MikroTik

Petri

Instead of a non-standard kludge I would love to see MikroTik put effort into implementing 802.11d (country ie), .11h (channel utilization), .11k (neighbor reports), .11v (BSS transitions)... Once those are properly implemented should any effort be put into tweaking.

Petri

Can't understand, why not to introduce 1 simple setting: if 5Ghz signal level is over 70 (for example), do not move client device to 2.4Ghz, even it has much better signal level? The AP does not move any client devices. The client devices decide themselves how to connect, when to roam, what band et...

Petri

I'll chime in to keep this thread busy. I would be happy with any solution, 64-bit WinBox would do. Everything beyond that is welcome, of course.

Petri

No. I don't know any commercial gear that supports 802.11mc. AFAIK it is still in draft status.

Petri

How about the wAP LTE Kit? It has an omnidirectional LTE and integrated 2.4GHz Wi-Fi AP in a weatherproof case. It is really hard to keep the SXT LTE directed to a stationary cell phone tower from a boat. Even when anchored the boat keeps turning around. You could mount the wAP LTE Kit as high as yo...

Petri

I am not a cell phone engineer but to my knowledge yes. Cell phones use TDMA so the SXT LTEs wouldn't be transmitting at the same time. I wouldn't install them touching each other, though. The one transmitting will induce currents in close proximity metal objects like a circuit board. One meter apar...

Petri

802.11n without 802.11g support in known as 'greenfield'. In mixed mode (the opposite of greenfield) all transmissions start with CTS-to-self and a non-HT preamble, which is a waste of bandwidth, if you don't have any pre-n clients. For the best results disable everything you are not going to need.

Petri

I'll chime in again: 1) 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands are independent and won't affect each other. Same goes for non-overlapping channels in the same band. Note that 802.11b and 802.11g are only available on 2.4GHz. 2) 802.11b uses a completely different modulation (DSSS) so supporting such devices will req...

Petri

Yes, the beacons and most control frames will be transmitted at the oldest and slowest supported method just in case there is an old device just about to associate. All transmissions will also start with a 802.11b header so the presumed old devices will know to wait. Note that transmitting data at t...

Petri

@Kindis Yeah, 20Mbps is slow, but my wAP LTE Kit installations have been very remote with only band 20 available (800Mhz). With directional 2x2 antennas and short (20cm) antenna cables I have succeeded where nothing else has worked. In that sense 20Mbps is really good (twice the capacity of thin Eth...

Petri

I have deployed them only in rural areas here in Finland. The problem is that we have three operators and on band 20 (800MHz) the channel width is only 5MHz (or was it 10MHz?) Anyways the net result is around 20Mbps throughput. I have also used directional 14dBi antennas (yes, I have been asked to h...

Petri

If you set the 2.4GHz transmit power 6dB lower than 5GHz the the device will perceive them as equally strong. If you set it lower then the 5GHz will appear stronger and be chosen. Most devices will prefer 5GHz if the signals are equally strong. That's why 6dB difference usually does the trick. You c...

Petri

You should take a look at the spectrum with a tool like WiFi Analyzer (Android), inSSIDer (Win) or WiFi Explorer (macOS) to see what channels are in use and what is the signal level with the CAPsMAN setup. Do all the APs end up on the same or overlapping channels, perhaps? There is a reason why the ...

Petri

You need to do it on a router where the Nintendo is directing the traffic. Currently the provider router is the default gateway so it should happen there. However, I doubt the provider will do a special config for you. It would be a maintenance headache for them in the future. Your best bet would be...

Petri

You also need to tell about the environment: How much area are you covering with the 15 APs? How is the RF environment? Is it office, hotel, home…? How many and what kind of clients? What kind of apps are they using? On the configuration side I would be interested in the transmit power levels and ch...

Petri

As a second thought: I think you could pull this off with a single AP on the vehicle. Just use the 5GHz radio for the infrastructure and 2.4GHz for the internal WLAN or vice versa.

Petri

I have to stretch my imagination to grasp what on earth are you aiming at. Anyways, multiple SSIDs in the vehicle is not a problem. However, keeping the traffic separated up to infrastructure will need some creative thinking. Like creating a VPN tunnel for each SSID and bridging the SSID in the vehi...

Petri

If I understood correctly the vehicles move indoors?

To me it sounds like basic 802.11 roaming is what you are asking for. No need for any P2P. Place wireless APs around the building and the wireless stations on the vehicles will roam from AP to the next automatically. Plain and simple.

Petri

r00t gives good advice. I would like to correct just one detail: -6dB is a quarter of the original. -3dB is half.

Petri

1) If you you use the Home AP quickset you will have NAT and DHCP on every AP. The client devices will roam, but they will move from behind one firewall to another and even get new IP addresses, which will break Skype calls for example. You won't notice the interruptions in browsing or twittering, t...

Petri

Meshing has nothing to do with roaming. If you have the APs connected with Ethernet cables (good!) then you don't need meshing. Meshing is needed when you can't pull cables and you are required to use wireless uplink. Your client devices will roam from AP to AP as long as the SSID and password are t...

Petri

@iScape: CAPsMAN is intended for controlling APs. My suggestion was to use CAPsMAN to control the two access points in ac bridge mode and configure the station mode hAP AC Lite as a standalone device. I could have been clearer with that, though.

Petri

Some thoughts on your post: You have two APs with 20MHz channel width and three with 80MHz. The client devices won't consider channel width when selecting the AP to associate with. The number of clients would be even over the APs, not used channels. I would set all APs on 40MHz unless you are certai...

Petri

@ninja365: It could be interference on the particular channel this bridge is using. If the interference is intermittent the link should come back up by itself. The fact it doesn't, but works after manual intervention, is a sign it isn't an interference problem but a device problem. Could be power, h...

Petri

You can rule out the power issue by putting an UPS at the feed for SXT LTE and Pharos. If it still happens it isn't the power. I'm sorry but I don't see any simple causes. How often does this occur? Is there anything in the logs at the time? The wireless bridge should be transparent to the other dev...

Petri

If this is very recent phenomenon then it could be a bug in iOS 12 which is fixed in 12.0.1. The bug caused iOS devices to prefer 2.4GHz over 5GHz, but it didn't affect all devices. IIRC only the latest Xs phones displayed it.

Petri

I asked this very same question two months ago with no reply from MikroTik: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=136598&p=680458#p680458

Petri

The interesting part is that the signal level graph works, so there is a way the device knows the signal level. It is just not made available for modem-signal-treshold. I hope it would be reasonably simple to fix, once the problem is acknowledged.

Petri

There is no mechanism for such messages. It can't be done. You'd need some client software in all devices to receive and display the message. (I am not saying it wouldn't be handy at times, but it does not exist.) If you hijack http connections to your proxy you will break many things. Imagine how y...

Petri

Did you assess the environment as I suggested two months ago above? Bad RF environment would be an straightforward explanation to high ping times both on 2.4 and 5 GHz and to the difference between the two.

Petri

Client devices shouldn't react to BPDUs at all. I can't see how RSTP could cause this. You can turn (R)STP off for testing if you are not using meshing and you don't have wired loops in your network. You should find out what does the device test to see whether it is connected to the Internet or not....

Petri

My guess is the "connected, no internet" state means that the client hasn't received a DHCP lease yet. Where is your DHCP server? To test this hypothesis you should monitor DHCP traffic.
Does the client appear in registration table instantly?

Petri

I just received my SXT LTE Kit. I haven't figured out how to make the LED bar work. The default setup doesn't use them at all. I set LED1 to follow lte1 interface-status, which works. However, if I set LEDs 2-5 to follow modem-status with signal levels -81, -71, -61 and -51 the configuration succeed...

Petri

That's what I meant. I don't buy the "lite" versions. The price difference is small and the lites are handicapped in hardware.

Petri

It all depends on the construction and your needs. It is very different to plan for a bamboo hut from a reinforced concrete bunker. For home use I'd assume quite few devices and light use. Without any further information I'd start with an AP in each floor. You could get by with less, but the connect...

Petri

Yeah, you are probably right about the environment causing issues. There is noting much that can be done via settings. You need to carefully plan the locations and antenna directions to achieve best results. You mention antenna locations. How long are your antenna cables? They could be a major sourc...

Petri

At the start there was discussion how to implement band steering. Selective beacons would be an easy solution. I found documentation how Ubiquiti does it. It requires keeping track of the clients even across multiple access points, so It requires quite a bit more work: How Band Steering Works Contro...

Petri

@pe1chl: How did you convert dBi to beam width angle? I have been trying to figure it out assuming that the lobe is a round or elliptical cone but I haven't come up with a formula. I know there are other cases like omnidirectional antennas, too.

Petri

Have you looked at the environment? 2.4GHz is often more crowded and more prone to interference. Recently I was looking at a deployment with 995 competing BSSIDs on 2.4GHz and 4 on 5GHz. If you have an Android phone then WiFi Analyzer is a good tool to start with. For noise sources you'll need a har...

Petri

Remove the wireless interface from the bridge. Then you can run a separate DHCP server on the wireless and route traffic to your other networks.

Petri

@JasonZZR has good points. However, I was thinking that if @hhkatch gets bad coverage from a single AP tucked in a basement wiring closet he has a good chance of getting decent coverage with a single AP placed in a good spot. Managing multiple APs is easier if you set up CAPsMAN, but it steepens the...

Petri

You never mentioned your router model or RouterOS version. They are important if you want to get useful help here. No, you don't want to put the antennas at the end of a cable. The cable will kill the signal on the way. You need another router. Replace the current one with a hEX and place the Wi-Fi ...

Petri

There are far too many ways your Wi-Fi could be broken. To have an idea you would need to study a lot. I can give some hints to get you started. Apparently you can connect to your network but you are not happy about the performance. I would look at the environment and signal level first. If you have...

Petri

WinBox can connect to the MAC address on layer 2. Not as reliable as a TCP connection but can help you out.

Petri

You can add those access lists in Winbox in CAPsMAN > Access list. You need two entries, one to accept -75..120 and a second one to reject -120..-75. You should be aware of the consequences for devices with no better access point available. Usually that means the perimeter of you coverage, but there...

Petri

Once I had one device that only supported 2.4GHz but occasionally wouldn't connect. It turned out that the device only supported the U.S. channel set 1–11 and the channel plan was European 1, 5, 9, 13. Whenever the device was in areas covered by an AP on channel 13 it was disconnected. That is one m...

Petri

The 11 channels on 2.4GHz are 5MHz wide. Wi-Fi uses 20 or 22MHz wide channels. If you use channels next to each other they will overlap. By using 1, 6 and 11 you have three genuinely distinct channels. Here in Europe you can occasionally use 1, 5, 9 and 13 and get a fourth channel. Apparently you me...

Petri

You are in the wrong menu. Check Data Rates menu, there "VHT" section is for 802.11ac
Yes but in the "VHT" menu there is only the option of MCS 0-7 and MCS 0-9.

Those are the only options in IEEE 802.11ac. There is no way to enable or disable rates individually.

Petri

@anav You won't find any exact figure since there isn't one. The theoretical limits are 4095 VLANs and 2007 SSIDs. Each SSID can be connected with a VLAN so 2007 would be the answer since it is lower and thus the limit (as @JohnTRIVOLTA noted). On a one-radio MikroTik device you would run one SSID o...

Petri

I am wary of automatic upgrades, I have been bitten more than once. I am no scripting guru either, that's mostly why took a look at your script. Two observations: The last closing brace doesn't have a pair. With your logic the firmware will be updated on the next run (24h hours later) - unless there...

Petri

Nobody can promise anything. The only answer you'll get is "It is closer than ever before!" Don't try to hold your breath. Of course MikroTik is doing their best, it will bring revenue for them. If you are in a hurry you should try wAP LTE Kit. You can install pigtails and fit a more direc...

Petri

Are we talking about a WISP setup here? (Again it is me guessing..) I have no experience with running a WISP, so I'll step aside then. My advice concerned providing Wi-Fi service to client devices directly. It would have saved my time and you would get better responses if you'd given some background...

Petri

You are not helping much. I already guessed it was outdoors. What kind of deployment? It is a totally different matter to serve 300 people scattered around a park than 300 people packed in front of a concert stage. How much freedom do you have in AP placement? How are going to supply power? What kin...

Petri

50 clients is more like maximum due to air time availability. If all the clients are very close you can squeeze in a lot of clients because they all will have fast connections. If you have clients further away connected at 1 to 6 Mbps they will eat all the air time. Your 3Mbps requirement is modest,...

Petri

From your description I have no idea what is going on. You need to post more details. What is your network design? You have three APs but how are they connected? How many networks do you have? Where is the DHCP server? Do you have CAPsMAN running? What channels are you using? Et cetera. You can also...

Petri

WDS or meshing was never really standardized. Interoperability between brands is coincidential. It won't hurt to try, however.

Petri

I don't know, but I believe there is some good reason.

Yeah, I like the SXT LTE as well. However, wAP LTE Kit looks like an equally good device at a comparable price. If I only get my hands on one, I may switch my favorite. My plan is to attach an external, directional antenna to it.

Petri

No. The auto frequency will determine the best frequency at startup and then stick to it. There is no negotiation or central intelligence. The problem is that after a power-out all the APs start at the same time and probably determine that channels 1 and 36 are vacant and choose identical channels. ...

Petri

I'm afraid we have a different definition for roaming. Roaming is when a client associates with another AP within the same ESSID. This association typically involves authentication and key exchange for encryption. With WPA2 PSK (a.k.a. WPA2 Personal) this is fast enough not to cause any service inte...

Petri

Caps man isn’t overkill at all for 2 AP’s, it’s the right way to do it. It actually makes roaming work correctly.

Could you please elaborate a little. How does CAPsMAN affect roaming?
(AFAIK it only centralizes management.)

Petri

CAPsMAN is good, but overkill if @lewekleonek is just adding another AP. To me, it sounded like he had only used QuickSet configurations. Learning the ropes of setting up the wireless, creating a bridge and adding the necessary ports to it is enough of a challenge already. CAPsMAN would add another ...

Petri

PtP Bridge AP is definitely a wrong QuickSet. It is meant for a central wireless hub. I'm not all familiar with the QuickSet modes. If you want to use one, use the Home Dual AP, but give it a different IP range to use for DHCP. Then you would have two subnets (e.g. 192.168.1.0/24 and 192.168.2.0/24)...

Petri

I was wrong and @pe1chl is right (he often is). My mind was preoccupied with masquerading. 1-to-1 NAT is just address rewriting, no bookkeeping.

Petri

I think the OP is asking for a log analyzer like Fail2Ban, SSHGuard or BlackListd for MikroTiks. No, you can't set it up on the router. If you really want, you can redirect the log to a Linux box and run the log analyzer there. Then you could define an action to add the offending IP to an address li...

Petri

The client devices are very simple minded. They scan for the SSID and choose an AP with the strongest signal at the time and try to associate. If they are rejected they try associating to the same AP again. They don't "learn" from rejections, because the assumption is that all BSSIDs for t...

Petri

If you want to, you can create a virtual WLAN interface in ap-bridge mode and add it to the same bridge. This will add AP functionality to the device, but will also incur a performance penalty to the whole wireless network.

Petri

Set up the hAP AC Lite as a station or station-bridge and add the wlan and ethernet interfaces to the same bridge. This will allow the PC to connect to the wireless network. See https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:W ... tion_Modes

Petri

The way NAT works is that the router keeps a database of open sessions. That's how it can route the return packets to correct destinations. Now the session is in IGW1 and when IGW2 receives a return packet it has no idea what to do with it. AFAIK there is no way to sync this information between the ...

Petri

I see you haven't got any replies yet. I was hoping someone else had some experience already.

I haven't got hold of a wAP yet, but I am looking forward to installing something like https://www.eurodk.com/en/products/lte- ... na-1800mhz to it.

Petri

If you are using wireless you should test the casing material. Put it in a microwave oven (with a cup of water) and turn on full power. If the plastic warms up (or melts) then it is absorbing microwave energy and not suitable for wireless enclosures.

Petri

@pawelek5 You posted this on the Wireless Networking forum. Do you mean "from the outside" in a wireless sense? You will probably get more help in the General forum if you have a general networking question not involving radios.

Petri

I've been trying to get hold of a wAP LTE Kit, but no luck yet. I believe it can do bridging, but I can't find a reference now. Here is the current list: https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:Peripherals#Cellular_modems Look for the Passthrough Support: Y SXT LTE is not going to be supported. I beli...

Petri

If you only had a second unit to test.

No, I haven't tried prying the thing open. It doesn't look like it was designed to be serviceable.

Petri

IIRC the top graph responds more to the alignment. Makes sense for the quality of the connection. It is easier if you have partner to turn the device while you keep an eye on the graph. The max value does help, though. You are running pretty old software. Is it intentional? If you do upgrade then up...

Petri

I have had very little trouble with the SXT LTEs. I have just used the web QuickSet to enter the PIN for the SIM and updated the firmware. They have worked as expected. I don't know why you are getting so low rates. The only advice I could give regarded the alignment procedure. Oh, one trick: There ...

Petri

I can't remember. I've set up just a couple of them. There are two graphs and if my memory serves the top one reacts to the alignment visibly. I have gotten 30Mbps up and 60Mbps down in urban areas, same as my phone. Those numbers don't depend on the signal level so I have assumed they are set by th...

Petri

The wire should come out of the bottom of the SXT LTE, but it shouldn't change the signal level. Are you using the same SIM card in your testing? At least here in Finland there are many subscription levels with different data rates. For alignment I have used the web based (http://192.168.88.1) Quick...

Petri

Either way, the net effect is the same.

I usually set the Frequency Mode to regulatory-domain, Tx Power Mode to default and then adjust the antenna gain. That will protect me from doing anything silly. Check the Status tab for actual power level.

Petri

[edit: I just noticed the dates: this is almost two years old thread] @rooneybuk Lower the transmit power on your APs. Client devices will decide when to roam. Most devices will just track RSSI and when it is strong enough they won't roam even if there is a better signal available. The RSSI doesn't ...

Petri

CAPsMAN uses DHCP option 138 for the IP address of the manager.

Petri

I think your problem is the APs 15m high. What kind of antennas are you using? You need directional antennas to aim the signal down between the aisles. My question is if I configure one wireless to receive from APs and the other on a PDA handheld connection eg via WDS. Will the high-performance wago...

Petri

@haik01 Yes, it depends on the environment. OP didn't give a hint about it. The floor plan looks like it could be a small hostel (no bathrooms). The hostel could be in the jungle, mountains or downtown Bogota. There might be neighbours or not. Your advise suits Netherlands or Finland, where a single...

Petri

@chechito If you want to get by with just one access point per floor, you need to locate it centrally. Just a bit north from the staircase in this case. (I assume its is a staircase at the middle of the bottom part of the floor map.) If you place the APs in the corner of the floor you are wasting 3/...

Petri

coverage at that power level you suggest is very poor @chechito I can see you have long experience with MT, but this answer puzzles me. Wi-Fi connection is bidirectional. With high power levels the AP can be received over a long distance, yes. However, there is no way for the low-powered client to ...

Petri

One example could be that you have a couple of SSIDs and you want to keep them on different VLANs. Local forwarding would require the access points to be connected to trunk/tagged switch ports. In many installations the access switches don't know about VLANs at all, so you'd have to reconfigure the ...

Petri

@alihaji No need to apologise. I just explained why you didn't get any replies. pe1chl is an old timer here and he has seen far more bad posts than me. English is not my native language either. Grammar and spelling errors are tolerated, but language is not an excuse for not providing enough detail t...

Petri

I don't have experience running a WISP, but I can help you write better questions. You didn't get any replies because your post was so vague. There is no way to answer it with the information you provided. You should start by clarifying at least following points, then perhaps someone with WISP exper...

Petri

I think the page is mostly correct. It needs only slight rephrasing. I believe the author meant that the -41dBm signal IS matched by the rule, but there is no rule to apply if the signal drops - assuming the default is to authenticate. In the second example there is a rule to NOT authenticate -120.....

Petri

Apparently I stand corrected. Live and learn :o The wiki page also contains this example stating clearly that the client will be disconnected: For example, if client's signal during connection is -41 and we have ACL rule /interface wireless access-list add authentication=yes forwarding=yes interface...

Petri

@Korg Are you aware that the configuration does not do what you asked in your first post (and title)? The access list only affects connecting clients. After the client is connected it won't be disconnected even if the signal drops below the threshold. If the client gets disconnected, he won't be all...

Petri

@Lansman You have just described Single Channel Architecture (SCA). It requires co-ordination between the access points, so it is not possible to set up with RouterOS. Some vendors do support it, Meru is the biggest proponent AFAIK. Ubiquiti calls it Zero Hand-Off (ZHO). It does have some advantages...

Petri

As an e-mail admin I would advise against allowing traffic outbound to port 25. Users should never connect to 25 but use 587 instead. If some guests have old or badly configured mail clients they can send their mails later from some other network. Do allow POP3 (110 and 995) and IMAP (143 and 993) t...

Petri

No, you won't be able to support 1000 users with 6 access points. There's no problem with a single SSID, but adding enough access points on 2.4 is going to be difficult because there are so few separate channels. Steps to improve your design: Change all the omni transmitters to multiple sectors. On ...

Petri

Not to my knowledge unless there is a hack. WPA2 Personal uses a shared secret and WPA2 Enterprise uses RADIUS for user authentication.
Why wouldn't you run UserManager?

Petri

Nope, you can't. Bridging LTE is an upcoming feature of 6.41 but SXT LTE is not going to be supported:
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=123936&p=618088&hi ... ge#p617931

Petri

To begin with, I second what pukkita wrote above. One bottleneck in your setup is the 16 Mbps uplink. A streaming guest can saturate it. (Unfortunately there is little we can do about it. I am aware of the costs of high speed data in most countries.) Assigning usernames and passwords to guests would...

Petri

Preauthentication has to do with roaming. When the client detects a new AP with the same SSID it will automatically authenticate with it just in case it will switch to using that AP. That makes the switch seamless, if it occurs. Of course this could lead to many unnecessary authentications as well, ...

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