MikroTik

Hi all,
I'm a bit confused about antenna-mode settings in MT...
I'm using MT devices WRAP based with a double wireless interface (N connectors); in my understanding antenna-mode=a or antenna-mode=b means connector a or connector b.
Based on this, I've connected one sectorial antenna to connector a and another one to connector b, and tried to connect clients (@ 5GHz). Clients on sector a (interface wlan1, antenna-mode=a) connected to the AP without problem, but I spent about 1 hour trying to connect clients to sector b (interface wlan 2, antenna-mode=b). Finally, changing interface wlan2 to antenna-mode=a, lets clients connect to the AP perfectly.

Considering above facts, what does antenna-mode=a or antenna-mode=b mean?
Should every wlan interface be configured as antenna-mode=a?
Could it be possible that wireless cards used does not support such configurations? MAC address is 00:0b:6b:80:c8:4e, doing a OUI search on IEEE web site, this mac address refers to Wistron (http://www.wistron.com)

Thank you in advance for any information,
Rgds

Under normal circumstances you only use antenna a or b, not a and b. Most cards are marked Main and Aux which normally corresponds to a and b, however Wistron CM9s are reversed.

The only occasion you would use both antennae together is where you are sending on one antenna and receiving on the other.

If you want to set-up two separate sectors you will need two Wireless cards.

Proprietary Access Points will often have two antennae, these are usually connected in Diversity mode, i.e. using both antenna a and b to tx/rx simultaneously, which improves signal reception where there a lot of reflections, e.g. indoors.

Thank you cmacneill for reply,
I'm sorry but my description wasn't clear enough: the device I'm using has two wireless cards (miniPCI Winstron).
In the light of your consideration, I suppose that antenna-mode=a means the card main connector and antenna-mode=b means the card aux connector. So for both cards antenna-mode=a should have been selected, because each of them have only one connector.

Looking @ MT manual I was confused about meaning of antenna-mode parameter,

antenna-mode (ant-a | ant-b | rxa-txb | txa-rxb; default: ant-a) - which antenna to use for transmit/receive data:

I thought that "antenna" was referred to external (N connector) ones and not to card connector, so I selected "a" for one card and "b" for the other one.... my fault

rgds

Be aware that some cards are Main=A and some are Main=B. If in doubt, try one or the other.

CM9: RH corner = ant-a
SR9: u.fl main = ant-a
SR2/5: u.fl = ant-b mmcx = ant-b
XR2/5: mmcx = ant-a (only port available)
R52/H: u.fl main = ant-a
PRISM: inside u.fl port = ant-a (on most prisms, you shouldn't be using these cards anyway)