wAP AC (General questions and experience)

pukkita · Mon Oct 31, 2016 7:52 pm

How many wAPs have you deployed? What's the distance between them and the boats? hundreds of meters is not suitable for wAPs, nor is it Omni antennas either.

rgroothuis · Mon Oct 31, 2016 8:48 pm

How many wAPs have you deployed? What's the distance between them and the boats? hundreds of meters is not suitable for wAPs, nor is it Omni antennas either.

Only 1 wAP at the moment for testing purposes. This one is positioned on the jetty in the harbour. I've three other mounting points on the jetty. The setup was originally running 4 Unifi Ubiquiti AP Outdoor https://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-ap-outdoor/ antenna's but the performance is not so good. That is why I replaced one of them with a wAP to build up experience. Those Unifi Ubiquiti are about 450 euro compared to 90 euro for a wAP. And I want to add three to four AP's. This will safe a lot of money. But is the wAP as good as the Unifi Ubiquiti

A jetty is about 100 meters long, the boats are on both sides of the jetty. The next jetty is about 50 meters away from the previous one. And this is the case for about 6 jetties.

pukkita · Tue Nov 01, 2016 2:52 pm

wAPs are conceived as proximity APs, so you should deploy several of them, aiming at placing them not farther than 25-30m, 50m as an absolute maximum from the spot being covered.

Bear in mind mobile devices like smartphones are very limited in Tx power and their internal antennas are very low gain; for communication to happen between two given devices, both devices (wAP AC and mobile device) must be able to "hear" each other.

A diagram or Google Earth screenshot will make things more clear regarding wAP AC needed density. How's Site Spectrum?

rgroothuis · Tue Nov 01, 2016 3:11 pm

A Google maps screenshot is included in this post

Screen Shot 2016-11-01 at 13.59.52.png-2.pdf

harbour2.jpg

The red stars are 4 locations at which I've the Unifi Ubiquiti AP Outdoor AP's and I want to replace them with wAP's
The blue circles are 3 locations at which I want to add additional wAP's to extend the WIFI coverage.

Why do the AP's need to be a maximum of 50 meters from each other? There are not wireless communicating with each other. All the AP's in the harbour are connected via ethernet cables.

Would this be a good solution to have a good WIFI coverage? 7 wAP's in the harbour?

FYI, a jetty is about 100 meters long.

pukkita · Tue Nov 01, 2016 3:34 pm

Why do the AP's need to be a maximum of 50 meters from each other? There are not wireless communicating with each other. All the AP's in the harbour are connected via ethernet cables.

wAPs are conceived to deploy in high density, tuning down power to provide coverage to nearby customers, without interferring with other nearby wAPs in the same channel; remember there's only 3 non overlapping channels in 2.4GHz spectrum.

There's another reason: water. You want the less "reflections", the better, so the less power, the better.

Would this be a good solution to have a good WIFI coverage? 7 wAP's in the harbour?

A harbor is a tricky scenario to provide WiFi coverage... you'll had to deploy one wAP, start playing with lowering Tx Power and test actual throughput with an average smartphone in terms of wireless performance (Apple devices aren't) for its effective coverage area (don't rely on the phone's signal levels), then extrapolate for the needed number of wAPs.

rgroothuis · Tue Nov 01, 2016 3:40 pm

Thanks for the feedback. It is not as simple as I was hoping for.

Interesting thing is that at the beginning of the jetty I've a Mikrotik SXT2 and at the end of the jetty (about 100 meters) I still have wifi signal on an Apple Mac Book Pro. I was impressed by this. Instead of selecting wAP's is isn't it a a good idea/solution to put SXT2 at the beginning and end of each jetty? Any thoughts?

Regarding reflecting of water there is probably also a lot of influence of the masts of the sailing boats.

pukkita · Tue Nov 01, 2016 4:14 pm

SXT2 has a Sector antenna, using several of those place strategically (remember, there are only 3 non overlapping channels) of those maybe you could cover the entire harbor, but remember smartphones need close range.

Again, don't use a macbook as a reference testing device, but an average (read: cheapo) smartphone, you have to take into account the worst possible scenario, unless you will only provide service to laptops.

Choosing between low-count, long range Sectors vs high-count, near range wAPs depends on the services you are going to provide (bandwidth), expected simultaneous users, Dual band coverage, budget, etc. There are lots of aspects to consider.

I'd contact a Consultant, you'll end up actually saving money by hitting the nail on the first hit.

ik3umt · Thu Nov 03, 2016 4:17 pm

Just arrived three today

From what I've understood, they come with a default AP configuration with firewalled ethernet (no management) and no encryption on wireless.
If powered-up with reset button pressed they boot in CAP mode with management capability on ethernet.
If I want a zero-configuration routerboard, I have to connect in default AP mode via wireless and push the "remove configuration" button on first time window.
A "system reset-configuration" command in either "zero-configuration" or "CAP" mode will force Wap into preconfigured AP mode.

Do you confirm this ?

Thu Nov 03, 2016 5:10 pm

/system reset-configuration no-defaults=yes
to get no config.

ik3umt · Thu Nov 03, 2016 5:59 pm

/system reset-configuration no-defaults=yes
to get no config.

Fine, Thank you
Is there a "system reset-configuration" argument to get the CAP mode ??

scampbell · Tue Nov 08, 2016 11:11 am

Thanks for your feedback, that is really appreciated.

The area I need to cover is a harbour of about 120 x 260 meters. In the harbour their are a lot of boats (obviously) with masts (sailboats) as wel as metal boats. The requirement is that there is good WIFI reception inside the boat. Cabling is not really an issue, I can relatively simple get cabling at all the different locations in the harbour. Do you have any suggestion on how to approach this challenge?

Regarding the pole construction, I'm aware of picture in the brochure, also I've a wAP under test at the moment. The wAP is connected against the metal pole and I'm afraid that that disturbs the WIFI signal strength. Therefore I was wondering if there is a different construction available, that you can buy, to connect the wAP on a pole without this losing signal problem.

Fabricate a mount on top of the pole from plastic or fibreglass so no metal "shadow" ?

Or perhaps just a standoff from the pole ?

For sure the pole will cast a shadow in the wireless if it's mounted hard against the
wAP

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

pukkita · Wed Nov 09, 2016 11:55 am

/system reset-configuration no-defaults=yes
to get no config.
Fine, Thank you
Is there a "system reset-configuration" argument to get the CAP mode ??

You can create a .rsc file, and select it to be loaded after reset-configuration, e.g (for a dual band wAP ac):

/interface wireless cap
set discovery-interfaces=ether1 enabled=yes interfaces=wlan1,wlan2

You can also use reset to turn devices into CAP mode, see RouterBoot.

It can be tricky at first, but once you get the reset button press timing is the fastest way to turn to CAP mode.

meanmachine · Sat Nov 19, 2016 1:40 am

Hi Guys

does anybody have any idea on how many clients can one wAP ac support for some normal internet usage? (1-2Mbit per device)
almost 100% are mobile phones in this case.
I'm looking for the deployment for around 50-70 clients

Thanks

Makoto · Sat Dec 10, 2016 11:28 am

Hi,

can wap ac be used in 5Ghz for client and 2,4 ghz for AP mode ?

MartijnVdS · Sat Dec 10, 2016 6:19 pm

Hi,

can wap ac be used in 5Ghz for client and 2,4 ghz for AP mode ?

Yes. You can configure both radios independently.

beetlejuice81 · Wed Feb 08, 2017 4:42 pm

Hy.

I'm looking for a switch POE Gigabit 8/16/24 Port compatible with Wap AC (8 AP).

Are these products compatible with AP?

- Tplik TL-SG3424P
- Ubiquiti TS-8-PRO
- Linksys LGS124P

Any suggestion would be appreciated.

Thank you.

Thu Feb 09, 2017 3:15 pm

I'm looking for a switch POE Gigabit 8/16/24 Port compatible with Wap AC (8 AP).

Check this wiki page out.

beetlejuice81 · Thu Feb 09, 2017 3:24 pm

I'm looking for a switch POE Gigabit 8/16/24 Port compatible with Wap AC (8 AP).
Check this wiki page out.

Thank you!

troffasky · Sun Apr 23, 2017 12:33 pm

af/at/passive are all supported
http://i.mt.lv/routerboard/files/wAP_ac ... 143210.pdf

Could you update this page accordingly?:

https://routerboard.com/RBwAPG-5HacT2HnD {,-BE}

Just says "PoE in 802.3at" [as do the websites of the usual vendors I have checked].

wAP AC (General questions and experience)

Re: wAP AC (General questions and experience)

Re: wAP AC (General questions and experience)

Re: wAP AC (General questions and experience)

Re: wAP AC (General questions and experience)

Re: wAP AC (General questions and experience)

Re: wAP AC (General questions and experience)

Re: wAP AC (General questions and experience)

Re: wAP AC (General questions and experience)

Re: wAP AC (General questions and experience)

Re: wAP AC (General questions and experience)

wAP AC (General questions and experience)

Re: wAP AC (General questions and experience)

Re: wAP AC (General questions and experience)

Re: wAP AC (General questions and experience)

Re: wAP AC (General questions and experience)

Re: wAP AC (General questions and experience)

Re: wAP AC (General questions and experience)

Re: wAP AC (General questions and experience)

Re: wAP AC (General questions and experience)

Who is online