Ok, so after a lot of false positives and false negatives, I came to the conclusion that my CAPsMAN isn’t broadcasting in the 5G band.
I have two screenshots of Winbox indicating my 5G networks should be broadcasting (as I understand it), but they aren’t.
To show that they are certainly not transmitting, I have a screenshot of my Android running “Wi-Fi Analyzer” and - even better, a HackRF running a scanner - both show nothing whatsoever in the range my AP should be broadcasting.
Anyway, if “running up” doesn’t mean broadcasting, I should point out that they spend most of their time like this - and I can’t ever seem to find my SSID broadcasting in the 5GHz band.
Attached also my /caps-man export hide-sensitive.
Now the question is: how do I get it to work? capsman-config.rsc (1.61 KB)
On the screenshots I see Quickset, forget about quickset (unless you are using it for getting information).
WPA should never ever be used anymore (and MikroTik should get rid of any screenshot using WPA), only use WPA2 and AES only.
Choose your channels (or use lists as mentioned by rushlife), for 80 MHz width you can select:
5180, 5260, 5500, 5580*, 5660, 5745 (* not sure for your country).
Be aware that some channels could take up to 10 minutes (radar detection) before coming available. And…not all clients do support DFS channels.
Why is it that I have to set a list of available channels when using CAPsMAN? If I don’t use CAPsMAN, it automatically used the channels available for the selected country. After enabling CAPsMAN, why do I have to manually set a list of channels? Also, why the hell does it say it’s transmitting while it’s not? Aren’t these bugs?!
As for quickset, it’s too much of a hassle to change between PPPoE and straight DHCP (without authentication) modes, so I just use quickset because of that (I was receiving a technician from my ISP like every week before they found out the problem was in their own network, and I had to keep changing their modem between router mode - for them to check their own stuff, and bridge - for me to get rid of their terrible router).
Thanks for the call on WPA - normally I disable it, but this time I forgot. Probably got reactivated when I used quickset to change the connection mode.
I’ll search for a list of supported channels in my country and if it doesn’t solve my problems, I’ll come back.
Thank you very much again!
(But I still think having to manually define channels for CAPsMAN is a bug!)
From the screenshots above, your capsman has selected invalid channels. Devices will not generally find these non standard channels. We have had this happen sometimes and the result is that only macbook pros are able to connect up to the wireless on the non standard channel and no phones or other laptops or tablets seem to work.
I complained to MikroTik in a support ticket that CAPsMAN will select invalid channels and they have not responded yet. The workaround I have found, if you wish to use auto channels, is to force the extension channel setting to Ceee instead of the default “XXXX”. XXXX works fine when not using CAPsMAN, but when using CAPsMAN sometimes it will choose something like eCee 5660 which won’t work because the 80MHz channel is shifted by 20MHz from where the devices will be searching for it.
Thanks for taking the time to answer, but I think you got it wrong.
It’s not a matter of transmitting in the wrong channel/wrong standard. The HackRF + PortaPack photo shows it’s not even transmitting AT ALL. It’s completely blue (pure noise), whereas any signal should be green. And there’s no signal at all except for my neighbours’ 5G routers in the lower part of the spectrum.
I know the CAPsMAN interface doesn’t have the R beside it, but it won’t show as running with nobody connected. I haven’t actually tested with an RF meter, but with no clients connected it might be in a low power mode where all it does is beacon from time to time and listen for client connections. It could also be that the wrong channel selection is causing it to not transmit at all.
I am saying that the channel selection it is making is invalid (I checked both screenshots to be sure), and that is the only problem I can see. I am not guessing it is invalid, I verified that it is invalid. If you refuse to believe that could possibly be the problem, such that you refuse to even try it, then you don’t really seem to care about fixing your problem.
If you do actually want to fix your problem, try hard setting the extension channel to Ceee, reprovision your radios, and paste what channel selection they have made.
I had tested before with other combinations, but it still didn’t work. But at the time I tried other combinations, I did not check out with the spectrum analyzer.
I tried setting to Ceee as you said, and my phone still doesn’t detect the network. Neither does my Hackintosh.
The spectrum analyzer though, detects some short blips on the primary frequency (it chose 5550/20 and 5660/80 this time) every few seconds. Very faint, very short, kinda semi-randomly spaced in time.
I suspect those are probably beacons. MikroTik has never added support for choosing the beacon interval and that makes me suspect it could potentially be random.
Please export your entire capsman config and paste here, and also show screenshots or copy and paste text of the “current channel” from the status tab of the 5GHz cap interfaces ex:
First off, you have no idea how I’m glad you’re taking the time to help. These forums, Reddit and all, are more like an exercise on self learning. But if nobody had your problem before, you’re screwed.
CAPsMAN status is:
On main router: 5550/20-Ceee/Ac/DP(15dBm)+5660/80/DP(15dBm)
CAP: 5550/20-Ceee/ac/DP(15dBm)+5660/80/DP(15dBm)
Also, if I try to use “CAPs Scanner”, it resets all wireless interfaces (including 2.5GHz). Tried it now and it even crashed (closed) my Winbox.
The secondary-frequency can cause problems for some devices and the main frequency table you have is not correct (ex. 5170 and 5190 are not valid, 5180 is).
The only use for secondary-frequency is if you need more than an 80MHz channel but I think that is not a major concern at the moment given that you are simply trying to get this working.
That is how it was in the beginning (config.rsc is attached in the first post).
I cleared it again and I’m waiting for it to scan for radars because I want to check with the spectrum analyzer (which I didn’t at the time), but I suspect it’ll just beacon at best. It wasn’t working back then.
By the way, I think it’s a bug that the thing is not transmitting and it still shows as “running-ap” in status.
There are quite a few complaints of mine on another thread about - what I think are - bugs. How does one report them? I see no official channel for reporting bugs.
Edit: Yep, not running. No beacons.
Main: 5740/20-Ceee/ac(15dBm)+5570/80/DP(15dBm)
AP: 5740/20-Ceee/ac(15dBm)+5570/80/DP(15dBm)
No, it isn’t exactly the same as how it was in the beginning:
channel.extension-channel=XXXX
In your first post, you had that set. The issue is that I have found that XXXX extension channel can cause major issues when using CAPsMAN but it works fine when not using CAPsMAN. XXXX means randomized Ceee or eCee or eeCe or eeeC. When not using CAPsMAN, the XXXX option seems to properly choose one of those four options depending on the selected frequency, but when using CAPsMAN it has a tendency to select one of the four options that is not compatible with the chosen frequency.
