CPE510 - Multiple Problems
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My plan was to use a CPE510 to extend my existing wifi network to my workshop, which is a large metal building about 200 feet away from my main house. I also planned to use a second CPE510 to accomplish the same thing for yet a 3rd building, slightly further away from the house, in a different direction. My existing WiFi network at the house is served by a Ubiquiti AP, mounted outdoors with an omni-directional antenna, which has been working reasonably well for years. I also use a TP-RE650 extender to improve coverage from the Ubiquiti AP to the inside of the house, but that's not a critical bit of information for what follows.
Before going to the trouble of installing the new CPE510 "in the air" outside my shop and on the other building, I wanted to test to make sure everything worked. Good thing I did.
I configured the first CPE510 to run in client mode and connect to my existing client network. DHCP services are provided by redundant/failover servers on my main network, so none of my various network appliances (routers, switches, AP's, etc.) are configured as DHCP servers.
The CPE510 established a WiFi connection to my main AP just fine, no problem. However when I attached a laptop to its LAN port, the laptop failed to acquire an IP address from my DHCP servers. It made no difference whether I allowed the CPE to choose its own connection point, or whether I locked it to either the Ubiquiti AP or the TP-RE650.
I tried lots of different tweaks, nothing worked, so I opened a ticket with support. I also spent some time looking through here for other posts on the subject, but only found a few that seemed to confirm that "it should work" and that I had things configured correctly.
After spending several days trying (unsuccessfully) their various suggestions, they suggested I configure the second CPE510 as an AP with a different SSID on my network and connecting the client CPE that way. That worked ---- for the devices attached to the client mode CPE's LAN port.
However, neither an Android phone nor a different Windows laptop was able to connect directly to the new AP/SSID provided by the CPE510 running as an AP - at all.
I'm disappointed. I liked the idea of using the CPE510's to extend my network to other buildings on the property and I liked their price point, but it appears that unless I'm willing to replace all my exiting WiFi gear with TP-Link products (and hope that they all will play nice with each other), it's just not going to work.
Unless support is able to crack this nut and help me solve the problem within the next couple of days, I'll be boxing them up and returning them to "that big online retailer in the sky" for a refund.
This can indeed be critical. Read on.
That's not what CPEs are designed for. CPEs are designed for directional wireless links over large distances what means that CPEs are always used pair-wise in PtP or with three and more CPEs in PtMP scenarios:
The distance over which a CPE can exchange data reliably with any other AP depends on the AP with the smallest coverage, that's in this case the UniFi AP.
If you cannot receive the signal of your UniFi outdoor AP at the workshop with standard clients, you can't either with a CPE510. The typical symptom is that the remote CPE can receive the SSID of the UniFi AP (which is sent at 1 Mbps WiFi rate and covers 4-5 times the area covered by higher WiFi rates), but you can't exchange data. That's why your laptop doesn't get an IP via DHCP.
You should use the CPEs pair-wise and mount it (far enough) away from the UniFi outdoor AP and the repeater.
You also need a fresnel zone clearance of at least 40% on the PtP link, that's especially important if one of the two CPE is mounted above a metal which can generate reflections of the signal sent from the local CPE at the house to the remote CPE at the workshop. The remote CPE receives two delayed waves of the same signal if such reflections occur. To mitigate against such interferneces, compute the fresnel zone and you get as result the height at which the CPEs need to be mounted on the antenna poles at the workshop and at the house.