Hi All,

Just received my Mikrotik hAP ax3 as a replacement for my hAP ac2 and found that it is running RouterOS 7.8 and WifiWave2 with new CAPsMAN which does not support legacy CAPsMAN. But I have a few MikroTiks cAP ac that are running on RouterOS 6.49.7 and they are managed by CAPsMAN (hAP ac2 as mentioned above).
Is there any chance to replace my hAP ac2 with ax3 and continue to use CAPsMAN? Should I upgrade my cAPs to 7.8 test version to use WifiWave2?

Is there any other way how can I use my caps with ax3 like mesh or something like that?

Thanks.

I have similar issue, is it yet possible to run wifiwave2 radio with the legacy driver so it can be managed by capsman driving two cAP acs?

No, it's not possible. Both CAPsMAN versions are not compatible, each can provision it's own subset of devices. And unfortunately you can't run wifiwave2 driver on your cAP ac devices because they have too small flash space.

That is a shame, I would love wifiwave2 devices to be backwards compatible with CAPsMAN, so my hex could manage all 3 APs. BTW. why the heck the flash is so tiny in the older devices!? they have almost 20 times more RAM In that case, is it possible to run wifi on the hAP with the same SSIDs as CAPsMAN with no issues - roaming speaking?

It is possible to run WiFi network with all APs configured manually ... the most annoying thing about this is to keep security settings (more or less) synchronized ... i.e. same SSID and same PSK.

Keep in mind that CAPsMAN traditionally only provisioned CAPs' radio interfaces (and in case of CAPsMAN forwarding did the data shuffling), but it didn't do anything about station roaming (between controlled APs). This changed with wifiwave2 driver (and capsman2), but AFAIK the roaming features are actually handled by (C)APs themselves and these functions don't rely on availability of CAPsMAN.

mkx,

of course you could manage each radio manually. Why in the world you would be WILLING to do that I can't figure out.

Well, capsman can be a PITA to configure and then depends on number of APs in the network. I wouldn't do it one by one if there were more than a few to do. OTOH I was replying to the last sentence (question) in post preceeding mine ... where poster realized that using capsman won't solve his problems easily and was looking for alternatives. And a strong point of my post is that not using capsman doesn't hurt roaming (because it sucks also with capsman).

You could keep it simple by sticking with "Mikrotik client serving WiFi sucks."

CAP AX looks interesting... But I can't let go of THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS LOST on their last iteration of wifi.

I had to spend a whole year with another manufacture... But I have WiFi6 and even 6E. I have a MUCH SLOWER testing series after the "rectal beating" I took from using Mikrotik Wifi.

No matter how much I bash Mikrotik in the wireless space... They really taught me a lot by screwing us over so badly.

You could keep it simple by sticking with "Mikrotik client serving WiFi sucks."

Well, you're in different boat than I am. "rectal beating" hurts your wallet while it doesn't hurt mine ... and with a bit of "rectal beating" I can even save some dime while the performance difference doesn't matter to my better half as I never spoiled her with some "supersonic" wireless (I'm persistent at telling her that wires are only thing supporting good performance, if she wants commodity of not using wires then she has to live with not so great service ... which, BTW, is still better than she requires. Plus, an RJ45 socket is never more than 2m/6ft away in my house). And, BTW, I'm lucky to live in rural area where RF spectrum is far from congested; 5GHz part is completely empty (apart from my APs), 2.4GHz shows signs of around 6 APs, of those 3 are mine and the rest are below -85dBm. So MT wireless is doing quite fine for me, specially considering the price tag it comes with.

Actually CAP ax not worth it price at least untill mk team not fix all bugs with new CapsMan and Apple devices. One week of experience with CAP AX. Random client drops. Bugs with Apple devices. Wrong password errors…. Hell) Finally moved back to CAP ac. and LTE at home. Installed AX in a test environment bcos they are not usable in real environments.

My former "tormentor" (Boss of 30 years) retired 2 years ago.

When he left town he had been dealing with Mikrotik cap ACs in his home for years. It was "good enough" for being free. See we had to buy them back from a pissed client. He never had more than 25 wifi devices across his home.

When moved to his new home... And out of this industry... He went Orbi. Once he passed about 40 devices... The problems started. When he reached 65 IoT devices on the network when no one is home... The dropouts and failed calling finally got to him.

Last week, he used my employee discount to order 3 XV2-21x. He read me the serial numbers and I built him a config. Devices all checked in and pulled the config. 74 devices connected to 1 WAP. And his phone could not only carry a phone call, he got 550M on speed tests. And his stupid light switches all work again.

If it was not working... I would be hearing about it.

Right before he bought the other stuff... He joked "did Mikrotik ever get ACv2 working?"
I told him they have AX units and now use manufacture drivers. You wanna order some and put them up?
"F--k You and F--k NO!"

Jeezus, I looked at the XE3-4, price tag blew my socks off.
The XV2-21X is better but why is the XV2-2 almost double the price???

I do note that for less the cost of wifi6 only xv2-21X I can get the zyxel wax620D-6E
and for about the same price the triband version wax640D-6E.

May order the 620 to see how it fares......

ANAV,

The XV2-2 was $400 when it was first released. It was also designed and built as a Xirrus piece before the shut down. Price increases along the way really moved the price up. It took a long time to shake out all its "issues". But when I present them a problem. They ask me to reproduce it. Watch it live with me. Then actually go back and fix it. Rather than ignore me for months and years...

The XV2-21x was designed and built by Cambium... A LOT LATER. Its much smaller.

XE3-4. That software definable 4x4 is pretty Unique. So for now it operates as 2.4 2x2, 5.0 2x2 and 5.0 4x4. With a click on the configuration page... the 4x4 moves to 6Ghz.

Was with Ruckus for years... got burned bad by Tik Radios... Crawled back to Ruckus. A issue with 2.4 devices got me to take a more serious look at Cambium. When I talked to them about what I liked about Tik and Ruckus... "We can probably build that..."