MikroTik

Hi guys, I'm Luis from Costa Rica, I'm a recent user with Mikrotik and reason I'm writing today is in regards possible configurations about MESH or so, I have read multiple topics here and over Internet, some topics are already from few years ago so I was trying to get something updated for 2022-2023.

So a little of background first, I moving from a commercial MESH system to Mikrotik, I have Tenda MW6, they work ok but I don't like to have 2.4GHz & 5GHz under same SSID and is not an option to separate them, under the investigation I tried looks like this system uses 2.4GHz band for AP interconnections and to serve clients and the 5GHz to serve clients only (but again all on same SSID), I used to have this system this way: Master node wired connected and other 2 by WiFi, later on I was able to have Master node and a second node connected by wire (the second node connected to first node), final node was still fully wireless.

Now for Mikrotik change I have 2 Audience, 1 hAP ac lite TC and a hAP mini (as temporal device since is the one I actually use for testing). So I have following network:




So after ISP I have a Pfsense device, that serves as firewall and also handles the DHCP, after that a regular 8-port switch with some devices as computers/DNS_servers, then 3 Mikrotik devices connected by wire to the switch, all of them are configured in a bridge interface with all ports, on the wireless section there is a WDS connecting the audience and hap ac lite tc under 2.4GHz band, now I have a hap mini I need to have on a room that has really bad reception so that is connected by WDS to the hap ac lite only (because I figured out if that hap mini is connected by WiFi to all other nodes my Internet drops a lot, even using ethernet cables).

So I'm looking for some advice about this, I had read about MESH using bridge interface and wds dynamic mesh mode (that is the case I'm using now), also read about MESH using mesh interface and wds dynamic mode, also someone told me to use CapsMan instead but I'm not really sure about that option by now, so if someone can help me with this I will be grateful since with the Tenda MESH we just place it and we don't really know that is actually happening behind the scenes and I saw if some of this Mikrotik devices are fully wireless perfomance drops a lot under this configuration.

Some of topics and info I have used to try to setup this are:

https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/pages/vi ... Id=8978441
viewtopic.php?t=60982
https://youtu.be/PTJ97Rpz-5g (this one is in spanish)

Great first post! You've taken some time to present your question.

Would it be possible for you at all to avoid mesh entirely? Fiber is very cost effective now, for example. Would you consider that a possibility to wire access to all the APs and bring them back to a central switch?

Hi pcunite, thanks for the advice, maybe I can try to relocate some of this devices to keep them wired to main switch, looks Audience performs very well, so will try to choose other place with cable access already just to avoid new cable installations hehe, but in any case if I can place them by wired to main switch WDS will still needed or not ? just same SSID, freq. and bandwidth o different channels ?

Thanks for answering

Try the wireless repeater setting to connect the hap mini to hap ac lite

... if I can place them by wired to main switch, WDS will still needed or not? Just same SSID, freq. and bandwidth o different channels?

If you wire the stations together, then you don't need "wireless bridging", or WDS. Ideally, you would put APs wherever you need coverage, with a slight overlap of their beam patterns. Then you sent them all to have the same SSID. However, you set the frequency on each AP to be different. For 2.4Ghz, you only have three channels, with 5Ghz you have many more. Just make sure you don't have collisions, and turn the power down to ensure a pattern as shown below.

Thanks for all details guys, I was able to finally also get an answer from a teacher of a course I took, he gave some details about MESH and WDS, so finally I decided just use the 2 Audience, both connected to the switch by cable and getting an IP from Pfsense DHCP Server, finally a dynamic WDS between wlan3 of both Audience and all works ok, also I had to change the Audience from their original position to make sure and cover all house area, but now tere is someting really weird with hAP mini any way, it has verision 6.49.7, if is connected by wired or wireless, it doesn't matter, and if it has no configuration at all the network works ok by wire or wireless, but as soon as I create a bridge and place all ports in it (including wlan, but not activated yet) all network drops the connection to less than 10Mbps when fiber is for 100Mbps, this for wireless and wired devices, I tried to update the hap mini to 7.6 version and looks works just a little better but issue still happening and is only when that hap mini is connected, really weird hehe, not sure to ask for warranty them.

@pcunite: I think this is exactly what I'm looking for. Please share a config example. If you have this setup, please share the output from `/export compact`.

Joe

If you wire the stations together, then you don't need "wireless bridging", or WDS. Ideally, you would put APs wherever you need coverage, with a slight overlap of their beam patterns. Then you sent them all to have the same SSID. However, you set the frequency on each AP to be different. For 2.4Ghz, you only have three channels, with 5Ghz you have many more. Just make sure you don't have collisions, and turn the power down to ensure a pattern as shown below.