Capsman: AP Behavior on very basic config

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

Ros 6.49.15
I setup a bunch of wap-ac controlled by Capsman with a very little config:

Mode (ap)
SSID
Country
Datapath
Security

No channel configured.

Once system starts, what’s the philosophy behind frequency selection ?
Having different AP’s with different frequency, is it random or is frequency analyzed and then set ? (per AP ?)

To force a dual-band AP to use a single band, is it enough to configure just that band into Channels section ? (and make AP to load that CFG) , because doing so i seems both bands are still used…

2

Nobody seems to know for sure but most likely there is a scan going on to determine the least used frequency.

If you have multiple devices all starting up at the same time, it can happen they arrive at the same frequency.
I never use auto, I want to decide which frequency gets used.

Provisioning rules determine which radio gets what config.
If there is a specific radio you don’t want to use, a couple of options:

  • don’t provision it
  • provision it as none or disabled (my preference since you can still control things from capsman controller)
  • simply disable that radio so it doesn’t participate at all
3

“Nobody seems to know” is a little unsettling…but yes for few arguments (not so few) you would expect someone of Mikrotik staff at least sometimes comes out and say “it works this way: bla bla bla”

I use provisioning by Identity Regexp so when AP identity matches it uses cfgX

On cfgX I declare a channel like this:

/caps-man channel
add band=2ghz-b/g/n name=2g4

but 5GHz band seems to be used anyway…
Am I wrong on something ?

4

Depends on your config.
Do you have a default provisioning rule being used ?

Can you export capsman part of your config and post it in between [__code] quotes ?

5

Does the above really make sense to you?
All you do here is set the band, not the channels.
Ie, you wnat to set:

frequency=2412,2437,2462



How do you handle this, a config per radio?
How do you handle DFS events? Or do you choose non DFS channels?

6

Yes and mostly yes (if possible to avoid, I will avoid DFS. If not, then some downtime is expected).

7

Well... I supposed declaring the only band it behaves like in normal AP choosing band and leaving the frequency=AUTO
And I thought as well , declaring a 2.4GHz band and not the 5 GHz one would shut this last one.
Maybe I'm wrong...... in this case I'm looking for a Capsman provisioning config capable of shutting down the desired band
Or better, have a Capsman provisioning config capable of setup a SSID per radio band, i.e.:
for AP named AP01 use 2.4GHz radio with SSID MY2G4WIFI and the 5GHz radio with SSID MY5GWIFI, any idea ?

8

Provisioning, play with HW supported modes.
Or
Use radio MAC address. Then you’re 100% sure what will happen. I prefer this approach.