Draytek AP setup (Central AP management and Meshing) guide

This guide will show how to set up your Draytek Access Points while using Central AP management feature built-in to Draytek APs. 

 

First part of the guide explains on how to get hardwired APs set up while the second part of the guide explains on how to meshed access point and sync the config between the hardwired and the meshed APs.

 

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Open your preffered IP scanner to find the IP addresse(s) of the Draytek access point(s) and open the web UI of the Draytek AP.

Follow the Quick Start Wizard to set up your Access Point.

 

"Access Point" option is only required if you do not need meshing, if you require a meshed network you need to configure the AP as "Mesh Root" this will be the hard wired AP to the network.

 

Once the Access Points are set up, go to Central AP Management > General Setup enable RootAP and select "Discover Mode". The Discover Mode will find all of your access points.

Enabling Root AP option is only required on a single master AP. 

Then navigate to Cental AP Management > Note Status page. Click on Auth and type user name and password of the AP to authenticate the APs on the master AP. The State will change from "Initializing" to "Success"

 

For the last steps we need to get config synced across all of the APs, in order to sync the configs nagivate to Central AP Management > Basic Configuration Sync tick Select All and scroll down to apply.

 

 

Then nagivate to Central AP Management > Advanced Configuration > Select All and click apply.

 

 

Open Central AP Management > Node Status you will see a list of al the Draytek APs and the SSIDs that they are broadcasing. If you synced the configs across all of the APs the SSIDs should match on the all of the APs.

 

 

Meshing:

 

1. Connect the Access Points that will be meshed to the power socket. It is easier to connect Meshed Nodes (meshed APs) to the Meshed Roots (hardwired APs that will have Meshed APs connected to them wirelessly) if the Meshed Nodes are not hardwired to the network. 

2. Connect your Mesh Roots APs to the network Switch, log in to the web ui of them and set them up as Mesh Roots. The Quick Start Wizard will start looking for the APs that are ready to be meshed.

Select the APs from the list that you want to connect to the Mesh Root, give them Device Names and click Apply.

Meshed APs will show up as Offline at the moment, the AP will automatically join the system in a couple of minutes.

Open the web UI of the Mesh Root, navigate to Mesh>Mesh Status. You should see the list of AP(s) that are meshing off this particular Access point. The Status might show Online but in yellow, after a few minutes the light should change to green. You can try and speed the process up  by syncing the config between the Mesh Root and Mesh node APs, this can be done by going to Mesh>Basic Config Sync and Mesh>Advanced Config Sync.

 

 

If you want to sync the configs across the hardwired system and the meshed APs you will have to open web UI of the Master AP and sync the config to your hardwired APs by navigating to Central AP Management > Basic Config Sync followed by Central AP Management > Advanced Config Sync

Once all of the hardwired APs have their configs synced accros, open the web ui of the access points that have access points connected to them wirelessly and navigate to Mesh > Basic Config Sync and Mesh > Advanced Config Sync. This will send the config information from the hardwired APs to the meshed APs and the system config will be synced.