I’m setting up a few of the CAP AP access points that I purchased off of Amazon a few days back (MikroTik cAP ac Dual-band 802.11ac Wireless Access Point (RBcAPGi-5acD2nD-US)).
Each one of these will have an ethernet cable ran to it, so they don’t need to communicate between each other. My 4011 will be handling all of the work.
I’m encountering some issues however.
When I set it to home AP dual, I can set up a network to broadcast about both 2g and 5g, but I get no internet access.
and
When I set it to wisp AP, I get the internet, but can only broadcast at 5g, which makes it limited in its range across the house.
and
When I attempt to set up CAP, I fail miserably. Mainly because I don’t know anything about it, but the walkthroughs said to use it… however.. I don’t have integrated wifi to set as a wlan interface to begin with… so… I don’t think thats an option for me (but I really don’t know)…
I guess my best option would be to use the home ap dual, or maybe the mesh (I dunno), and attempt to get this thing broadcasting both bands to make sure we can get wifi everywhere in the home, but I am not sure what I need to do to get it to have internet? The thing I notice about the home AP, is that it removes the bridge option that WISP provides. This seems to help a lot. For some reason the home options make me set up a local network on it, which is kind of silly since I’m using my 4011 to handle that sort of stuff.
For the last couple months, I have used old routers as my wifi broadcasters, leaving the dhcp up to my 4011, and they just bridge as access points… they worked good, but they’re ugly, and these APs from mikrotik look real nice.
Yes, why didnt you ask about recommended wifi units before purchasing.
I no longer recommend the capacs, they will not be able to handle the wifi updates MT is working and the range and stability of the capacs are questionable.
I changed to the TPLINK eap245 for a similar priced but stable and dependable unit.
I have two capacs still, in non-critical areas, and set them up in wisp mode because I like the bridge concept.
You can use your RB4011 as CAPsMAN and set APs as CAPs. This tutorial fits your use case, if you have default configuration on RB4011 or close to it, you can just skip to step 2: https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:Simple_CAPsMAN_setup
I actually went through this one. I can do all the steps until I get to step #3, and it wants me to set up the cap on the wireless tables. I have no wlan, so I have no interface to select when I try to enable it. Thats what I’m trying to figure out
So, when going through this, I have everything set up on the router, and I just went through the steps in the walkthrough on one of the devices. Its still not showing up in my router’s cAP devices? I’m going to reset the config, and start from scratch on it. The quick set had added a lot more stuff than what was showing in that walk through.
Are their any recommendations for getting these things to show up in winbox by just plugging into ether1 to the 4011? Last night I had to plug ether 2 into the router, and then run another line to give it power in ether 1. Then I was able to log into the device and configure it.
Right now, the one that I just reset, is now not showing up in the list of mac address devices in winbox. The other 2 are still there, but I didn’t reset them. The reset one is showing up however on the device list within the router, it has an ip assigned to it, but I can’t access it through this ip.
These devices are a little strange off the rip.
Just to mention: for CAPsMAN configuration you need wired connection between router and cAP
I have all 3 of them currently wired in. One being powered from port 10, and the other 2 are on 8 and 9 with POE injected.
I was able to get it to reset into cap mode. It would only work while in the boot up process after putting power into it. I was trying to do it after it had been running for a while. Maybe it should work then too, I don’t know, I just know it didn’t work for me lol.
So, its in CAP mode now, but, its not showing in my cap devices, and its not receiving any of the configuration that I set up for it. It is broadcasting 2 generic mikrotik SSIDs but not the SSId I specified within the CAPS configuration.
I think I am just going to forget about cAP mode and go with the Home Dual AP.
The problem I am seeing with the HDAP is this;
If I have an ethernet cable going from my router to ether2 on the cAP AC, then my connected devices can obtain an ip address.
If I have an ethernet cable going from my router to ether1 on the cAP AC, then my devices will not connect because they can not obtain an ip address.
So what I need to figure out, is how to get ether 1 to act the same way as ether 2.
Ether 1 has the POE, which means its going to need a cable plugged into it regardless. I would much rather only run one ethernet cable to each device than 2.
The instructions for the cAP AC claim that “By default, the device is configured as a wireless access point, with the first ethernet port configured as a DHCP client, and the second interface bridged together with the wireless interface. A DHCP servicer is configured on the bridged interface.”
I’m assuming I need to change the default ether 1 to act more like ether 2…
When I reset it, and logged back into it, the dialogue box that popped up specifically said it was in caps mode and showed me the settings for caps. It still did not show up in the capsman interface on my router.
Currently I have both ether 1, and ether 2 plugged into my router.
I added Ether 1 as a port on the bridge to see if that would make a difference. This is what occurs.
If I have home dual AP quick set on, it disables the ether 1 on the bridge.
If I then enable ether 1 on the bridge, it changes the configuration in quick set to WISP AP.
So, being that I am not all that fluent in networking, I am not sure what the next step would be.
The goal, ultimately, is to get dual home AP to work, with the ether 1 port connected to the router.
Please post your CAPsMAN configuration. If I remember correctly, devices in cap mode somehow only work if a CAPsMAN controller is available in the network.
Thanks for the response. Ill get that for you this evening. I’m in the process of moving my main pc, and can’t get into winbox atm, by this afternoon I should have everything set back up and will post it up.
Do you know if caps will dual stream 2g and 5g by default? or do I have to create channels or something?
Please don’t quote posts entirely - quote selectively and don’t quote if you’re replying to the most recent post.
CAPsMAN will provision radios wlan1 and wlan2 based on provision rules based on mac address or hw mode (e.g. gn/ac).
In the documented example provision is not filtered so both radios (2GHz and 5GHz) will be provisioned with the same SSID and datapath.
If they are enabled in the ap, but they will be (and correct bridge will be selected) if you reset the ap to cap mode.
