I am trying to create a cloud capsman controller just to hand out settings to cap clients but I need somehow the caps to keep the settings until the next time that they will see the capsman controller on.
If the controller is off I want them to keep working with the latest settings. Of course that setup would use Local Forwarding!

I have tried the "create enabled" and the "static virtual" options that sounded somewhat related to what I am looking for but it didn't work. The moment it would loose connection to the capsman it would "disable" the cap interface.

Any ideas or workarounds to trick it?

I do understand that I could use scripting but that would be rather complex. "All" options are already there ... except this one, unless I haven't found it yet!

PS. Yes I have seen this feature in Ubnt's controller and I would like to use it in the MTs too!

Nope, one reason I dont use capsman, Also has something to do with my skill level, vlans and bridging are my limit.

check with NetWatch if the CAPsMAN are reachable,
if not, disable CAP inside the AP,
when CAPsMAN come back again, enable CAP on AP again.

Obviously before you enable the CAP on AP,
you must set correctly all parameters like CAPsMAN do not exist.

check with NetWatch if the CAPsMAN are reachable,
if not, disable CAP inside the AP,
when CAPsMAN come back again, enable CAP on AP again.

Obviously before you enable the CAP on AP,
you must set correctly all parameters like CAPsMAN do not exist.

I don't want to do that because I am having a certain issue with the non cap mode wifi. This is why in the first place I started looking after that solution
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=177459

Is like you are dying of thirst, they offer you some tea, but you refuse because sometimes you don't drink it...

And about the problem on other topic, for sure the problem is one of your setings.
Why write that? Because do not use CAPsMAN everywhere for HotSpot, and till now the problems reported are others.

Is like you are dying of thirst, they offer you some tea, but you refuse because sometimes you don't drink it...

And about the problem on other topic, for sure the problem is one of your setings.
Why write that? Because do not use CAPsMAN everywhere for HotSpot, and till now the problems reported are others.

I must say I didn't fully understand your sayings.

I have more than 4-500 sites and I want to somehow automate settings provisioning for the wifi settings, and capsman settings are 90+% there to support it, for my case of course.

If it was for a couple of setups I wouldn't be looking for a provisioning of some settings options. I would just modify them myself manually.

Personally after 2000+ mikrotik setups I do believe that I somewhat can prepare the basics for an access point. As I said in the other forum I have reset all settings and just added password and ssid and I am having this issue... whereas same devices (AP and androids) work fine on capsman. Of course that is from the other topic but I am explaining how it came up and I started looking for such a "provisioning" solution.

And of course I do like tea. I don't understand why you were upset when I explained why this solution wouldn't work for me!

Guys don't bother all teas(ideas) are welcome and open for discussion, looking after for the "best" solution for this project!

But if you can't reach CAPsMAN, don't you also lose connection to the gateway / internet? If so, how useful is to keep settings?

But if you can't reach CAPsMAN, don't you also lose connection to the gateway / internet? If so, how useful is to keep settings?

Hey Normis, long time no see without MUMs...!!! I hope that they will start this winter to meet again!

I would like to change to all sites from non capsman mode to capsman mode and provision the settings from the cloud controller.
I tried it already and it looks cool... I just added the public ip address of my cloud mikrotik where the capsman is running (to test).
The moment for any reason (like a dsl connection is down) there is no access to capsman I want the CAPs to keep working (OFCOURSE in local forwarding mode).
It is an environment for Restaurant POS systems where the android clients communicate to the server that is running in the same network. So I wouldn't mind loosing the access to the internet.
Waiters would still send orders and printers would still print them... the moment the internet connection would be up and running the caps could get possible change of settings from the capsman.

We have our own POS system in Greece and have several hundrends of restaurants running on mikrotik equipment (of course). I did came up several times to the UBNT APs and controllers because customers didn't want to spent money to change their equipment and it is then that I realized that it would be handy to keep the settings even if the caps would reboot and wouldn't have access to the controller! And now that I had a problem with non-capsman mode and a couple of certain brands of android that we use for POS for the waiters I started looking for that approach. To tell you the truth I thought that it was already supported but I just HAD to try it now and found out that it didn't.

PS. Sorry for using bad words like UBNT... I am allergic to them too!

This is very interesting, so huge volume, and capsman works from a cloud controller setup.
So instead of your router at home controlling all the APS in the house, you have a CHR or some model in a server farm some where that can dictates capsmans to all the ground units??
Further you want some assurances taht when your cloud controller loses contact with the ground units that the capsman settings on the ground units keep running in the background???
I clearly dont have a grasp of what you are doing or want to do, but it sounds like fun (not having a penny invested).

I don't think this is how capsman was designed to operate. You can have a cloud controller, but if you don't want to lose your APs, then just add a local capsman server that is enabled/disabled with netwatch. If it can't ping the cloud capsman server, it would enable the local capsman server and if it can ping it, then it would disable the local capsman server. This would fail the APs to the cloud server as a priority when it is available.

Depending on your config, you would need to list both capsman servers on the caps(if the local capsman server is not l2 accessible).

You would also need a way to sync changes from cloud to the local system, unless you want a bare-bones local capsman that will just keep things running.

It's incredible... I use two CCR every 250 user for redundancy, and I read about one RouterBOARD to rule them all...

It's incredible... I use two CCR every 250 user for redundancy, and I read about one RouterBOARD to rule them all...

Let me give my opinion, but a one-size-fits-all CAPsMAN server is great bullshit...

You are probably not using local forwarding then which has a huge positive impact on speed

(I didn't even think about remote forwarding [the true name], are you kidding?)

It's not about speed, it's about if for some reason the board go offline, all-at-the-time go offline...

Sorry,
however the network is yours, the business is yours ...

I prefer to apply another model, where by investing in backup, I earn/keep my customers.

But if you can't reach CAPsMAN, don't you also lose connection to the gateway / internet? If so, how useful is to keep settings?

@Normis please consider to ask to the staff, if is possible, to cache capsman settings for given amount of time...
The customers is online, all works, but REMOTE connection go down, not the local...
This prevent disasters...

This is very interesting, so huge volume, and capsman works from a cloud controller setup.
So instead of your router at home controlling all the APS in the house, you have a CHR or some model in a server farm some where that can dictates capsmans to all the ground units??
Further you want some assurances taht when your cloud controller loses contact with the ground units that the capsman settings on the ground units keep running in the background???
I clearly dont have a grasp of what you are doing or want to do, but it sounds like fun (not having a penny invested).

I want for example to have for example siteName-5g-5220 and get the configuration that maches and create a static interface that will also stay persistent on cap. We have many resellers that are trying to suggest them the use of mikrotiks along with our software but we can't make them all mikrotik experts. We want to make it as easy as possible to them in order to concentrate on the software options rather on advanced network setups. They are people located far away from our branches in islands and in hundreds kms away. We can't send everyone to become mikrotik experts but we can make them mikrotik advanced "users" and resellers. The more tools we provide to them the easier they will use our suggested hardware (which is Mikrotiks). We are expanding our network everyday and we are trying to automate as much some processes. We are not a mikrotik academy to invite all possible resellers to get mikrotik certificates. But we are definitely one of the best mikrotik promoters. We love Mikrotiks because it is open to such difficult projects and because everything is at least open for discussion. We could always say our software work with any network brand (since it can also work offline while a waiter has no signal) but we suggest our network to use Mikrotiks because we love their software too! Any new "feature" or option could improve both us and them. It is a win win case. This is why we use them, because we see progress based on the feedback they get!

But if you can't reach CAPsMAN, don't you also lose connection to the gateway / internet? If so, how useful is to keep settings?

@Normis please consider to ask to the staff, if is possible, to cache capsman settings for given amount of time...
The customers is online, all works, but REMOTE connection go down, not the local...
This prevent disasters...

Indeed that would be great... so we could set it to something like 1 year... and what would be super(and needed for me) to be able to persist this caching also after a reboot

We have this already in our "feature wishlist" for future. Just wanted to hear your ideas how to implement it.

...how to implement it...

It can be implemented with what we already have, without revolutionizing everything ...

Now CAPsMAN pass all parameters to wlan.
Simply the wlan save that parameters on "standard way", like is configured on terminal or winbox,
and with one option "activate wlan on CAPsMAN lost" on CAP setings,
when the connection with the CAPsMAN are lost, simply wlan go back to work stadalone, like the CAPsMAN is not used,
and when CAPsMAN is available again, bring back the wlan to work with CAPsMAN.

We have this already in our "feature wishlist" for future. Just wanted to hear your ideas how to implement it.

1) Well you have a polling timer at the moment at around 5-10", so to start with you could make that time range dynamic so we could set it to 1 year for example
2) You need to keep the settings(filtering the local forwarding ones) that are pulled locally to the cap so in case of reboot they are restored and of course a button to refresh them now and/or clear them.
3 but quite more difficult) For my case it would be awesome if I could have somehow dynamic ssid and wpa password so with 10-20 presets I could easily provision the band/channel which is possible already with the Regexp. For the band and channel I can have a regexp that would be the correct configuration. So 1 parameter is the band (2 or 5) and then the channel (2412,2437,2462,5180,5200,5220,auto).. that would need 14 different configurations/provisioning settings). So if in that regexp I could pass somehow also the ssid and the wpa key I wouldn't need to duplicate configurations and provisioning settings. Of course in the case where there is only a master configuration that is more simple but when/if someone would need master and slave it would be rather more difficult... or it would need a delimeter for each ssid and wpa key

"feature wishlist" for future.

While we are discussing CAPSMAN and a "feature wishlist" for future, could you also consider getting Hotspot 2.0 (Passpoint Wi-Fi Alliance) to work with/under CAPSMAN (ref. viewtopic.php?t=105412#p524870).
For us public Hotspot providers it would be really great to have Hotspot 2.0 on our CAPSMAN-controlled APs. Currently we have to forgo Hotspot 2.0 features if we use CAPSMAN.

1) Well you have a polling timer at the moment at around 5-10", so to start with you could make that time range dynamic so we could set it to 1 year for example
2) You need to keep the settings(filtering the local forwarding ones) that are pulled locally to the cap so in case of reboot they are restored and of course a button to refresh them now and/or clear them.
3) (offtopic suggestion)

No need for 1 and 2. Just keep the running configuration in memory - no need to store to disk.
The problem is temporary connection loss between cap and manager which could be easily be fixed by:
- keep running configuration on connection loss
- suppress re-provisioning after (temporary) connection loss

You are asking for a time range set to one year and persistent storage - so basically a complete rewrite of the capsman design into a provisioning model.
I personally like the current setup - caps initialisation is quick and modifications on the controller are applied immediately.

We have this already in our "feature wishlist" for future. Just wanted to hear your ideas how to implement it.

Has this feuture been implemented? It has been several year since this post.
Can I set up my CAPs, so that they would continue to operate without Capsman?
I don't see why CAPs need to stop working without Capsman controller, especially considering that in my case traffic is processed on the CAPs.