Getting network connectivity to two difficult rooms in my house with OpenWRT

Question

I have a D-Link DIR-835 rev. A1 running OpenWRT as my wifi AP and also ethernet router. I have put the AP in a reasonably central location in my house given the limitations for it being near a cable entry point. But the two back rooms of my house get bad wifi signals; in one a device can connect but bandwidth can sometimes be bad, in the other room it is basically impossible to connect. I have racked my brain trying to figure out how I can get an ethernet cable to one or both of those rooms from the room with my AP but it would be very difficult. I can run an ethernet cable easily between the two rooms that are having problems.

I currently am addressing the problem with dd-wrt (because I could not find good OpenWRT support for this device) running on a Linksys E1200 v2 set to Client Bridge Mode in the room that gets OK wifi. It's router ports offer network to devices in that room and the other difficult room. This works OK for a while and then stops working well and I am mindful of the warning

Client Bridge will never be as stable as any of those modes. It is by design a hack and not a true transparent bridge like WDS. It will cause connection problems for more than a single client.

So I am looking for a better solution.

What are my best options for getting network connectivity to these two rooms?

The dd-wrt page on Linking Routers suggests that Client Bridge is the worst choice from the available options (Repeater Bridge, WDS, Client, Repeater, AP or OLSR) and suggests that Repeater Bridge may be second worst choice. The dd-wrt wiki says that

There is no repeater mode option on Qualcomm/Atheros devices

and my D-Link DIR-835 rev. A1 is Atheros hardware. The dd-wrt page also suggests that to use WDS I should have two AP/routers with the same chipset. I am not opposed to buying a second D-Link DIR-835 rev. A1 if that is my best option.

Does it help that the D-Link DIR-835 rev. A1 can broadcast at multiple frequencies?

I am citing the dd-wrt info pages because those are the best explanations I have found so far but my intent is to set up my solution with OpenWRT. For whatever solution is most highly recommended, I am looking for clear instructions please.

Answer 1

Here is the solution I found.

I bought a second router that can support OpenWrt, a TP-Link Archer C7 v2. The TP-Link is my primary access point. I use the D-Link as a client bridge using WDS supported by MAC80211. I installed a recent version of OpenWrt on both devices and set up the primary AP as normal. Then I placed the D-Link in a place in my house where it gets a good signal and ran a 15m ethernet cable to the room that does not get a signal tacked discretely along the baseboards. I then set up the D-Link up as a WDS client bridge. As noted by MariusMatutiae in those instructions I did have to disable DHCP for IPV4 and IPV6.

At the other end of the ethernet cable I attached a Linksys E1200 v2 running DD-WRT in Wireless access point mode