Hi,
I’m looking to upgrade my home wifi system. Currently I’m already using an RB1100AHx2 which managementwise is a dream so also choosing Mikrotik for wifi seems the logical choice. Looking at the various Routerboard and interface options however I’m in doubt what would be the best combination for my scenario so I hope perhaps you guys could confirm my thinking direction, correct me or provide me with any alternatives I might haven’t thought of.
I’ll try my best to be as complete as possible. This could get lengthy so please bear with me or just skip over to the questions at the bottom. Thanks in advance.
The situation
Currently I’m using two Engenius ECB350 for 802.11b/g/n in WDS transmitting at 20dBm with 40MHz bandwidth, one downstairs in the meter cupboard where also my router and NAS is sitting (eliminating fannoise in the rest of my house), one upstairs in my study. Both APs are also connected through gigabit ethernet creating a mesh.
This has grown over time. As I rent the place I’m not too keen on pulling cables and the electrical system is too old to have a stable network over the powerlines. Bassically I’m relying on wifi to have a network in the house.
I’ve started out with a Netgear WNDR3800 dual band router. Unfortunately, while the house is not that big and one AP should be sufficient, the location of the meter cupboard is not very at a very favourable nor central position in the house. Due to the layout of my house the signal from the meter cupboard to the study is traveling through the wall at a very sharp angle thus traveling a large distance through the wall and losing a lot of power, especially at the 5GHz band.
I thus opted for a strong 2.4 GHz AP to have less signalloss through the wall however within the 2.4GHz band there is no place place in the spectrum where I have block of six channels for myself to have 40MHz without interference (nothing under ca -70dBm in the study against -30 dBm signal). In a final effort trying to come up with a good wifi solution I’ve since opted for two APs at a lower power setting linked through WDS. While the coverage is now OK, the interference still causes the speed being slow (not even half of the theoretical 300Mbps). This causes issues issues with e.g. streaming HD on the HTPC in the living room which translates in the occasional buffering…
With the cable now upstairs in the study it also eliminates the need for an accesspoint at in the meter cupboard and perhaps have a 5GHz AP at a more central location. The only risk I can foresee is that the omnidirectional antennas aren’t serving my HTPC properly from the study as it is directly above the living room.
Requirements
As the 5GHz band is empty (really, inSSIDer shows an empty graph), I don’t have to travel from the meter cupboard anymore but can choose a more central location at the upstairs floor and pretty much all my equipment that would require large bandwidth has a 5GHz wifi card, I looking for a 5GHz solution with a 2.4GHz as a compatibility option (guests, old laptop, mobile phones).
Managementwise, I’m opting to replace the Engenius wifi hardware with Mikrotik so I can do everything through Winbox. Economically it would be nice if I have to only buy one AP to serve it all. So dual band has my preference.
Futureproofwise it would be nice if I can expand the network to a mesh should the single AP proof to be inadequate or when I move to a bigger place (which in time will happen).
Options
Looking at the Routerboard hardware, there are two series that spark my interest as they have a gigabit interface and the required slots to cater for another interface for the dual band i’m opting for:
-RB433GL
-RB435G
-RB912UAG
However looking more closely at the RB433GL, unfortunately the GL doesn’t come with the serial port (which has saved my ass in the past). It also has miniPCI instead of miniPCIe which provide limited options for the powerful cards. I don’t need the bigger CPU or RAM as the routing will all be done by the RB1100AHx2. Finally with the board already being $60 more expensive AND requiring an aditional miniPCI card as it doesn’t have any wifi chip on board I think I can cross this one off my list.
The RB435G does come with the serial port, but at the expense of yet another $60 more compared to the RB433 while still leaving me with less powerful radios. At this rate, I can buy two RB912s for the the price of one RB435.
For the RB912UAG I notice it comes with two models: one with 2.4GHz (hence needing a 5GHz miniPCIe interface to offer dual band) and another with 5GHz onboard (needing a 2.4GHz miniPCIe interface). They are both dual chain and rated at 1000mW. Looking at Mikrotik’s miniPCIe card offering, at 500mW the strongest dual chain 5GHz miniPCIe interface is the R11e-5HnD only rated at half of the RB912UAG-2HnD . While that would translate to 27dBm which most likely be enough for my situation, choosing the RB912UAG-5HnD with e.g. R11e-2HPnD would give more potential for the same amount of money than vise versa.
I do however wonder whether the CA411-711 enclosure allows for the four antennas needed to support to two dual chains. In addition as I currently don’t max out the dual channel bandwith for 2.4GHz, I wonder whether I would be better off leaving it with a single chain for 2.4 GHz.
Questions
- As I have no experience with routerboard without serial console, in case of e.g. a failed RouterOS would I be able to recover a RB912UAG board through the reset button and using NetInstall through the ethernet port?
- Would the RB912UAG-5HnD + R11e-2HPnD would give me the best potential for an AP in terms of wifi throughput and transmission power (regardsless whether I would actually be using the power) or are there reasons to choose differently?
3a. Can I adapt the CA411-711 case to accomodate 4 MMCX anntennas or should I run the 2.4 GHz card in single chain and leave the auxilary chain disconnected?
3b. I know I should run the card without antenna or dummy load. Can I safely just have the auxilary channel disconnected? Is the chain turned off by default so I don’t burn out the radio at first boot? If so, which one is the aux (can’t seem to find the board layout)? - Does using RouterOS allow me to create a mesh network with any piece Mikrotik hardware (provided they are on the same band and reception conditions to establish a physical connection are met) or does it pose additional hardware requirements?
- Anything else I’m missing?
Regards, Magchiel