Dear Mikrotikers,

Due to limitations in the house where I live I can't use cabling and therefore I'm forced to go with the Repeater Mode to extend the WiFi Coverage in the house.

My current setup is:

Living room. HAP AC2 acts as the router and the gateway to the world. 5G/2G on the same SSID.
Room 1: HAP AC2 acts solely as repeater on both 5G/2G on the same SSID, has no IP address etc...
Room2: HAP Lite acts solely as repeater on 2G on the same SSID, has no IP address etc...
Room3: where my MBP is located

The problem is that my client (Macbook Pro) in Room3 connects to Room1 instead of connecting to Living Room where the Living Room has equal or similar signal strength comparing to Room1 relatively to my MBP. This wouldn't be problem at all, but the MBP somehow gets packet losses when I'm in Room3 while connected to Room2 (maybe it's switching between two AP's ) don't know. When I'm in another Room where the signal strength is very poor from the Living Room but good from Room2 , I don't face this issue anymore.

Do you have some smart solution in mind ? I was thinking of setting up some rule Romaing Access Rules based on signal strength but I'm afraid when I hard set these the Repeaters themself get disconnected.

Thanks for suggestions and descriptive answers!

Restricting registration according to signal strength as you suggest is certainly the best solution. Especially considering apple devices are notorious for hanging on until connection is lost almost completely.

Are you worried about the wireless connection between the main router and extenders dropping because of the signal rules? If so, simply specify the interface to ensure the rules don't apply to the interface you don't want to be impacted.

Or if the group of devices you want the rules to apply to is not very big - bind the rules directly to the device MACs.

Yeah I see, but I still don't understand why it's dropping packets when I'm in overlap with two routers ? Perhaps because they are broadcasting on the same channel ? Is it possible to have repeater re-broadcast on different channel ?

Why don't you use Powerline Ethernet adapters instead of Repeater?

Try WDS, It's working for me.
I got WDS between 2 HAP AC2 on 5GHz.

Yeah I see, but I still don't understand why it's dropping packets when I'm in overlap with two routers ? Perhaps because they are broadcasting on the same channel ? Is it possible to have repeater re-broadcast on different channel ?

Oh yes you can. Study the repeater setup. It's basically very simple. Your WLAN is set to "station bridge" to connect to the main router. Then you make an "Ap bridge" on a virtual WLAN on that same interface as master. The "station bridge" will determine the interface settings (channel and bandwidth) for the "ap bridge" virtual interface. Both WLAN interfaces are "bridged" together. To make it a transparant repeater all SSID's and security are the same. Unfortunately so are the wifi channels used. If the main router is a foreign brand, the mode "station pseudo bridge" must be used (with lots of limitations).

Mikrotik RouterOS gives all the options to put that "AP bridge" on whatever other WLAN interface , with whatever other setting. It's still the same SSID and security. But different radio, band and channel. The station WLAN and the AP WLAN are still connected via a bridge. Throughput doubles as every radio is only used once.

Your current packet dropping can be caused by the "hidden node" problem, so common with "same channel" repeater deployments and far away nodes.. Using RTS/CTS can help in that case.

Why don't you use Powerline Ethernet adapters instead of Repeater?

I've seen a PWR-Line option in the interface for the mAPs - can anyone confirm that these can be used as an ethernet handoff to an access point using the powerline to connect back?

Crazy how many features those little devices have for the form factor and the price.

EDIT: I've just had a look here: https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:I ... e/PWR_Line and under the "Supported Hardware" section there is quite a few devices. Your hardware may already be able to do this and you can cut out the wireless repeating completely if everything is on the same circuit.

I think the mAP must be from some recent date of manufacturing. But we are using it at several locations with a hAP Lite using the PWR-Line power adaptor. Distribution is to PWR-Line AP or PWR-Line + hAP Lite (when you need the ethernet interfaces).

@bpwl pardon my ignorance but I can't see the option to change the channel for the Virtual WLAN in Winbox. Am I missing something ?

No you can't change the channel on a virtual WLAN. It is defined by the master WLAN.
To have an "other channel" repeater, you need a device that has 2 radio's, so it has 2 master WLAN interfaces.
hAP Lite (2.4 GHz only) will not do it. hAP ac Lite (2.4 and 5 GHz) can do it. All AP's that have 2.4 and 5 GHz can do it.
Splitting chains on one radio is an intuitive next attempt, but cannot be done.

Audience has even 3 radio's, but is rather expensive.

Other way of doing it is combining 2 AP's, and connecting them together via ethernet. This has the advantage that both AP's can be optimally chosen and placed for their function.
Backhaul wifi and client wifi have quite different requirements.