MikroTik

Will I ever be able to run wifiwave2 on my rb5009 and manage non wifiwave2 Caps? Or will I have to upgrade all my Caps to hardware that wifiwave2 supports?

Will I ever be able to run wifiwave2 on my rb5009 and manage non wifiwave2 Caps? Or will I have to upgrade all my Caps to hardware that wifiwave2 supports?

You can run non-wave2 CAPsMAN on one of the non-wave2 CAPs and manage the other non-wave2 CAPs from that one. Both the old and new CAPsMANs should work on the same network, just not on the same device.

Yes I suppose so, might make migrating between APs interesting though.

Yeah, one of the things not thought enough about earlier on.
As it stands now, every capsman installation having both non-wave2 and wave2-cap-devices in the network, will need 2 controllers. One for each part.
Maybe they manage to integrate both later on but it could be a long wait.

Will I ever be able to run wifiwave2 on my rb5009

No you can never run wifiwave2 as there will never be a RB5009 with wifi.

The wifiwave2 package exists for the 5009 so that it can run as a capsman.

The wifiwave2 package exists for the 5009 so that it can run as a capsman.

But what radios work with that driver is the issue.
Right now.
Audience, WAP AC3 currently available.
The AX stuff when it comes along.

But all those cap AC XLs you bought in 2022... They don't have an upgrade path the WAVE2.

I would love to see support for wifiwave2 capsman come to typical router devices like the rb series.
It makes sence to manage the network from a single point - wich is probaly why non-WiFi devices like the rb3011 have capsman installed in the first place, even though it does not have WiFi itself?

You can run non-wave2 CAPsMAN on one of the non-wave2 CAPs and manage the other non-wave2 CAPs from that one. Both the old and new CAPsMANs should work on the same network, just not on the same device.

Is this a hard "no" from your side? Or is it simply a matter of time?

Can I manually install wifiwave2 package on a rb3011 or rb5009 to get that capability?
Or would I have to buy a 4011 instead to get the wifiwave2 capsman on my router?

WifiWave2 CAPsMAN can be installed on non AP devices as well, aside from SMIPS and MIPSBE architectures. This is meant purely for WifIWave2 CAPsMAN capability, not for adding wireless NICs to x86 for example. You can download WifiWave2 for other architectures from the current testing branch - 7.7rc4.

Though any device with 16MB flash won't have the storage capacity for the ~10MB wifiwave2 package!

WifiWave2 CAPsMAN can be installed on non AP devices as well, aside from SMIPS and MIPSBE architectures. This is meant purely for WifIWave2 CAPsMAN capability, not for adding wireless NICs to x86 for example. You can download WifiWave2 for other architectures from the current testing branch - 7.7rc4.

Ah, nice! I misunderstood that. Would that replace the default capsman? or can I run both on my rb3011?

Thank you for your fast reply

Though any device with 16MB flash won't have the storage capacity for the ~10MB wifiwave2 package!

My RB3011 has 128MB
@edit: RB5009 has 1GB

Would that replace the default capsman? or can I run both on my rb3011?

To my knowledge:
As it is now:
You need (at least) one capsman controller using wifiwave2 and (at least) one separate controller using legacy wifi-package for controlling the respective access points through capsman.
As far as I am aware you can not run both wifi-packages on the same capsman controller.
For a mixed AP environment (legacy Wifi and wifiwave2 devices on the same network), this means at least 2 controllers, 4 if you want redundancy.
(and keep in mind some AP devices are perfectly capable to act as capsman as well)

Future:
it may be possible both wifi-packages are going to be integrated into one package (but I could have misunderstood some messages completely wrong there although it would be the only logical evolution, in my view).

Thanks. I was hoping the "only one package / replace wifi" thing was due to the limitation that there can be only one driver. I was hoping the simultaneous capsman would not be affected (and I still do not really understand why they cannot be run in parallel.

Guess for now I will need to use the ax3 as capsman. And hope for that merge you were talking about.

I have hEX PoE. I love to be able to do a very simple thing: to use it as a Caps manager for my AX devices. As I understand it is not possible as soon as it is on MIPSBE? Am I correct?

hex poe is mipsbe, so too bad...
But you can use one of the AX devices as controller.

Just take care to have local radio for that one device configured as local, not via capsman.
And it will work.

Will I ever be able to run wifiwave2 on my rb5009

No you can never run wifiwave2 as there will never be a RB5009 with wifi.

You do not need wifi capability on a device to install and run wifiwave2 package (It's CPU and memory size).

To my knowledge:
As it is now:
You need (at least) one capsman controller using wifiwave2 and (at least) one separate controller using legacy wifi-package for controlling the respective access points through capsman.
As far as I am aware you can not run both wifi-packages on the same capsman controller.
For a mixed AP environment (legacy Wifi and wifiwave2 devices on the same network), this means at least 2 controllers, 4 if you want redundancy.
(and keep in mind some AP devices are perfectly capable to act as capsman as well)

Future:
it may be possible both wifi-packages are going to be integrated into one package (but I could have misunderstood some messages completely wrong there although it would be the only logical evolution, in my view).

With 7.13beta coming out, situation has changed completely.
You CAN now have both capsman versions on the same controller.
And you CAN have arm-based AC devices using wave2 drivers too, with good results !