MikroTik

So I have read through every thread on these things. Seems like they had software problems that maybe are resolved? One review said they had better noise floors than the UniFi equivalents. I’ve read the cap is amazing, has a bad antenna design, is slow, is fast and everything in between.

So - pretty thin on real info.

I want to buy maybe three to five APs to blanket my house. Ceiling mounted which speaks to going with the Cap AC.

How would a cap compare to a UAP-AC-nanoHD or Pro? Are the software issues resolved for speed. Is there handoff? Assume price between them is immaterial - which way should I go?

The cAP ac and hAP ac2 are beasts from a processing perspective, but their RF performance leaves a LOT to be desired.

With a cAP ac in a 3 bedroom townhouse with wooden walls, I can barely use 5Ghz in the room next to the cAP ac

The cAP ac and hAP ac2 are beasts from a processing perspective, but their RF performance leaves a LOT to be desired.

With a cAP ac in a 3 bedroom townhouse with wooden walls, I can barely use 5Ghz in the room next to the cAP ac

i have tested wAP AC (3dbm less tx power x chain than cAP ac in 5ghz radio) and the coverage on 5ghz is as you say very limited

i was expecting cAP ac to be noticeably better than wAP ac, but your experience worries me

i was expecting cAP ac to be better than hAP ac2 because uses independent antenna for 2ghz and 5ghz (hAP ac2 uses combined antenna) too

Looking unifi datasheets i see similar tx power on 5ghz radios, i have not tested 5ghz models of unifi to compare coverage, your experience leaves me thinking...

MikroTik for routing.
Ubiquiti Unifi for wireless access.

I have a single UAP-AC-LR covering a 1930's 4 bed semi from the attic and I get amazing signal and speeds everywhere.

I must agree with Steve. I have 1 hap ac as Master and 4 ha ac lite to cover my house. Uap ac lr beats all the lites hands down.

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I must agree with Steve. I have 1 hap ac as Master and 4 ha ac lite to cover my house. Uap ac lr beats all the lites hands down.

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what a shame on mikrotik

Completely agree with Steve. There are far better (non-point to point) wireless options than Mikrotik.

Is this still true, is the UAP-AC-LR preferred over the Cap AC?

I'm trying to find a setup for my house, the main router will either be the HAP AC or HAP AC2 and I thought about the CAP AC for
wireless - I'm unsure though reading these threads...

Any more suggestions?

Yes it is true, Mikrotik is far away from good speeds on there Wireless Systems @2,4Ghz and 5 GHz, they need to think about that, but they don’t care...

Is this still true, is the UAP-AC-LR preferred over the Cap AC? Any more suggestions?

Understand what is being said here about MikroTik wireless. Slower 54Mbps connection rate is not a problem for home users surfing the internet on their mobile phones and tablets. The issue is when you have a laptop and you're trying to transfer files to/from a server or other big data transfer situations. Then WiFi speed becomes something noticeable.

Is this still true, is the UAP-AC-LR preferred over the Cap AC? Any more suggestions?

Understand what is being said here about MikroTik wireless. Slower 54Mbps connection rate is not a problem for home users surfing the internet on their mobile phones and tablets. The issue is when you have a laptop and you're trying to transfer files to/from a server or other big data transfer situations. Then WiFi speed becomes something noticeable.

Yes I understand that of course - but my question is if there are still the above-mentioned differences between the UAP-AC-LR and Cap AC so that the Ubiquiti is still the preferred product to chose as the price is not really a big difference.

Mikrotik for routing.
Ubnt for PtP links.
Ruckus for Wireless Access Points.

In wireless.. I can do a ton of stuff with Mikrotik wireless that I can't with Ubnt. But in straight throughput... The Ubnt is going to beat the Mikrotik and Ruckus is going to clobber both of them by a considerable margin. The Ruckus can also do it with more clients on each radio than either Mikrotik or Ubnt.

Wish it wasn't the case... but even the new ACv2 chips from Mikrotik, they just don't come close.

I don't have experience with UBNT AP because the requirement of deploying UniFi controller on top of the APs doesn't fit with my purposes (home only as my business locations are Cisco centric).
Nothing wrong with UniFi and I know it could be possible to do a "set and forget" setup but I like to keep my systems monitored so once again "set and forget" approach doesn't fit my purposes.

Said this.
As we speak, I have an cAP ac covering an entire flat that is approximatively 65m3 with medium density brick walls (10cm depth)

The AP is setup to provide 2 SSID under 2.4GHz (using VLAN and separate bridge) and 1 SSID under 5GHz, path is cAP AC ==> CSS106 ==> hEX S ==> Internet, in average 10 devices connected to this AP.

This is the heatmap I get.
2g https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FEAxmq ... sp=sharing
5g https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HRmJN2 ... sp=sharing

Speedtest towards internet hits 67/68Mbps down and 19Mbps up (in theory a 100/20 vdsl FTTC, but modem is attesting at 68/20Mbps because the cabinet is 300m from my home)

Iperf3 tests using 2.4GHz link is test 130Mbps ing avg in both direction
Using 5G iperf is exchanging data at 260Mbps in avg in both direction.

As I said, I don't have the experience to day if the UBNT AC lite can do better, perhaps yes, but I don't feel the cAP ac is that terrible.


Regards
Dario

Dario.

When you configure a hAP AC2, cAP AC, and Rucks R510 exactly the same and swap them into the same spot one after the next... You would get it.

The cAP AC and hAP AC2 top out right around 300 at point blank range. But the R510 will actually hit the 866M you should get from a 2x2 AC-MU radio.

The Ruckus seem even more expensive.. I'm not sure if this isn't way overkill for my home (concrete house).

I'm just trying to figure out whether I should get the Hap Ac or Ac2 and which Wireless AP (4 of them)... this is getting really difficult it seems

this is getting really difficult it seems

Performance, features, price ... pick any two.

I'm aware of that, that's why I asked for suggestions

How about Capsman, wouldn't that be a benefit to go with Mikrotik?

All in all, what would you suggest for a small setup (house with 3 floors, concrete) to go with the Hap AC2?
Shouldn't be too expensive I think that's not needed in my scenario.

Hate to say it but the Unifi's esp the LR Model is just a whole lot better especially now that they've designed a proper Cloud Key.

The Ruckus seem even more expensive.. I'm not sure if this isn't way overkill for my home (concrete house).

I'm just trying to figure out whether I should get the Hap Ac or Ac2 and which Wireless AP (4 of them)... this is getting really difficult it seems

Ruckus is more expensive that Mikrotik. And i will use Mikrotik and caps-man right up until people have WAN speeds higher than about 200M or a WHOLE LOT of client devices at a time.

When it comes to routing... I never feel like I am "settling for poor performance" when i use Mikrotik. But in wireless... Its glaringly obvious.

The cAP AC and hAP AC2 top out right around 300 at point blank range. But the R510 will actually hit the 866M you should get from a 2x2 AC-MU radio.

True, but this is coming at four times the price of a cAP AC/Unifi AC Lite making the comparison unrealistic.

Like said by someone else, it is all about the requirements, and have it clear is the first thing to do when designing systems.
But really, 300Mbps means copy 1GB file in ~30 seconds that for many home solutions, where generally speaking frequent copies of large files within the LAN is not the main task, I think this is more than acceptable considering the original investment in the range of 60/70€ and choosing more expensive equipments could be overkill...there could be cases where having 800Mbs make sense, but if the speed and frequent file copies are so critical I would consider an ethernet cable to achieve also the goal of a better reliability.

At least valid for my country where having a 100Mbit WAN link is still something many people dream at night...

I don't have experience with UBNT AP because the requirement of deploying UniFi controller on top of the APs doesn't fit with my purposes (home only as my business locations are Cisco centric).
Nothing wrong with UniFi and I know it could be possible to do a "set and forget" setup but I like to keep my systems monitored so once again "set and forget" approach doesn't fit my purposes.
.......
Regards
Dario

The cloud key $80 in the US. Drop it on the install and register it to your account with ubnt and you can remotely management from anywhere with an internet connection and webbrowser. It makes a connection to ubnt.com and you log into unifi.ubnt.com and it gets you back to the key.

I have issues with the performance of the UBTN Access Points... they lack features and configurations that I use in my installs. Hence why I used Ruckus on EVERY COMMERCIAL network I have done for years.

Only recently have I tried 1 site with caps-man as my test bench.
The things that stand out are:
1. Lower throughput numbers at the clients.
2. It seems that the 2.4 radios STOP ACCEPTING CLIENTS. (I will log in during a busy time of day and see NOTHING on the 2.4 caps.)

We have several installs where we told the Point of Sales Company... "Just take out the Meraki stuff... give me the SSID info and password you want and I will add it to our system." This resulted in the bars not needing to cycle the "point of sales network" every couple of days. After several successful deployments like this... this is now how we start out. "Yeah breadcrumb... just tell me the wireless info you want the iPads to use... we will take care of it."

As we had been designing networks for years that handled hundreds of connections at time... it was pretty easy to onboard the Point of Sales devices into our existing installs. But I have a lot more experience and success, with Ruckus Wireless than I do with Mikrotik wireless.

As mentioned I'm looking for a private setup, nothing professional, just my home.

I have two capAC2s powered by hex and lately rb450gx4. Three story home.
Quite happy with the performance of the capAC inside the home but range in 5Ghz is markedly and expectedly less than 2.4ghz.
The main use for wifi is smart phones and thus the RUCKUS approach per cost is not justified.
I use 2ghz mainly for smart devices (on vlans) and the 5ghz for house wifi and vwlan for guest wifi (also on vlan)
If my house was not wired for ethernet,....... well that would be a different story.

Quite happy with the performance of the capAC inside the home but range in 5Ghz is markedly and expectedly less than 2.4ghz.

That's pretty typical of 5GHZ. It is faster, but doesn't go through much, or very far.

The cAP AC and hAP AC2 top out right around 300 at point blank range. But the R510 will actually hit the 866M you should get from a 2x2 AC-MU radio.

True, but this is coming at four times the price of a cAP AC/Unifi AC Lite making the comparison unrealistic.

Like said by someone else, it is all about the requirements, and have it clear is the first thing to do when designing systems.
But really, 300Mbps means copy 1GB file in ~30 seconds that for many home solutions, where generally speaking frequent copies of large files within the LAN is not the main task, I think this is more than acceptable considering the original investment in the range of 60/70€ and choosing more expensive equipments could be overkill...there could be cases where having 800Mbs make sense, but if the speed and frequent file copies are so critical I would consider an ethernet cable to achieve also the goal of a better reliability.

At least valid for my country where having a 100Mbit WAN link is still something many people dream at night...

Such hypocrisy...
When I remove SonicWall, Meraki, Cisco routers costing around $600 each. Then replace them with a hEX and get better performance... "That's awesome!"

When a $70 Mikrotik WAP gets clobbered in a head to head with a $300 Ruckus... "That's not fair."

Have no time to test throughput with iperf, so only speedtest.net results:
1. With CAP AC I can get 230/230 mbit/s. Distance between AP and my laptop (2x2:2 radio) = 6 meters, channel width 40MHz.
2. With UAP-AC-PRO I get 200/200 mbit/s with same laptop and 260/330 mbit/s down/up with 3x3:3 macbook pro.
But take a look at their price - 70$ vs 140$

Guys what can you say about roaming capability? Is this implemented in unifi is far better than mikrotik ones? Im consider which implement in my house.

Guys what can you say about roaming capability? Is this implemented in unifi is far better than mikrotik ones? Im consider which implement in my house.

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Caps-Man can be MUCH MORE GRANULAR.

for roaming just go with ubiquity.

roaming as 802.11 k/r/v not supported in capsman. Roaming similar as you would just connect 2 routers with similar ssid from diverent vendors to the same layer 2 network, as far as I testet caspman with my two mikrotiks.

ah, and genius here always tell that roaming is a client decision. but yes, this decision in modern devices is based on the information given by the infastructure (beacone rates, frame rates announced in beacons per device, k/r/v and so on.

i use aruba instant, and mikrotik just for the routing part. I just deactivated the wifi stuff; runs perfectly, with my needed support vor k/r/v, airtime fairness, band steering, roaming, voice priority, and overall performance compared to my mikrotik wifi solution.

mikrotik go for routing stuff.
just my two cent. would never like to miss my mikrotiks

For roaming just go with ubiquity.

I agree with your post, however, you are coming at this from a commercial perspective. The OP is asking about his home. So, why not just recommend Rukus for everything? I mean, if we're going to go down that road.

I'm actually very happy with the hAP ac2.

My home is of wood construction, is single story, and about 185 m^2. We have a couple of tablets, a couple of smartphones, a couple of laptops, and an Amazon Fire stick on the TV. We occasionally have house guests that add another 1 or 2 phones and perhaps a laptop. The population density here is about 270/km^2 so it's definitely not an urban area.

It would be easier if it had band steering so I could have just one SSID, but it's been working as it is.

Perhaps if my wireless needs were less modest I would look into some other product, but the ac2 has good hardware as a router and RouterOS is really capable. The hAP ac2 was also very inexpensive - it cost less than many other consumer-grade wireless routers.

I'm actually very happy with the hAP ac2.

My home is of wood construction, is single story, and about 185 m^2. We have a couple of tablets, a couple of smartphones, a couple of laptops, and an Amazon Fire stick on the TV. We occasionally have house guests that add another 1 or 2 phones and perhaps a laptop. The population density here is about 270/km^2 so it's definitely not an urban area.

It would be easier if it had band steering so I could have just one SSID, but it's been working as it is.

Perhaps if my wireless needs were less modest I would look into some other product, but the ac2 has good hardware as a router and RouterOS is really capable. The hAP ac2 was also very inexpensive - it cost less than many other consumer-grade wireless routers.

Toggle your 2.4 once an hour and that would force anything that could... move to 5.8.

And you can write access control rules to filter by MAC to what band they can attach.

Turn down the antenna gain on the 2.4

etc
etc

As a rule you should always consider using 5GHz access points per void - be it a room in a house, classroom or office. Try and make sure as much as possible that there is a direct line of sight from the AP to the device (so get the AP up as high as you can), don't rely on reflections or penetration or diffraction to get you by. Don't get upset if the performance through walls signal strength-wise isn't as good as 2.4GHz. It's not unusual to stand in a doorway of a room with 5GHz, and then walk away from the door and see the signal level drop very quickly.

In places like the USA and Australia where a lot of plasterboard/drywall or wood is used for internal wall cladding and wooden framing and flooring you will generally have good luck with 5GHz getting through at least one wall. Even then bathrooms and other rooms might have cement sheeting on the walls, steel framing, brick fireplaces and chimneys or metal-foil damp proofing in the walls which all have a detrimental effect on the signal. Metal coated glass can be a problem too.

In places like Europe where the internal walls are brick filled and floors are concrete slabs and have a lot of concrete in the super structure your luck will run out very quickly with any kind of Wifi once you leave the void with the AP in it.

Because of this I always as a rule allocate a 5GHz AP per void and generally have good performance with that - on some sites I have been surprised with how well 2.4GHz and 5GHz work where I didn't expect them to - so can't always predict it BUT you should always plan for the worst case. Mikrotik devices are so cheap and CAPSMAN is so good I have always had satisfactory performance with throwing in as many devices onto a site as possible.

I am mostly a happy mikrotik hap ac2 user.
It was a lot of learning and watching tutorials before I managed to manually configure this device to do. Vlans for trusted-with internet access and non trusted devices with internal wireless but no internet access, also intervlan traffic.
VPN no issues
My home is European style. (With bricks) 4 bedrooms and I get a good coverage to the house no problem. Jargons and artificial throughput aside. In happy with the speeds.

My only issue is that my outdoor cam is WiFi 5mp device. It drops network very often.
So I'm only assuming that a dedicated access point would be sensible.

Unfortunately, can't drill and pass wires for now.

It'd be interesting to see what you came up with. Cap ac Vs unifi ap AC lr
Cheers

I bought the Hap AC2 now with some Cap ACs and so far it's working nicely.
I'm no pro and I don't have 100 clients, so I probably do not note any big differences.

I still have to look at VLAN etc because I want to get a XIAOMI vacuum robot and need to separate it
from my internal network as they logging a bit too much.

@drtik, I had a similar scenario with a camera in my garden that was too slow over wifi (because I wanted it realtime)
and used a TPLink Powerlan adapter (1gbit) that I had lying around.

I have to admit, this is working perfectly - I didn't expect that. But I guess it's only an emergency solution and depends
on your wiring setup.

@drtik, I had a similar scenario with a camera in my garden that was too slow over wifi (because I wanted it realtime)
and used a TPLink Powerlan adapter (1gbit) that I had lying around.

That might be an alternative solution, but not ideal! I would've tried if I have something lying around. Unfortunately I don't.
Did you have a good experience with throughput?
I can probably upload some of my script to have a look at it and see if it helps you with isolating internet from you iot device.

Yes throughput is okay, much better than with WIFI.
I also used it to stream video via tvheadend.

However the final position is not fixed so I'm still doing tests.

Scripts would be very nice, always good to look at existing solutions!

@UpRunTech Best practical thinking/advice on this thread! Thanks.