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gius64
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Auto frequency scan on MikroTik devices

Sat Nov 21, 2015 7:09 pm

Hello,
I just saw a video of Ubiquiti products:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPEx_dFXM1g

Their "magic" system scans the frequency both from AP and CPE and suggest you the higher efficiency channel you can use, and this seems to me a super usefull technology in Point to multipoint.

Will MikroTik have this technology in the future?
I also see in MikroTik you have to choose Channel Width to a fixed channel. It would be usefull to have a 5/10/20/40 selector, so you can move the bandwidth used for a single AP directly from the AP!
 
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docmarius
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Re: Auto frequency scan on MikroTik devices

Sat Nov 21, 2015 8:00 pm

IMHO, on MT, if you set the frequency of the AP to auto (just scroll completely down in the channel list in Winbox) it will find the best available frequency (behaving just as described).

Also you can choose modes like "20/40MHz Ce", which means auto selection between 20 and 40MHz width with extension channel above (or below for those with eC). On AC products you can have things like "20/40/80MHz eeeC", which will auto-select 20/40 or 80MHz BW with extension corresponding to the group of letters.

I have not actually seen an AP which allows 5/10/20 automatic selection...

So your requests are actually available, with the exception of 5/10 automatic selection (20/40/80 working), which you will probably not find on any standard WiFi equipment (Ubiquity included, as in the picture from a Nanostation M5).
UBNT_BW_selection.jpg
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gius64
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Re: Auto frequency scan on MikroTik devices

Sun Nov 22, 2015 3:40 am

Yes, you're right, choosing auto it will choose the "best" available channel, but you have to admit that Ubiquiti's "magic" tool seems to be very handy. It's similar to "Frequency Usage" from MikroTik, but it scans also the CPE side, and it's impossible to have this using MikroTik devices at this time. You scan only AP side.

I did a similar thing by using API and doing scans from both sides in each place, but it's my personal solution... I think a tool like Ubiquiti did it's very helpful in differents situations. Spectral-Scan is useful in MikroTik but it doesn't do the same as Ubiquiti and it doesn't work with AC equipment at this time (so you're limited to scan and frequency usage :? ).

About 5/10/20/40/80 automatic selection you're right, it doesn't exist on standard WiFi equipment, but I think it could be useful: you can configure all CPEs the same, and you can move from an AP to another even if they have different bandwidth. Maybe MikroTik could introduce it at first before other vendors :D
 
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docmarius
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Re: Auto frequency scan on MikroTik devices

Sun Nov 22, 2015 9:02 am

Coming a little to the technical challenge of this:
In order to do a frequency scan, you need to disconnect temporary, scan, and then reconnect. And this takes some time (at least in the order of some seconds), time during which the remote party in inaccessible (if you use Ubiquiti M series, check how "Site survey" on a remote device is working, while you use WiFi to connect to it). And then it takes again time to reconnect. On a country setting with a lot of channels, this makes the approach on a single radio device unpractical, taking sometimes 1 minute to complete, if it ever does.
As I understood from UBNT's Airfiber series implementation, they have an ASIC in their high end devices which does this spectral scan in the background parallel to the normal WiFi functions without disconnecting the slave device (speak CPE) to allow such functions without interrupting the data connection. Using such an special architecture makes of course sense in particular PtP cases, but the equipment costs are high preventing their deployment as regular client CPEs.
Now on an P2MP setup, one can not take in account the opinion of all CPEs since each could have a completely different view about the "best" channel, which changes over time, and you need some kind of arbitration/negociation on the AP to prevent permanent channel hopping. Of course, some main interest slave devices could implement this, while others do not.
One certain thing is that, excluding the ASIC development costs which can be skyrocketing, the actual cost of an ASIC in low numbers (meaning something like 100 000 per year for a few years and a single customer :lol:) will be at least triple the price per piece compared its high volume regular counterpart with millions/year production volumes and a large customer base. On smaller numbers the difference it is even higher because of the fixed costs given by the production line setup (and as I said, excluding the development costs).

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