For my previous experience with other platform (IkarusOS), I know that Compex WLM54G23 is a good card.
I had 12 cards remaining from my other network, so I decided to put them in my MT nodes. But they don’t work like was expected. First, in System/Resources/PCI, WLM54G23 appears as “unknow device (rev. 1)”.
The worst is the poor signal levels, and I know that this card can do so much. Is a good performer in his price level, maybe one of the better.
My other MT central node is based on Gigabyte WI01HT (Atheros 5413, 100mW 802.11b/g, 40mW 802.11a) and works perfect. But I would like a better support for WLM54G23, because I have obtained much better results with them than Gigabyte.
Had been struggling for 3 days with a tower experiencing high interference. Serves 28 clients.
Tried the following cards on all 2.4 channels with 802.11b and got results from best to worst as follows:
engenius senao 2511-MP 200mwatt 200mwatt - 28 clients connected, good signals
engenius NMP - 8602 18 db tx power - 24 clients connected acceptable signal - unstable links
Compex WLM54AG23 23 db tx power - 6 clients connected - very poor signals
Compex WLM54AG 19 db tx power - 6 clients connected - unstable
R52 19 db tx power - 0 clients connected
The WLM54AG23 was tested using the AUX antenna socket. Got nothing on main antenna socket? Also got nothing with tx power set to default.
Can MT please advise? Is the power setting correct or is there a driver issue similar to NMP - 8602 with wrong manual tx power settings? Remember the 4 db difference issue?
i.e. should we set the Compex to say 26 or 28 db tx on MT in order to get 23db?
Seems illogical that the engenius 2511-MP which is also 200mwatts performs so much better!
The prism card is a real “staatmaker” (dependable) in my opinion. No static discharge issues, no many senao clients on AP disassociation issues, best signal levels, good interference resistance, etc etc. I cannot understand why Mikrotik do not want to support them anymore and why we can’t have virtual AP and G-mode support on them or else it would be the only cards I would use.
My original first WLM54G23 card is from an older (6months ago) batch I bought from my supplier. I used the main (middle) connecter and is very good card. The new ones, I bought last week, are all very poor, and are about 10-15 db’s weaker than the dualband WLMAG23 card. I am going to send them all back. I don’t know if it is a driver issue, because I see it is “unknown” in winbox system, pci. Maybe I should play around with manual TX power settings first. The WLMAG23 is very good so far, also on main connector. I have it in AP on mountain and it performs on par with the SR2 I had in previously.
I have old and new versions of the card, and they are different, this is sure. All my older version are broken (WRAP second mPCI slot fried all), so I only have newer version in active.
In Compex webpage, the new version is named WLM54G 6A-23. In general, the newer cards seems cleaner than older, possibly for the use of Atheros 6th generation chipset instead the older 4th gen.
I think that MT must put a little more effort in the support of mpci cards. Even if they sell a branded one (I know that isn’t the reason of the issues of other cards), there are a lot of reasons to not use R52 and choose other one.
doesn’t it seem unlikely that we don’t support our own card (which by the way is not compex)? Please make supout.rif files from the non working units and send to support. The forum is not an official support page, the answer here is not guaranteed. If you wish to get help, contact support. The forum is a community discussion place.
Thx Normunds. Appreciate your input, coz it shows, whether forum members get a direct answer or not, MT is on the watch for customer problems and needs.
Unfortunately I have removed the card for now. Definitely will let you know once I use it in a different place. By the way, the card worked fine on horizontal with 7 clients connected. It is only on the vertical signal, that is with high number of vertical clients in the area including our competitor’s, that we were unable to pickup anything. I like the R52, but mainly for backbone links on 5.8Ghz. It seems the high power levels arround the R52 are ruining its signal.
I can see the same problem is affecting all Atheros chipset cards. The SR2 related post earlier is a similar situation. Someone did send MT support a supout.rif and your reply was the fault is on the client units and we should use MT RBs instead. Well… we do have MT RBs for some clients and doesn’t make a difference. When there is high interference, Atheros dies!
i normally use compex wlm54ag cards with rb133c as a cpe. owing to difficulties getting stock of these i recently got a batch of wlm54ag23 and wlm54sag23 cards.
i notice one major problem with these though, in 802.11athey have much worse recieve sensitivity than wlm54ag or indeed cm9.
the problem does not appear to be in a lower recieve treshold but rather that less rf is being recieved, eg on one test against a reference AP, with cm9 i get -89, with wlm54ag i get -87 but with wlm45(s)ag23 i do not recieve any signal. this is done from the same location using the same 19dBi antenna.
has anyone else found this problem, or a solution?
