MikroTik

I recently upgraded an AP from another OS/SBC solution to a RB500 with 2.9. With both SBC's, I used a Senao/Prism 200mw minipci 802.11b card for the AP. I had one Atheros card in the other solution for the backhaul and two Atheros cards in the RB500 for backhaul.

After upgrading to the RB500, I experienced significant problems with the AP clients being able to connect consistently. Some clients, which had as low as a -57db connection strength with the other solution could not connect at all. Some clients would connect initially, then disconnect until I rebooted the RB500. Finally, after a number of days of problems, and then losing wireless connectivity totally by trying to switch to the legacy wireless drivers (see my post(s) in the Routerboard section), I switched back to the other solution, and my problems went away. All clients are now connected and working properly.

A number of months ago, I tried upgrading another AP running MT 2.8 with Prism cards to a 2.9 beta, and seemed to experience the same problem. I had hoped that the problem had been resolved in the updated 2.9 version, but it has not.

Has anyone else experienced this problem? Is there a solution that I have not discovered? Do I just need to use Atheros cards exclusively in 2.9?

I have the same problems, I had to replace prism with atheros.

In general I notice lot of problems and low perfomance with any wireless card under 2.9 if you do a comparison with 2.8

It's very stupid to get an answer "problem with cables", "problem with signal", when the same hardware worked with 2.8. Something broke in 2.9. Prism don't work not because of hardware problems, they are not supported properly.

Thanks for the response. After posting, I did a search on "Prism" and found a number of people saying the same thing, including my friend Sam here in Oklahoma, who tried to do the same thing I did, with the same results.

Like Sam, I am really surprised that Mikrotik released 2.9 as "stable" with the Prism problems that still exist. At least they could have mentioned it in BOLD letters as a caveat in the release notes.

My network is about 90% "The Other OS/SBC" and 10% MT. I decided to give the Routerboard 500's a try, and on the Prism front, it has been very painful. On the Atheros side, they seem to work well. I don't have any MT/Atheros 2.8 connections, so I don't know about the performance declines that you mentioned occur when going from 2.8 to 2.9. My tests between the two RB's using 5.8 non-NStream showed right at 30MB/sec one way speed, dropping to half that in duplex mode. These were 3,300 ft apart, using 17 and 26 db antennas, with a good, but not perfect, line of sight.

My next step is to try to get the wireless package back on one of the RB's. I think I found a solution, using the automatic upgrade feature where you can load a package from another router. This seems to be the only way to do it, until MT puts all the RB packages on the website in a zip file, like they do with the Intel version of the software.

Well, the automatic upgrade did not work, as you have to be able to upload the packages on another router, not just copy already installed packages. So, I am still stuck as to how get the wireless package loaded back on the RB. I tried downgrading from 2.9 to the last release candidate, but the software did not let me.

I have the same problems, I had to replace prism with atheros.

In general I notice lot of problems and low perfomance with any wireless card under 2.9 if you do a comparison with 2.8

It's very stupid to get an answer "problem with cables", "problem with signal", when the same hardware worked with 2.8. Something broke in 2.9. Prism don't work not because of hardware problems, they are not supported properly.

how many wlan cards can connect to athreos ? same as prism
what perfomance ?

I'm currently testing it with 5 clients 2.4Ghz-B. I have problems with latency when there is lot of traffic. With Prism I have problems with disconnections in 2.9. If there is any kind of fix I will test it again with Prism.

We are having the exact same issues.

Our CPE devices are everything from OpenWRT WRT54G's, Tranzeo CPE's, Mikrotik CPE's, to YDI EtherAnt 2's & 3's. If Mikrotik CPE's are having issues, I know its 2.9 and now any kind of hardware.

Because our mikrotik is the heart and soul of our business (WISP), we have decided to downgrade to 2.8.28.

FYI -- Before I downgrade, gonna setup wireless-legacy.

I suggest a quick upgrade to v2.9.1.

John

We also downgraded to 2.8.28.

We did see some very interesteing behavior with 2.9 and 2.9.1

I could not ping my ap with a packet larger than 686 (ping with 687 bytes would fail 100%) bytes when using 2.9x
when down grade to 2.8.28 pings of anysize go perfectly.

Has anyone gotten 2.9x to work with prism ap and mixed clients??

Nope, only works with 2.8

We also downgraded to 2.8.28.
I could not ping my ap with a packet larger than 686 (ping with 687 bytes would fail 100%) bytes when using 2.9x
when down grade to 2.8.28 pings of anysize go perfectly.

Tested with Prism AP v2.9.1 and RouterOS wireless client (atheros) and with the Windows (Atheros card) - works fine. Maybe the link is full, try to increase the ping timeout to 2s.

please specify what wireles clients have these issues?(OS,card manufacturer,model,chipset)
Are all the clients having issues with reconnecting or some specific?

I was having problems with Senao CB3 wireless bridges and DLink DWL-810+ wireless bridges. The Senao CB3 uses a Prism PCMCIA card just like the ones supported by MT.

The CPE's I have trouble with are Tranzeo TRCPE-200 (cb3/custom firmware) and High Gain Antennas, A realtek processor and a phillips radio module. identified as mac 00:e0:4c. Both Radios work perfectly under 2.8.28.

I assume the High Gain Antennas is an OEM but not sure whose PCB/radio it is. maybe Interepoch??

As I said it was bizzare, my laptop with either a hermes (Orinoco) or a Prism (Senao ext2) chipset did not demonstrate the problem. I could ping sucessfully from my laptop. However when using the realtek based CPE the ping size was limited to 686 bytes, these would succede 100% and 687 byte packets would fail 100% The test was done using 2 different Windows XP boxes with different Ethernet cards. This CPE is very customizable, I did not try to set fragmentation to less than 686, since I did not want to do it for every customer.

Ping 192.168.168.1 -t -l 686 ( this would reply 100%)

Ping 192.168.168.1 -t -l 687 (this would fail 100% as would anyting larger )

Joe.

I was having problems with Senao CB3 wireless bridges and DLink DWL-810+ wireless bridges. The Senao CB3 uses a Prism PCMCIA card just like the ones supported by MT.

Tested with Dlink DWL-810+ (FW:2.1) - works fine.