I am not sure if this has been discussed in here before, I was unable to find anything matching what I intend to do.

Anyone familiar with Cisco Aironet or some other big Wireless vendors will know they have software and hardware to monitor beacons from any wireless device nearby a Wireless AP while still being able to accept clients and function as an Access Point.

Mikrotik does this natively by putting a wireless interface into Sniffer mode which I assume changes the interface to promiscuous/Monitor mode. The problem with this is it then no longer broadcasts and accepts clients in traditional AP/Master mode.

So this is where as far as I can tell unless I am missing something multiple radios are required. I believe cisco get around this with add-on WSSI Module which most likely adds another radio (or two if its dual band)

I want to try replicate this with Mikrotik but so far it seems too expensive to use a single routerboard with 4 wireless interfaces (2x 2.4 and 2x 5ghz)
Using 2 routerboards might be cheaper but then I would have to find another enclosure or just install two enclosures together.

Has anyone done this? Is there an easier /cheaper way?

Hi,

I am looking in to this to. But Cisco Meraki (which i have used) have seperate dedicated security radio which I think is called air marshal. I am looking at adding a radio to mikrotik to do this (cost permitting). First of all I will be looking at how meraki do it as one air marshal radio for dual band AP doesn`t seem enough to me?

Also are they truely enough benefits or is it more of a nice thing to have?

As per your question can you do it with the dual bands already? Perhaps for some of the features? The radio will need to capture and process everything (as it does?) and then not drop frames not inteded for it - different mac. These can then be processed accordingly. This sounds like a type of promiscuos mode / AP mode. Theres also the interference side which likely need an additional radio.

If meraki need another radio then its probably the only way?

Anyway an interesting project.

Regards

Aidan Venn

Thanks for the reply

You confirmed my findings, that I need a dedicated radio for monitoring.

Now that I have come to terms with this I have a few ideas on how to achieve it.

BYO using routerboards seems entirely possible but not cost effective.