Hi folks!

I have some questions regarding an outdoor wireless network I'm planing:

1) Which RouterOS level should I use / you prefer?
From the central building (gateway to ISP) I use 3 Ubiquiti Nano Bridges to connect the main sites of the camping ground. On one site an AP is connected to the Nano Bridge with cat5 cable. I will need 5 APs to cover the area of one site. Those APs should be connected via MESH and also serve the clients with the web access. Which level of RouterOS should I use (3 or 4) to let clients connect and mesh with nearby APs?

2) Which Routerboards you prefer for outdoor?
Which Routerboards (with wireless interface cards) should I use? Are there some good integrated solutions with good price/benefit ratio depending on question 1 the need of which level the routeros should be?

3) Will my NAS (RB2011UAS-2HnD-IN) perform well with let say 300 users connected?
The NAS will serve as DHCP, web proxy (attached USB stick for cache) and hotspot system which will account all the users through my RADIUS server. Is this too much load for the router or should I get a better one?

Thanks for your comments

Hello,

I was just curious if you were still looking for information on this setup as I have just installed a WDS Mesh on a Campgrounds with 4 RouterOS devices

Metals with Omni antenna's this is working sweet!

I was having some issues in the beginning but that ended up being interference from some old wifi cameras.

Hey,

with this setup I ran into many problems. I have more than 15 APs on the ground, so frequency interference was a big issue. Also the WDS between the APs cut the bandwidth into pieces. Another problem was that if you are running a ROS version below 5.18? that WDS links between AP-bridge configured access points generates internal loops (bug from ros). After I upgraded all APs to ROS 5.24 the links are working, but the performance is realy poor.

After all I ended up with the following configuration:
I used Ubiquiti NanoStations and NanoBridges 5Ghz bands to build up the backbone links and attached the Mikrotik APs in simple AP-bridge mode to the Ubiquiti Stations. Simple setup, great result! The only important thing to note is, that the 5GHz links have to be in WDS mode because MAC passthrough is very important for the ticket system.

Best regards

edit:
I have up to 400 clients sometimes so the RB2011 is far too weak in handling the hotspot connections. This is because of the SFQ bandwidth management of mikrotik. I changed the router to CCR-1016.12G and everything was fine!

Hello,

I have a very similar request for a solution. A suitable one would be an outdoor mesh network, using 5 Ghz for meshing and 2.4 Ghz for client access. It would be placed at a mine in a rural area. External interference is low, but I want to understand how the solution could handle the self interference of the mesh nodes. Isn't there a mesh coordination between APs?

If wireless mesh is a supported Mikrotik feature, what are its capabilities and practical limitations? I set up a test bed with three APs, and they work only when I turn of them off. Otherwise it looks like they interfere each other (there is a hidden node case, because A can see B and B can see C, but A can't see C).

Thank you.

gkrueger, I was wondering if you could send me the setup that you did with the 4 devices you had. I'm trying to do a WDS mesh network with 4 devices (RB951Ui-2HnD) and can't seem to get them working; I've tried the http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Wireless_WDS_Mesh page and also the youtube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRIu6MIE-Zw. If you could give me the steps for what you did to set it up I would be greatly appreciative.