5GHz Wi-Fi frequencies in Russia - cAP ac

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

Hi everyone. I am setting up two cAP ac’s in an office, and I need them to be managed by CAPsMAN. This takes place in a Russian airport, and since it’s an airport, we are contractually obligated to only use frequencies specified by airport authorities. They allocated us 5805 MHz frequency.

The problem is, when I set country to “russia” (or “russia2” or “russia3”), I cannot set frequency to 5805 MHz. It is not in the drop-down list, and when I enter it manually, I’m getting “bad frequency” error. I tried all possible values for extension channels. The frequencies in the drop-down list only go up to 5600 or something.

I checked, and 5650-5850 MHz range is legal for indoor use in Russia since 2016 (link in Russian for those interested). Before that, this range was only legal to be used on airplanes flying above 3000 meters. So it seems country settings in RouterOS are outdated (I’m using v 6.44.6, latest long-term release).

I found two workarounds, both of them unsatisfactory.

  1. I tried all possible country values, and not a single one allows me to set frequency to 5805, except “debug”. However, in “debug” the tx power seems to be limited to 5 dBi, no matter the tx power setting.
  2. Also I am able to set the frequency to 5805 MHz by using Superchannel. However, there seems to be no way to enable Superchannel from CAPsMAN, only at AP itself.

Any help would be appreciated!

2

If I try to add channel 5805 in CAPsMAN it works without any problems (country set to Netherlands):

/caps-man channel
name=“channel1” frequency=5805 control-channel-width=20mhz band=5ghz-n/ac extension-channel=disabled

3

Weird that it allows to set frequency to 5805 MHz with netherlands set as country:

[ u@r ] /interface wireless> info country-info netherlands
ranges: 2402-2482/b,g,gn20,gn40(20dBm)
2417-2457/g-turbo(20dBm)
5170-5250/a,an20,an40,ac20,ac40,ac80,ac160,ac80+80(23dBm)/passive,indoor
5170-5330/a,an20,an40,ac20,ac40,ac80,ac160,ac80+80(20dBm)/dfs,passive,indoor
5250-5330/a,an20,an40,ac20,ac40,ac80,ac160,ac80+80(20dBm)/dfs,passive,indoor
5490-5710> /a,an20,an40,ac20,ac40,ac80,ac160,ac80+80(27dBm)/dfs,passive
5190-5310/a-turbo(20dBm)/dfs
5180-5300/a-turbo(20dBm)/dfs
5520-5680/a-turbo(27dBm)/dfs,passive
5510-5670/a-turbo(27dBm)/dfs,passive
902-927/b,g,g-turbo,gn20,gn40(30dBm)

Clearly 5805 MHz is outside any of allowed frequency ranges for netherlands.

The same command for countries russia, russia2 and russia3 all show alowed channels in wanted range:

5755-5815/a,an20,an40,ac20,ac40,ac80,ac160,ac80+80(20dBm)/outdoor

But then, if airport authorities set you the particular frequency to use, you can always set country to no_country_set … it has even wider “permitted” frequency band.

4

@mkx: strange indeed…I only tried to add it as channel, didn’t try to provision it to a cap.

5

@mkx thank you for your reply and for posting the output of that command. You have pointed me in the right direction.

Everything worked when I set “installation” to “outdoor” or “any”.

It was set to “indoor” before, since its an office, and because 5650-5850 range in Russia is explicitly allowed only for indoor usage. So the frequency list in RouterOS probably still needs updating.

6

I seem to remember discussion about meaning of indoor v.s. outdoor v.s. any … and I think the response from MT was that as outdoor setting is mostly more restrictive (after all, limitations mostly exist to protect some higher-priority users from interference and outdoor installations have farther reach and thus higher potential to interfere) and hence for indoor installations one could select any instead of indoor and most probably still remain within legal limits.

But I guess that regulatory texts describing allowed usage are sometimes somehow not entirely exact and are thus bound to different interpretations … in this case the one with better (read: more expensive) lawyer winst the argument :wink:

7

On “any”, versus “indoor”, “outdoor” …

Some MKT devices now (6.44 and up???) only allow “outdoor” as setting , and limit therefore the use to only outdoor frequencies.
E.G. : SXTsq 5 ac, Omnitik 5 ac
Setting “any” or “indoor” is not possible on those devices ( for European countries at least )

Klembord-2.jpg
So your mileage may vary depending on device and ROS version.
This is not a problem here in this topic, as “outdoor” or “any” must be selected for 5805MHz. Only a general information.
I have no knowledge of a device that is limited to “indoor” only.