WDS(Wireless Distribution System) is a means to transparently bridge wireless APs. What exactly does transparent bridging mean? A transparent bridge is basically turning your wireless links into an ethernet cable. It takes anything put into one side and spits it out on the other.
This is great for connecting two locations. This is often used for towers that utilize a router in the center that does PPPoE aggregation with separate radios to bring in clients. Another note is that WDS implementations doesn’t span vendors. Vendors use their own proprietary versions.
Generally you run one side as an AP with WDS and the other side as a station WDS client. You can generally connect two APs running WDS, but this is usually unnecessary.
Mikrotik
In Mikrotik we have to create a bridge interface. We then add our desired ethernet interfaces to the bridge. Once the radios connect a WDS interface is automatically created and added to our bridge. This will connect the ethernet interfaces across the wireless via layer 2.
AP Radio
Station Radio
Ubiquiti
In ubiquiti we don’t have to go through the trouble of creating bridges and such, we just make sure to leave the network mode in its default bridge mode and then configuring the wireless interfaces as follows.
AP Radio
Station Radio
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