People, since RB751, MikroTik haven't launched any new SOHO RB with external antenna connector. Why?

Those 2.5dBi internal antennas that comes with RB951, hAP, mAP are very poor and not sufficient for all scenarios (I guess MikroTik engineers doesn't know most of houses' internal walls around the world are made of concrete).

I was wanting to install hAP Lite for my ISP's customers due to the need of some advanced features that RouterOS provides, but they coverage is generally not enough for most of them. It's not the ideal, but unfortunately I'm having to consider using TP-Link routers with OpenWRT within. At least even TP-Link cheapest models have external antennas...

Nobody needs 30dB of tx power in a SOHO router. Instead, most of us need greater antenna gain and external removable dipoles.

I'm beginning to think that the reason for not launching models with external antennas is a dumb commercial strategy to prevent people and ISPs to have 2.4GHz outdoor access points using SOHO RBs and force them to buy more expensive models... It's a dumb strategy because mostly nobody works anymore with 2.4GHz in outdoor environments, and so I really expect this isn't the real reason.

What does MikroTik guys have to say about this?
Any explanation? Any plans to launch RB models with external antennas (without overprice them, as it's a simple hardware change)?

Can't you use a RB 2011 with more powerful external antennas ? Granted this knocks the cost up quite a bit .

Well, it is clear that integrated devices will not fit to everyone. If you need something special you have enough bricks from mikrotik to build whatever you need. Of course, the price could be the problem then. Sure I could imagine many integrated models that I would like to see on the market, just because they would fit my needs.

Those 2.5dBi internal antennas that comes with RB951, hAP, mAP are very poor and not sufficient for all scenarios (I guess MikroTik engineers doesn't know most of houses' internal walls around the world are made of concrete).

I was wanting to install hAP Lite for my ISP's customers due to the need of some advanced features that RouterOS provides, but they coverage is generally not enough for most of them. It's not the ideal, but unfortunately I'm having to consider using TP-Link routers with OpenWRT within. At least even TP-Link cheapest models have external antennas...

Any RB951 with its integrated antennas will kick the pants off any tp-link, no matter if you swap its antennas with a 30dBi one. Included concrete wall houses.

Why? because sensitivity is the "real thing", and compared to a WDR4300 for example mikrotik has triple the sensitivity. Compared with any low range tp-link the difference is much drastical.

Don't use the hAP lite as example because that router is not intended for general use but flats and offices.

Nobody needs 30dB of tx power in a SOHO router. Instead, most of us need greater antenna gain and external removable dipoles.

I'm beginning to think that the reason for not launching models with external antennas is a dumb commercial strategy to prevent people and ISPs to have 2.4GHz outdoor access points using SOHO RBs and force them to buy more expensive models... It's a dumb strategy because mostly nobody works anymore with 2.4GHz in outdoor environments, and so I really expect this isn't the real reason.

Come on... Do you think mikrotik will be where they are now with these "strategies"?

A much better way of thinking would be the opposite: "why does mikrotik, who knows their stuff, use internal antennas on their most widely used SOHO routers while cheapo brands or models intended for general public don't?"

As mentioned in the thread you can always choose any RB, enclosure and put external antennas on them. 99 out of 100 times an RB951 with its internal antennas will perform similarly if not better.

I have installed hundreds of openwrt powered tp-links in the past, and their performance and reliability (not to mention management as like you this was in a WISP environment) is a joke compared with RBs.

RB951 with internal antennas working better then d-link with external. In sensitivity and in transmission. Connectors complicate and increase the cost of construction. Looking for routers with connectors - please choose another model )

Any RB951 with its integrated antennas will kick the pants off any tp-link, no matter if you swap its antennas with a 30dBi one. Included concrete wall houses.

Sorry I did not read your message at once)

By the way I tried to connect 6-10 dBi omni antennas to RB711 - RB951 anyway works much better...

Thanks everybody for your answers.

Can't you use a RB 2011 with more powerful external antennas ? Granted this knocks the cost up quite a bit .

No. RB2011 is so much expensive and waste of resources for most of ISP's customers.

Why? because sensitivity is the "real thing", and compared to a WDR4300 for example mikrotik has triple the sensitivity. Compared with any low range tp-link the difference is much drastical.

You're right. I forgot about how poor is the RF of common brands' APs.

Don't use the hAP lite as example because that router is not intended for general use but flats and offices.

Even hAP Lite, that is the cheapest of all RBs intended for home use, is too much expensive for most of my ISP's customers. I can't use better models as example, as nobody is even going to pay for a hAP Lite (don't forget there is also radio/ONT cost).

As mentioned in the thread you can always choose any RB, enclosure and put external antennas on them. 99 out of 100 times an RB951 with its internal antennas will perform similarly if not better.

I'm pretty sure any cheap brand router (even having worse sensitivity) with external antennas will perform better than an hAP Lite with 1.5dBi measly gain. This is the only problem I see in this RB model, and could be fixed with an external antenna connector (as I guess enclosure is so much small to have a higher gain antenna inside).

RB951 (even Ui) is too much expensive for home customers.

RB951 with internal antennas working better then d-link with external. In sensitivity and in transmission. Connectors complicate and increase the cost of construction. Looking for routers with connectors - please choose another model )

Most of RBs - including RB951 ones - have ready circuits for an extra MMCX connector on board. I guess it wouldn't be that complication to MikroTik provide at least an internal connector (and a hole on enclosure for pigtail).

Do you guess hAP Lite would work better than D-Link, TP-Link, etc. with external antennas? Personally, I guess no.


Obs.: phpBB (or at least the theme used here) is a pain in the neck for not having multi quote feature.

I dont know how stay hAP lite with wifi coverage, but RB951/UI or G model is much much bettter then most TP-Links, D-Links , Linksys in price to E60. Not every router with external antennas have a better coverage. For ex. TP-Link TL1043ND has two external antennas, but too low output power 25 dbi or 251 mW. That is too low compared to Rb951 series, who have 1000mW output power.

So conclusion more antennas not meen better coverage !

@tsouzar: hAP Lite is under $22 - it's a price of 2 large pizzas, I must disagree it's too expensive.

Adding an external antenna can not only improve the signal, but also enhance the ability to receive, all of my rb951 and rb941 are converted into an external antenna.

I also find the antennas help quite a bit, and have chosen to stay away from the hAP lite as an AP, will stick with the more expensive models with antenna support for now.

Adding an external antenna can not only improve the signal, but also enhance the ability to receive, all of my rb951 and rb941 are converted into an external antenna.

Please add photo

Adding an external antenna can not only improve the signal, but also enhance the ability to receive, all of my rb951 and rb941 are converted into an external antenna.

Please add photo

Signal before the transformation did not cut diagram, so I can not be issued to compare, just know that a lot better after the transformation signal.

Reconstruction costs only $ 3, looks pretty good now.

And inside photos? Thanks

And inside photos? Thanks

No cutting plan before conversion, and it has not condition contrast, unless then buy a.

And inside photos? Thanks

There are before and after conversion and modification before been compared, but images are not saved, and I use the same mobile phone comparison in the same location, just remember that the signal is good about 10dBm.

And inside photos? Thanks

Oh, you say should be the internal circuit board, and I thought it was winbox it. rb951-2n and rb941 are the first hands-on, the board out of the mess, but does not affect use.
rb941 with the line too thick too hard, but there is no screw shell, the shell is hard together, we go next time to use fine-point line.
Experience is the line connected to the front socket, otherwise the signal will be affected.

And inside photos? Thanks

this is realy sad, and speaking about RB hardware there are many failures:

fail #1 was introduction of microUSB connector on 2011 and related hardware
fail #2 was removal of external RF connector on 951G
fail #3 was microSD and SD card lack of support on CCR
fail #4 was RS232 console serial instead of RJ45 on latest RB and CCR (we have some terminal servers in DC dont we?)

ant it deosnt really matter would it be better than TPLINK or not (because those who buy TPLINK will continue buy them anyway), fail is fail - just dissapointing and less sales

this is realy sad, and speaking about RB hardware there are many failures:

fail #1 was introduction of microUSB connector on 2011 and related hardware
fail #2 was removal of external RF connector on 951G
fail #3 was microSD and SD card lack of support on CCR
fail #4 was RS232 console serial instead of RJ45 on latest RB and CCR (we have some terminal servers in DC dont we?)

ant it deosnt really matter would it be better than TPLINK or not (because those who buy TPLINK will continue buy them anyway), fail is fail - just dissapointing and less sales

all these are solved by simply choosing the right product for purchase - RB9xx and RB4xx series have it all. Including sleek black case with external antennas.

http://routerboard.com/CA411-711

And slick "bloated" capacitors on RB4xx series. Especially RB411xx is the product you can really rely on

And if you need cheap wifi router with external antena and at least 5 Ethernets?
2011 is not solution...
If you need dualband AP? RB 433 with two cards? or rb493 with two cards?
If you need dualband ceiling AP? rbCAP is only 2,4Ghz and only 1chain.
I can give you more examples...

And slick "bloated" capacitors on RB4xx series. Especially RB411xx is the product you can really rely on

I see you are referring to an issue specifically on RB450 that happened many years ago. Since then, we use higher grade capacitors, and 3-4 years we have not received one RMA unit with such issue.

And if you need cheap wifi router with external antena and at least 5 Ethernets?
2011 is not solution...
If you need dualband AP? RB 433 with two cards? or rb493 with two cards?
If you need dualband ceiling AP? rbCAP is only 2,4Ghz and only 1chain.
I can give you more examples...

If we all put our heads together, we can probably come up with at least 100 types of routerboards that MikroTik needs to make. Especially all of them under 19EUR per piece. But in reality, there is only so much we can do in given amount of time. Step by step we add more products, and drive the price down as much as we can.

in year 2000, our cheapest router was 2000$
now, the hAP lite costs under the price of our L4 license.

We still have a lot of exciting products to be announced this year. Keep following the news

I would rather see those exciting products in the shops on the shelves than just being announced and then not delivered at expected time...

@normis: I see your point, but I think MT really lacks products in dual band market. Let's look at 802.11ac - currently there's no even single product which can act as dual band AC router (2 or more RJ45's + miniPCIe/builtin ac radio + miniPCI/builtin 2.4 radio) from you
RB3011 could be that product, but it's impossible to use two radios. The only one, which probably land in our hands somewhere around october, is hAP AC - while 5 ports is enough I'm little worried about performance.

Mikrotik hardware is really great, but I think you should consider user opinions. Speaking about further changes most of ISPs will be extremely happy to see hardware for GPON, since this market is growing really fast in Europe. Also there's no hardware with FXS (and no plans for support it as I found).

in year 2000, our cheapest router was 2000$
now, the hAP lite costs under the price of our L4 license.

Yes rb941 is very very good product. We use them very often. Price is also very good.
In my eyes (ISP) is there too much desktop switches CRS210-8G-2S+IN, CRS212-1G-10S-1S+IN, CRS112-8G-4S-IN
Who have on table 10 and more SFP optic cables?
We need more products with POE output. At least 8x POE out.
There is actualy only RB750UP and POWERBOX (the same product only oudoor)
We need CAP but dualband. Or 2x2 mimo.

We still have a lot of exciting products to be announced this year. Keep following the news

Where is news 66 from mikrotik? We still waiting for CCR1072, DynaDish5, hAPac and others.
CCR1072 was mentioned in Q3/Q4 2014 and still nothing. No words about it...

@normis: I see your point, but I think MT really lacks products in dual band market. Let's look at 802.11ac - currently there's no even single product which can act as dual band AC router (2 or more RJ45's + miniPCIe/builtin ac radio + miniPCI/builtin 2.4 radio) from you

You have true. There is only RB953 (3x ETH), expensive and unsuitable as a dual-band AP on table

RB3011 could be that product, but it's impossible to use two radios.

Integrated 2,4Ghz + miniPCIe is better.

Mikrotik hardware is really great, but I think you should consider user opinions. Speaking about further changes

Yes. Mikrotik - Give us more info on forum. Ask users, more questions for ISP what they need...

most of ISPs will be extremely happy to see hardware for GPON

That's what I wanted to say, we need current GPON

Speaking of RB953 it's overkill for sure, but it's also targeted more for base station than actual router Plus it needs actually two cards - 5Ghz 802.11ac + 2.4Ghz 802.11b/g/n - since integrated wireless is 5Ghz 802.11a/n one.
I even looked at any solution with one ethernet and at least one SFP (to use 1G copper module) but I still haven't found any with miniPCIe and integrated 2.4Ghz radio (or with ability to install one).

CCR1072 was mentioned in Q3/Q4 2014 and still nothing. No words about it...

Time to check with the distributor

One problem solved And others?

And slick "bloated" capacitors on RB4xx series. Especially RB411xx is the product you can really rely on

I see you are referring to an issue specifically on RB450 that happened many years ago. Since then, we use higher grade capacitors, and 3-4 years we have not received one RMA unit with such issue.

I'm referring to an issue connected with RB4xx series. I bought 20x RB411 couple of moths ago from i4wifi and yes, the capacitors are still bloating. Maybe they have an old supply, RoS version was 5.26 that came with them. You don't receive RMA about this issue because it's much much cheaper and faster to change the capacitors by yourself. Sending routers to Latvia and wating for their return can take weeks, changing capacitors takes max 10 mins per rb411 board with 4 of those capacitors and capacitors are really cheap.

Changed 3 capacitors out of 4 2 months ago, should have replaced the fourth too. As you can see this is not a RB450 board and far from being the only one.

And slick "bloated" capacitors on RB4xx series. Especially RB411xx is the product you can really rely on

I see you are referring to an issue specifically on RB450 that happened many years ago. Since then, we use higher grade capacitors, and 3-4 years we have not received one RMA unit with such issue.

I'm referring to an issue connected with RB4xx series. I bought 20x RB411 couple of moths ago from i4wifi and yes, the capacitors are still bloating. Maybe they have an old supply, RoS version was 5.26 that came with them. You don't receive RMA about this issue because it's much much cheaper and faster to change the capacitors by yourself. Sending routers to Latvia and wating for their return can take weeks, changing capacitors takes max 10 mins per rb411 board with 4 of those capacitors and capacitors are really cheap.

Like I said, we have not made products with these capacitors since many years, if you have such device, it is covered by warranty.

Those 2.5dBi internal antennas that comes with RB951, hAP, mAP are very poor and not sufficient for all scenarios (I guess MikroTik engineers doesn't know most of houses' internal walls around the world are made of concrete).

I was wanting to install hAP Lite for my ISP's customers due to the need of some advanced features that RouterOS provides, but they coverage is generally not enough for most of them. It's not the ideal, but unfortunately I'm having to consider using TP-Link routers with OpenWRT within. At least even TP-Link cheapest models have external antennas...

Any RB951 with its integrated antennas will kick the t-shirt off any tp-link, no matter if you swap its antennas with a 30dBi one. Included concrete wall houses.

Why? because sensitivity is the "real thing", and compared to a WDR4300 for example mikrotik has triple the sensitivity. Compared with any low range tp-link the difference is much drastical.

Don't use the hAP lite as example because that router is not intended for general use but flats and offices.

Nobody needs 30dB of tx power in a SOHO router. Instead, most of us need greater antenna gain and external removable dipoles.

I'm beginning to think that the reason for not launching models with external antennas is a dumb commercial strategy to prevent people and ISPs to have 2.4GHz outdoor access points using SOHO RBs and force them to buy more expensive models... It's a dumb strategy because mostly nobody works anymore with 2.4GHz in outdoor environments, and so I really expect this isn't the real reason.

Come on... Do you think mikrotik will be where they are now with these "strategies"?

A much better way of thinking would be the opposite: "why does mikrotik, who knows their stuff, use internal antennas on their most widely used SOHO routers while cheapo brands or models intended for general public don't?"

As mentioned in the thread you can always choose any RB, enclosure and put external antennas on them. 99 out of 100 times an RB951 with its internal antennas will perform similarly if not better.

I have installed hundreds of openwrt powered tp-links in the past, and their performance and reliability (not to mention management as like you this was in a WISP environment) is a joke compared with RBs.

I agree with you.

I recently tried my house a asus rt ac68u.He returned immediately to Amazon and returned to my RB951 that has better range by setting all at 23 dBm.

It would be the same comfortable with the possibility of an RB951 external antennas.

In my opinion the perfect device for home regardless of the final cost would be a HAP AC with the same form factor of RB951 with any external antennas, and over the USB microSD reader, a button to close the LED and maybe a screen LCD

I truly believe, both by judging mikrotik's design of the 951 line, and from direct experience, that external antennas are just marketing gimmics for lower-end network manufacturers, specially at low price ranges.

We are dealing with SOHO scenarios, where 70 to 80 of wireless devices are phones, and to work well you should be able to hear, and hear them well, so any improvement in reception is worth any design change.

Putting anything but the antenna itself in-built on the PCB via an optimized RF design (using plastic as a cover for the device) just "clogs" the line to the board radio "ear" and it's a hard to beat path in design, specially in these price ranges.

I also see more an unobstrusive, sleek look without the gather-dusting, and not particularly useful protuding antennas that are more for looks than anything else... unless for whatever reason you use metal housings: compare the 2011UiAS-2HnD vs a 951Ui/G specs for example.

External antenas are especially worthless in 802.11ac MIMO setups. To perform effective beamforming antenas have to be aligned properly.

external antennas on indoor wifi implementations have the drawback of increasing collisions, decreasing capacity and worsening the snr from accesspoint perspective picking more noise and interference of near accesspoints and clients on the same channel.

if you feel you need more gain antenna on wifi environment you are possibly wrong, possibly what you really need is to improve accesspoint location or more accesspoints with the benefit of increased capacity.

hi all,

I'm look at replacing my ubiquiti unifi ap's (had multiple replacements, they just never lasts) with multiple hAP ac lite's. Athough these don't have external antennas, I should get good coverage in my home?

I stand by my post
:

Any RB951 with its integrated antennas will kick the pants off any tp-link, no matter if you swap its antennas with a 30dBi one. Included concrete wall houses.

Why? because sensitivity is the "real thing", and compared to a WDR4300 for example mikrotik has triple the sensitivity. Compared with any low range tp-link the difference is much drastical.

Rubberduck external antennas rarely enhance anything, their low gain is nulled by physical connector losses.

hAP ac lite radio specs should be close to UniFis if not better. Based on real life experience, UniFi's radio specs are nothing to write home about, and possibly the reason why ubnt doesn't release its specs.

hAP ac, wAP ac or RB951 are twice to four times better in terms of radio specs and real life performance.

Plus, you can use CAPsMan to control all of them from one of the RB's.

Higher gain antenna always means that they are more directional. For RX this means you have to adjust their beam to your usage. This is difficult indoor as there are reflections. For tx depending on your country you have to reduce power.

So using additional antennas you should know what you are doing or you end up with higher interference problems or lower signal.

The weak point are the CPEs (Smartphone antennas are very limited) you are using. You might be better of placing more APs at good locations with lower TX-Power to reduce interference and amount of obstacles between AP and CPE.

It is not like PS of a car. More Power/Higher Gain does not help in every situation.

Like I said, we have not made products with these capacitors since many years, if you have such device, it is covered by warranty.

Try telling that to your distributors

Try telling that to your distributors

Thanks for raising a 2 year old topic from the dead.

Try telling that to your distributors

Thanks for raising a 2 year old topic from the dead.

NP

Like I said, we have not made products with these capacitors since many years, if you have such device, it is covered by warranty.

Liquid electrolyte capacitors are "the cancer that is killing".
I feel pity whenever i see a nice board butchered for a few cents more gain.