I have a setup of one MikroTik Router and multiple cAP AX Accespoint.
My setup consists of one WiFi Configuration and one WiFi Provisioning. This works well and the SSID’s appear on all Accespoints.
But I’m unsure how to perform “fine-tuning” now.
E.g. how to set 2Ghz to 20Mhz and 5Ghz to 80Mhz, how to select per Accespoint Channels and things like that.
Also recommended settings for these parameters would be nice.
It is better if you separate the 2 and 5 GHz configurations; this is the best approach for MikroTik.
For fine-tuning, I recommend:
Enable Multicast Enhance
Enable Station Roaming
Enable RRM and WNM
Create a neighbor group for roaming (ft and Station Roaming has to be active for it to work)
Enable FT and FT over DS
You can define multiple channels in the Channel Config tab; the APs will then choose the best channel for themselves. Additionally, it is recommended to add a reselect time (range) so the APs can automatically switch channels to avoid Wi-Fi issues. However, this depends on the environment. You cant set it for each AP seperately.
Do not use DFS channels; in MikroTik you can skip them by setting Skip DFS Channels to all
Nice and complete respons from @SpeedIUNSC.
In addition, here some documentation:
In regards to DFS, I prefer to use as it adds a lot of bandwidth (especially when living in the center of a village).
Thanks for your very comprehensive list of recommended settings!
I think my understanding problem lies in the 2 and 5 GHz configuration separation. I think you mean using two configurations with the same SSID.
But how can I apply the 2GHz config to just 2GHz radios and vice-versa?
Ah, I see, supported bands setting in WiFi Provisioning!
By different options:
Indeed, radio capability (you can also use 5ac or 2n, etc.):
/interface wifi provisioning
add action=create-dynamic-enabled master-configuration=MAIN supported-bands=5ghz-ax
add action=create-dynamic-enabled master-configuration=MAIN supported-bands=2ghz-ax
MAC address (if you want a configuration for one specific radio:
/interface wifi provisioning
add action=create-dynamic-enabled disabled=no master-configuration=MAIN radio-mac=XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
Hmm, to my understanding this should work and deploy three SSID’s to each radio. But it just takes one SSID (the one without -Xg).
Or is this understanding wrong?
/interface wifi configuration
add datapath.bridge=bridge disabled=no name=cfg1 security.authentication-types=wpa2-psk,wpa3-psk ssid=ssid
add datapath.bridge=bridge disabled=no name=cfg-dev-2g security.authentication-types=wpa2-psk,wpa3-psk ssid=ssid-2g
add datapath.bridge=bridge disabled=no name=cfg-dev-5g security.authentication-types=wpa2-psk,wpa3-psk ssid=ssid-5g
/interface wifi capsman
set enabled=yes interfaces=bridge package-path="" require-peer-certificate=no upgrade-policy=suggest-same-version
/interface wifi provisioning
add action=create-dynamic-enabled disabled=no master-configuration=cfg1
add action=create-dynamic-enabled disabled=no master-configuration=cfg-dev-2g
add action=create-dynamic-enabled disabled=no master-configuration=cfg-dev-5g
Change this:
/interface wifi provisioning
add action=create-dynamic-enabled disabled=no master-configuration=cfg1
add action=create-dynamic-enabled disabled=no master-configuration=cfg-dev-2g
add action=create-dynamic-enabled disabled=no master-configuration=cfg-dev-5g
to this:
/interface wifi provisioning
add action=create-dynamic-enabled disabled=no master-configuration=cfg1, slaves-config=cfg-dev-2g
(this is by heart, make sure to test).
Can you functionally explain what you want?
I use Webfig, because I go cross eyed with the command line equivalents. So WiFi -> Provisioning -> New, you get to choose a master configuration and slave configurations too. You can add more than 1 slave if you want.
As you appear to have different wireless interface slaves for 5GHz and 2GHz, but the same master, you will need to provision separately for the 2 frequency bands, duplicating the master configuration and selecting the slave appropriate to the band.
/interface wifi channel
add band=2ghz-ax disabled=no frequency=2412,2437,2462 name="USA 2.4" width=20mhz
add band=5ghz-ax disabled=no frequency=5180,5745 name="USA 5.0" width=20/40/80mhz
Do what you will with that.
I have left it running with these settings for a bit now. But it seems not that stable, looks like especially when falling back from 5G to 2G.
Any idea what could be tuned?
/interface wifi security
add authentication-types=wpa2-psk,wpa3-psk disabled=no name=wifi-security
/interface wifi configuration
add channel.skip-dfs-channels=all .width=20mhz datapath.bridge=bridge disabled=no multicast-enhance=enabled name=wifi-cfg-2g security=wifi-security security.ft=yes .ft-over-ds=yes ssid=wifi station-roaming=yes
/interface wifi steering
add disabled=no name=steering1 neighbor-group=dynamic-wifi-cce188c1 rrm=yes wnm=yes
/interface wifi configuration
add channel.skip-dfs-channels=all .width=20/40/80mhz datapath.bridge=bridge disabled=no multicast-enhance=enabled name=wifi-cfg-5g security=wifi-security security.ft=yes .ft-over-ds=yes ssid=wifi station-roaming=yes steering=steering1
/interface wifi capsman
set enabled=yes interfaces=bridge package-path="" require-peer-certificate=no upgrade-policy=suggest-same-version
/interface wifi provisioning
add action=create-dynamic-enabled disabled=no master-configuration=wifi-cfg-2g supported-bands=2ghz-ax,2ghz-g,2ghz-n
add action=create-dynamic-enabled disabled=no master-configuration=wifi-cfg-5g supported-bands=5ghz-a,5ghz-ac,5ghz-n,5ghz-ax
I think you want steering on both configurations selected.
station-roaming is for radios set to station (and not ap).
When you want to have auto channel...I would really advice to use reselect-interval to have a background scan periodically checking if you use the best frequency:
Does the Radio stop passing traffic during that rescan?
How long does it take to select new channels?
Scan is done in background.
When switching to a DFS channel, it will take 1 minute (or 10 minutes in case of a frequency in between 5570MHz and 5650MHz) to perform (additional) radar detection.
In my case I get switched to 2.4GHz in case of switch to DFS channel, and automatically reconnect to 5GHz when that radio is available.
Though I prefer fixed channels, my neighbors don't.
Apply that piece of config I listed above and then do that rescan and watch if it actually drops clients. Since DFS is avoided… it shouldn’t shut down clients from what you are telling me.
Because hitting scan in cap-man disconnects everything from the radio.
AFAIK you can't do a background scan manually. If you want to test, you would have to set the reselect-interval very low. Don't know if the background scan is logged, not when having default logging settings.
Indeed, by triggering a scan (I assume that is what you mean by rescan), all clients are dropped.
Having the radio scan for a new channel would cause an interruption?
Well that means it has to be scheduled outside primary usage hours. And couldn’t adapt to a problem until then.
Unattended radio scan (e.g. if property reselect-interval is configured) is background scan, so normal operation of AP (on old frequency) resumes.
However if reselection algorithm chooses to start using a DFS frequency, then there will be a pause in AP operation ... but not because of "listening" for radar, it's because of regulation requiring a "listen only" period before active use of selected frequency. This part can't really be done "in the background" because own Tx and Rx will interfere with "listening" on the new frequency (own Tx would also interfere if there was an additional dedicated receiver just for channel scanning).
Manually executing radio scan is a disruptive operation (snooping is as well) but that really shouldn't be a part of normal operations..
“resume”
To me, that means it stops.
“Continues” is what I am looking for as that would keep devices from dropping.
As I pointed out before… I left you a channel config. Put that in caps-man and it won’t select DFS as its not an option.