devices at once while having total control over your own personalized wireless network.
A logical combination of AP+STA mode on one physical radio allows most of OpenWrt/LEDE supported router devices to connect to a wireless hotspot/station (STA) and provide a wireless access point (AP) from that hotspot at the same time. Downside of this solution: whenever the STA interface looses the connection it will go into an active scan cycle which renders the radio unusable for AP mode operation, therefore the AP is taken down if the STA looses its association.
To avoid these kind of deadlocks, travelmate set all station interfaces in an "always off" mode and connects automatically to available/configured hotspots.
receive travelmate runtime information:
::: travelmate runtime information
travelmate_version : 0.9.5
station_connection : true
station_id : blackhole/04:F0:21:2F:B7:64
station_interface : trm_wwan
station_radio : radio1
last_rundate : 06.12.2017 16:47:56
system : LEDE Reboot SNAPSHOT r5422-9fe59abef8
1. configure the travelmate wwan interface in /etc/config/network:
[...]
config interface 'trm_wwan'
option proto 'dhcp'
[...]
2. add this interface to your firewall configuration in /etc/config/firewall:
[...]
config zone
option name 'wan'
option network 'wan wan6 trm_wwan'
[...]
3. at least add one ap and (multiple) wwan stations to your wireless configuration in etc/config/wireless:
[...]
config wifi-iface
option device 'radio0'
option network 'lan'
option mode 'ap'
option ssid 'example_ap'
option encryption 'psk2+ccmp'
option key 'abc'
option disabled '0'
[...]
config wifi-iface
option device 'radio0'
option network 'trm_wwan'
option mode 'sta'
option ssid 'example_01'
option encryption 'psk2+ccmp'
option key 'abc'
option disabled '1'
[...]
config wifi-iface
option device 'radio0'
option network 'trm_wwan'
option mode 'sta'
option ssid 'example_02'
option encryption 'psk2+ccmp'
option key 'xyz'
option disabled '1'
[...]
4. start travelmate:
edit /etc/config/travelmate and set 'trm_enabled' to '1'
/etc/init.d/travelmate restart
Q: What's about 'manual' and 'automatic' mode?
A: In "manual" mode travelmate will be triggered solely by procd interface down events, whenever an uplink disappears travelmate tries n times (default 3) to find a new uplink or reconnect to the old one. The 'automatic' mode keeps travelmate in an active state and checks every n seconds the connection status / the uplink availability regardless of procd event trigger.
Q: What happen with misconfigured uplinks, e.g. due to outdated wlan passwords?
A: Travelmate tries n times (default 3) to connect, then the respective uplink SSID will be marked / renamed to 'SSID_err'. In this case use the builtin wireless station manager to update your wireless credentials. To disable this functionality at all set the Connection Limit ('trm_maxretry') to '0', which means unlimited retries.
Q: Is travelmate compatible with CC/Openwrt?
A: Travelmate was never tested with an ancient CC/OpenWrt release ... it should still work, but no promises.
[...] to be continued [...]
Please join the travelmate discussion in this forum thread or contact me by mail
Have fun!
Dirk