My LinkSys WiFi is beyond stale. I want to add MikroTik access point to home lab fleet.
I know networking pretty well but still new to all MikroTik aspects beyond my little fleet.
MikroTik WiFi hardware advice is wanted and welcome. Many thanks in advance.

Seek another manufacturer for wifi.

Until the AX stuff is out and the bugs shook out of it... You really shouldn't even dip a toe at this point.

Seek another manufacturer for wifi.

Until the AX stuff is out and the bugs shook out of it... You really shouldn't even dip a toe at this point.

I'm heavily wired biased; WiFi fleet is phone and Chromecast pair, I wire laptops; WiFi 6 is pointless.
I'm looking at cAP ac or cAP XL ac; they seem cheap enough; adding 5 GHz is the goal.
I'm intensely curious, why another manufacturer?

@gotsprings has had a fair share of (professional) disappointments with MT WiFi gear. And he is pretty vocal warning people from using it.

On the other hand there are a few users which find MT WiFi gear decent for its price. Myself included.

So if you can spare a few dimes, then invest some in an ax Mikrotik (ac are past, many are not able to run the new wifiwave2 wireless driver which brings performance to level comparable to other vendors' ac devices). And, as @gotsprings wrote, don't expect everything just work. It might, but ax devices (as everything new coming from Mikrotik) have their share of teething problems.

@mkx, thank you for the prompt reply.

WiFi need is wireless only devices, all ac only.
Anything supporting wired always will be.
WifiWave2 matters not at all here.
I want cAP form factor.

@mkx, can you indulge me with your MT WiFi experiences?

@mkx, can you indulge me with your MT WiFi experiences?

My experiences with MT (and MT wifi) are far less than those of @gotsprings. I have an audience (ac generation, running wifiwave2), a hAP ac2 (can't run wifiwave2, hence N generation), a few RB951Gs, a few hAP ac lites (some used in nv2 bridge configuration) ... However my theoretical (and practical) knowledge of radio communications is far greater than that, until a few years ago I was working as senior radio engineer (15+ years) for major MNO in a smaller EU country (we didn't outsource anything to major service providers and yet our network was one of best performing in the region).

Hence you might want to go with advice by @gotsprings if you think I'm underqualified to give you advice. I wouldn't chime in if advice by @gotsprings wasn't so biased against MT's wireless ... and following this forum for quite a few years it doesn't seem to me that state of MT's wifi is as bad (for everybody) as suggested by @gotsprings. Hence my suggestion to give it a try, if you can afford the expense in case it proves not to fulfill your expectations.

Think of a swiss army knife.

It's the absolute wrong tool for the job... But it might get it done.

Wanna cut down a tree? That little toothy blade is probably the wrong choice

Need to screw in a couple dozen Philips head screws into a door frame. You are gonna be at it all day and likely ruin your wrist and bang your knuckles a lot.

I could go all day...

I brought in Mikrotik wireless and really went down the rabbit hole with caps-man. I started having functionality that expensive wifi manufactures couldn't keep up with.

But what also had was a pre 2016 radio driver. This was the main problem with keeping clients connected. In busy environments Mikrotik performed far worse than competitors. In really busy environments... It was useless.

I would also have all sorts of quirks with keeping certain brands of wifi cards connected.

I worked and worked with everyone and anyone on it. I would get one email per month from support with a new idea that fixed nothing.

I finally got an email stating that they had reproduced the connectivity issues. And they had no fix and would get back to me.

That was in 2019...

I keep up to date on the function of Mikrotik wireless as I pull it back out and try it on my bench. Hoping I can finally fix some of my installs. Alas... Even the new wifi wave2 driver was leaps and bounds better... It's a 2016 protocol... Still shipping in 2022. It improves my audience remarkably. But it lagged behind still. And I still had quirks with keeping some chip sets connected.

I reached out to support a few months ago with a new support file and asked them to please figure it out... They gave me the same suggestions that didn't work in 2019.

Now let's get down to it...
When it comes to Mikrotik routing... I very rarely had to make any excuses, or chase down odd bugs. I can count on routerOS in all sorts of different types of installs.

But and this is a big one... That last connection, is the client devices to the wifi. Which is infact, the weakest link.

I can dig up old ruckus from 2016 that can still stomp all over Mikrotik WiFi. And I in many of the jobs I work... The wifi is the only connection that matters for the clients. So cheaping out there, is just not a good idea.

Now on the other side of that... The 60GHZ from them is awesome. I can't recommend it enough. Watching it cut right through all the noise in Washington D.C. and provide a full Gigabit of connectivity... It's awesome!

In closing. After thousands of wasted hours and a couple thousand in financial losses... Mikrotik made me MUCH BETTER at testing other manufacturers. Not to mention incredibly gun shy. So due to my trials and tribulations with Mikrotik... I actually got in with another manufacture who would chase down the bugs I presented. And they have produced a much better product than it was at initial sale.

Is it as cheap as Mikrotik? Nope.
Can it do most of the cool stuff I had built in caps-man? Yup.
Can it keep clients connected and actually passing traffic? Yup.
Is it cheaper than Ruckus... Yup.

@mkx Thank you so much for the encouragement and support.

... if you think I'm underqualified to give you advice.

So if you can spare a few dimes, then invest some in an ax Mikrotik (ac are past, many are not able to run the new wifiwave2 wireless driver which brings performance to level comparable to other vendors' ac devices). ...

Due to my heavy wired bias, any level of wireless experience likely exceeds mine!
I don't see MT cAP ax product; I'm really fixed on cAP form factor and my 3 devices are ac at best.

• It slowly dawns on me, the point isWifiWave2improves performance and ax is the necessary platform.

• That said, for example, the cAP ac or the cAP XL ac will underform the competition?

• What else might I be foregoing with the cAP ac or the cAP XL ac products?

@gotsprings Thank you! I am wondefully surprised and grateful.

I brought in Mikrotik wireless and really went down the rabbit hole with caps-man. ...

... pre 2016 radio driver ... main problem ... keeping clients connected ... busy environments ... far worse ... really busy environments ... useless.

... wifi wave2 driver ... leaps and bounds better... lagged behind still ... still had quirks with ... some chip sets ...

When it comes to Mikrotik routing... I very rarely had to make any excuses, or chase down odd bugs. I can count on routerOS in all sorts of different types of installs.

... last connection ... client devices to the wifi ... weakest link.

... 60GHZ from them is awesome. ...

... I actually got in with another manufacture ... produced a much better product than it was at initial sale.

CAPsMANcuriosity is a motivation here.
MikroTik routing, RouterOS, and 60 GHz feedback doubly appreciated. Agreed, careful and rigoous testing before deploying big commerical project matters much.
May I ask which products you favor for three ac devices in home office?
May I ask also who your "got in with another manufacture" might be?

wifiwave2 runs on select ac devices. Basically it boils down to amount of RAM (256MB or more), flash size (in reality 128MB or more) and supported wifi chip. Oh, yes, and supported architecture. Both cAP ac ("normal" and XL) fail first two checks.

The only device I remember right now which passes 3 out of 4 checks (RAM, flash and supported platform) and partially fails at "supported wifi chip" is rb4011igs+5hacq2hnd-in (RB4011 with wireless). It uses discrete wireless chip for 2.4GHz and that one is not supported by wifiwave2 drivers. So if one installs wifiwave2 to unleash power on 5GHz, looses support for 2.4GHz. MT doesn't seem to care about that.

So, realistically, if you want decently performing Mikrotik ac AP, you only have a few options: Audience, hAP ac³ (model without LTE modem) and the ax models.

I have also had the hAP AC3 on the bench and at the inlaws for a while. It's not bad for a 2x2. But it suffers all the quirks that Mikrotik wireless does.

The Audience configured as a 3 radio AP was the best performance I have ever seen out of Mikrotik WiFi. I finally had more than one device being able to take advantage of the 5GHZ spectrum. And once I had the 4x4 available... I could cover more clients and it really improved the wifi calling. It once you fell back to 2.4... uggg. Same old issues... Some devices won't connect. Show as connected but won't pass traffic. Just too damn annoying to bother with. And like I typed... Support was like "ohh try this". And it was the first step that failed back in 2018...

Ruckus had spoiled me, as I was used to having wifi that worked in the worst environments. They introduced a pretty serious group of bugs about 2 years ago. And at one point I had no fixes for 17 months. They kept releasing updates... And the bugs persisted. One was so sever it threw units into a reboot loop.

Ruckus was a smaller private company when I first started dealing with them. I used to be able to talk to the head engineer and gotta say... I had wireless that spanked everyone else. Since the have been sold to several other companies over the last few years... They ain't the company I used to know.

在过去的几年里取得了很多进展and Ruckus stagnated. Forcing me to deal with the stack of test units I buy.

I found a serious issue in a unit that had been shipping for 2 years. I brought it up in their forums and they got me the head engineer. We went through it and I demonstrates it repeatedly. I showed them how other "glitches" were actually based on this.

I got to have regular screen shares with engineering and development. They actually listened and took notes as to how I made these issues appear.

After having to go back to the kernel and driver level... They got me a rc that was close. A few more RCs... And the issues they were seeing and not seeing are gone.

Soup to nuts... It was almost a year. The whole time I deployed hundreds of Ruckus because these other guys were not ready. I had to use an old firmware and downgrade new units to that... but those installs work.

Now we are in the home stretch and I have a few deployments in test systems. Once that's done... I would love to change over to them.

But unlike Ruckus... These guys have Wifi6E for less than $1600 and don't require subscription services "just to configure the thing "

@mkx *duh* It finally dawned on me "audience" meansAudience, a real product; smart looking too!

@gotsprings Sad about Ruckus post acquisition. Ruckus price makes no sense for my use case. Your Audience experience seems good enough to me.

Thank you gentlemen; I'm now looking hard at Audience!

*duh* It finally dawned on me "wave2" means the IEEE 802.11ac 2016Wave 2certification program.

Buy hap ax2 or hap ax3 better than audience....

@Rox169, thank you. I see both outperform CRS3xx at Layer 3 (routing) tasks.

I actually got in with another manufacture who would chase down the bugs I presented

Can you say who?

To the OP, I use MikroTik wireless solutions for clients. However, the biggest job I did was about 20 AP's and in a quiet (RF) environment. I also do not use Capsman. The 20 counts was for coverage, not because they had a lot of wifi clients. But as noted other professionals on the board have issues with them. I expect someday to hit a wall, but until then I deploy because of the environments I serve.

... I also do not use Capsman. ...

@pcunite, I find why choices are made helpful. Can you indulge me?

@pcunite, I find why choices are made helpful. Can you indulge me?

Well, its MikroTik's typical offering. A configuration nightmare. So, I just never used it. Deploy your radios with correct channel (frequency) spacing, everything back to a switch, and then set passwords. Its a service call to change passwords, what's wrong with that? But I understand others might operate the networks they manage differently.

Well, its MikroTik's typical offering. A configuration nightmare. So, I just never used it. Deploy your radios with correct channel (frequency) spacing, everything back to a switch, and then set passwords. Its a service call to change passwords, what's wrong with that? But I understand others might operate the networks they manage differently.

@pcunite, agreed, CAPsMAN is complex; passing such by when superfluous is rational. I'm just curious enough to do stupid for just 1 radio.

A lesson I have learned... I no longer pass on info about devices I am still "testing".

And testing takes a lot longer after my caps-man misjudgements.

I actually got in with another manufacture who would chase down the bugs I presented

Can you say who?

To the OP, I use MikroTik wireless solutions for clients. However, the biggest job I did was about 20 AP's and in a quiet (RF) environment. I also do not use Capsman. The 20 counts was for coverage, not because they had a lot of wifi clients. But as noted other professionals on the board have issues with them. I expect someday to hit a wall, but until then I deploy because of the environments I serve.

could you list t he devices you use?

hAP ax3 arrived Thursday and retired a LinkSys WRT54GL and WRT54GS today.

hAP ax3 arrived Thursday and retired a LinkSys WRT54GL and WRT54GS today.

WRT54GL... Did you send it to the Smithsonian?

As for the other manufacture...
Cambium Networks

I still struggle with the configurations.

With Ruckus... I blow through the configs and can trouble shoot them just because I have over a decade with them.

cambium I have to set the location on things in 3 places... then I still screw up the time settings.

我有一个啤酒花园直流无线Point of Sales. One AP keeps all the POS devices connected to the 5GHZ radio all over the location.... even with all the ugly bags of water in the way.

2 smaller bars were built on Cambium as direct replacements for the Ruckus that had been there for 7+ years. NO CALLS or complaints since deployment... just like the Ruckus units had managed before.

I put in A couple hundred Ruckus units for all sorts of installs this year so far. And I get a real laugh watching SNAP AV sell them now... after I told them to do it 10 years ago. They told me to F--k off. They were "just fine" selling Senao Networks rebadged with their logos.

Ruckus is now all over Amazon. Crushing the margins... that I don't get part of anyways. But... it allows me to use them more often as I can have the clients buy them directly. Then I can configure something I can set and forget. Hardware issue... Amazon handles that. I get to go back to design, build, deploy, MOVE ON!

When I first started working on Cambium... it was less than Ruckus across the board.
Now after price increases at Cambium and Whoring of Ruckus... RUCKUS COSTS LESS for some hardware builds.

但这WiFi6E软件可选择的广播雷电竞app下载官方版苹果at just under $1000. Ruckus 2x2 2x2 2x2 I think is $1500.

hAP ax3 arrived Thursday and retired a LinkSys WRT54GL and WRT54GS today.

WRT54GL... Did you send it to the Smithsonian?

• Both LinkSys still configured, and powered up but currently sitting idling and unused.
• They've been hardware trouble free all these years. I hate e-waste; would love a new home for them.
• WRT54GL released for 3rd party firmware use; my reason for selection but never got around to doing so.

IMO hAP ax3 WiFi can improve but is good enough for mobile phone, dual Chromecast (audio, TV), PSPgo, PS VIta, all uncritical uses.

• hAP ax3 CPU put it front & center as firewall router platform instead of taxing less suitable CRS309.
• My plan includes RB5009UG+S+IN as firewall router platform when it becomes widely available.

Thanks again for the kind help; I remain ever grateful.