I’ve been using Mikrotik for more than ten years, and from my experience, I can say nothing can beat it at this price level. Of course, the downside is you need to learn the Mikrotik way, but as an old geek, I’m enjoying it.
So I’m reconstructing my house from scratch, which means I will design the entire wire and wifi network, including / servers/switches /routers/ups …etc. I plan to use the new hAP ax2 and ax3 for my wifi. The good part is I will design the cables, and the plan is to connect everything over wires. The idea is to put a couple of Hap AX devices in CAPsMAN and create mesh networking. I want to be sure the entire house of 2 floors, additional building one floor, and the yard is covered. So I will start with 2 Hap AX and extent.
I was wondering if they will release Audience with Wifi6 but still nothing.
What you guys think:
Audience/RB4011 using new wifiwave2
You can move the devices around till you get best placement
Hap AX2 / 3 - with WIFI6 support
Mount on the sealing without any chance of movement but i will test them before
I know there is a little buzz over WIfi6 and stable 5GHz is totally enough but back in days I choose the Hap AC move to 5GHz and 5 years later still don’t need a cable in my house, so I invest in the feature. I work form home a lot, so network must be stable.
If you have such an opportunity to create everything from scratch, I recommend abandoning the idea of using a router with built-in wifi. And use only wireless access points. And put the rest of the network equipment somewhere in a separate place. And, if possible, use another manufacturer as a supplier of equipment for wifi.
If you still decide to use wireless equipment from this manufacturer, I recommend you wait with the purchase. Most likely, a number of new equipment will be released with support for wifi 6. It is likely that the new equipment will not be compatible with the current equipment in terms of centralized control. I mean the new version of CAPsMAN.
I very much agree. Its taken several years for my Audience to get up to WiFi5 Performance.
Going to Wave2 driver killed a lot of the functions that I wanted the Tik radios for. Particularly the functions I built into caps-man ~2018 that I had to abandon due to “the amount of interference in my environment”.
This was Confirmed by Mikrotik and I was promised an update when they had a fix… been waiting since 2019.
i think is better use a exclusive device for routing without-wifi, a RB5009 will be perfect and will work well as includes a switch, if you use the RB5009 Poe Version (RB5009UPr+S+IN) you can power your Wi-Fi Accesspoints direclty from it
Hap AX2 / 3 - with WIFI6 support
Mount on the sealing without any chance of movement but i will test them before
If you dont matter the big antennas on hAP AX3 i think is a good idea
try to not mix old equipment with new, looks like new Wi-Fi AX models will be managed independently from old equipment so start from scratch with new modells looks good
Given that the ax2 model may have problems with heat dissipation and because of this, the processor frequency in this model is reduced - I would recommend the ax3 model. which has no such problems.
I’d be waiting for cAP XL ac, but an AX version( who knows when ).
That said the cAP XL ac has about 3dB better RX ( on my personal tests just looking at noise floor in a RF quiet environment ), and its got 3db+ more tx power by default over a classic cAP ac too( adjustable of course for country rules ! ).
I look after a campus area with about 60 AP’s( all ceiling mounted ) and by far thats the best way to have it in business and in your house too.
I have just 1x cAP ac at home on the ceiling and its great.
The other side of the coin is how fast is your internet / nas home server that your wifi devices will be accessing. Not much point if your using ax with say less than 10 devices at home all pulling down massive data.
Thank you all for the recommendations. Here are some updates from my side:
The plan for the house is AirBnB / rent ~ 4 bedrooms ,so lets say 10-15 people at full capacity
Internet is optical 1GBps, one of the best provides just with media converter no crappy hardware from their side
I’m sys admin since 2000 ,so at some point I could build everything with NetBSD / Linux / PfSense and use some good hardware like “Protectli” https://eu.protectli.com/product-comparison/
One of the ideas is to put a small 6/8U ( could be bigger) 19in rack in the basement and route entire network there ( that is main plan )
I could put some small hardware for routing - Back in days we were using old computers but they are heavy, noisy , use a ton of power. I’m very experineced in that.
Put some AP’s which will use eth cable to the basement but i want to have WIFI6.
Physically I will not be in the house and i want to make it work flawlesly but i dont need ton of compute power.
Still considering some NAS ( self build ) to use it for some music service but not sure if i will do that. At home i have Synology and its running 5 years without any issue.
So at the end I’m saying i can build everything by my self because I’m a geek and im searching other geeks ideas how they will approach it.
I decide to use cAP XL ceiling APs for my WIFI, and I’m waiting for the new version.
For router still considering Netgate vs. Mikrotik vs Protectli vault
Mikrotik - Im sure it’s going to work as a charm, and there is no other company to beat the price.
Netgate - I love FreeBSD and open community, and supporting is my driving force, but for Europe, the price is high
Protectli vault - Maybe the best between Mikrotik and Netgate, but people complain they fail without a reason when you start to dive deep, unsure if the new HW is updated.
I was thinking of just 1 WAN port, but these days I overview the 2 ISP ideas for which I will need 2 WANs. The house will have ~6 bedrooms lets say 12 - 15 people and the internet is 1GB ,so another provider with 100Mpbs for backup I think is going to be enough.
RB3011 is pretty outdated now. It was a truly amazing device back when it first came out, but it’s outdated never the less. It’ll barely route at 1Gbps. There are a much more powerful devices available now, such as RB4011 or RB5009. The later being much more advanced than the former one and I guess a true future-proof solution. Although they are both a tad more expensive than RB3011.
Thanks for the feedback. I’m overviewing, and I’m 100% sure the RB3011 will do the job. I’m sure the 4011 and 5009 are better devices from a technical point of view. Here are some key things:
It will be Airbnb, so regular home internet is between 50-100Mpbs, and it’s working fine. I plan to have 1000 Mbps because the provider is rock solid, simple optical cable with a media convertor without any shitty ISP equipment and its cheap.
I don’t plan to route 1GB between VLANs now, so routing nearly 1GB at full speed is not mandatory its the minimum from that ISP provider. It’s up to me if i want to use an entire band or put a cheap home router and leave it at 100.
I know how to buy 50$ or 5000$ equipment and make it work. I can do it with pure Linux or FreeBSD. I set up many old 2nd hand computers working as routes, so at the end of the day, that is also an option which is the last thing I’m going to do. My Mikrotik is rock solid maybe more than 4-5y. never had a single issue every time i have some network problem the router is the last thing I blame. That does not mean that my RPi home automation is not been working for 4 years without a single issue. Is a matter of decision right now. Do I want to invest 400$ or 180$ in a router?
As Wi-Fi nowadays is mostly used, I recommend planning it accordingly. 5GHz band should be used, as the 2,4GHz band can have interference from quite a lot of sources, so that means APs should be deployed quite dense. A good, strong signal makes all the difference in stability and reliability. Mikrotik is cheap, so I recommend adding one AP per room - living room, bedrooms, kitchen and bathrooms if needed. Take into account needs and realistic use cases. When you have APs planned out, do wiring plan and racks (L2 connection points). And last, add router - 5009 should be fine, but look at your needs.
So just about everything is wifi only… And you would never buy an expensive one. Yeah… That’s smart.
There is no way in earth I would stick an Audience in a lecture hall. Or one of my beer gardens. Or any of the hundreds of other high density installs I do.
I’m not sure that highlited part is true yet. This forum has plenty of threads about issues with hAP ax2 … and none about issues with Audience. My own Audience works flawless ever since I purchased it. It came with factory software version 6.45.8, I installed 7.1.2 during unboxing, runs wifiwave2 from first minute and is rock-solid ever since.
Yes, hAP ax2 has potential to get better than Audience (perhaps, Audience has 4x4 MIMO on upper part of 5GHz band so it has potential for MU-MIMO while hAP ax2 doesn’t), but currently I wouldn’t say hAP ax2 is a better buy than Audience.
Im absolutely convinced that AX2 is better buy than Audience. I have hAP AX2 with 300Mbit internet connection, QOS - CAKE, Wireguard, Zerotier, and it is rock solid so far.
It has new WIFI 6 standard, there is big step between WiFi 5 and WiFi 6 it is not only about speed. MU-MIMO, OFDMA, Beamforming, Target Wake Time, BSS, 1024QAM.
It has modern 64 bit CPU and it is more powerfull than IPQ-4019.
It has more RAM, 256MB vs 1GB.
It has more LAN ports. 2 vs 5
It has 2x2 MU-MIMO on WiFi 6 standard
It cost less
There is no question that AX2 is better buy than Audience.
I also have a suggestion that I believe will work extremely well for You … its the TP-Link EHP660HD … based on my experience the EHP660HD runs circles over the Mikrotik AX3 or Audience - in every way shape and form - and I heartily endorse the RB5009 as the one to get …
mkx which threads are you referring to? AFAIK hAP ax2 works like a charm. I use it personally too. If you have no specific report made, don’t spread such false info then.
