Hello, I beg your pardon for my worst English but I’m trying to setup my new xap ax^3 as an access repeater but I cannot follow the suggested guide because I don’t see the “Setup repeater botton” either in winbox or by http access.
Also all the wireless configuration is pretty different compared to the documentation I’ve found on line (es: https://mikrotrik.com/how-to-setup-mikrotik-wifi-router-as-repeater-mode).
Could someone please help me ? where is my mistake ?
Ps. I’ve upgrade the routerOs to the latest version avaiable 7.7
Newest Mikrotik wireless devices (i.e. any model with “ax” in name) use new wireless driver (wifiwave2). This dtiver lacks a few functionalities, one is mode support limited to ap and station. So it do4sn’t support any of *bridge modes, needed for repeater mode.
So in short: ax devices can’t be configured as repeaters (yet).
Thanks for your answer. I tried to disable WiFi wave2 package and I noticed that the “old” menu with all options where available but the WiFi interface does not recognise the hardware wife interfaces.
Is it possible to use the old driver?
Sorry for bump up, but still the same situation? My 2 hAP ax2’s are in a drawer for at least half a year now. I wanted to wait for the wifiwave2 solution, but last week I thought - ok, I can maybe do it manually without the Repeater button, using old wi-fi stack. Is that really correct, that the only option on ax devices is to use wifiwave2?
If this is really true, I consider my devices being a bricked useless stuff, as I have no option to connect two of them via the ethernet in our apartment. The question is, how long should I wait, as I am not sure it is a priority for MT right now. Maybe I should sell them and buy later, once the repeater feature is implemented …
Only way to get wifi functional for AX devices is using wifiwave2 driver.
You can still use them as regular Access Points or repeater with added NAT (normal station mode).
As explained by mkx, 4-address mode is not (yet ?) available for wifiwave2 devices (currently all AX devices and some older ones like AC3, Audience,… when using wifiwave2 drivers).
In addition to what @holvoetn writes: it might be possible to get what you want (wireless bridge between two wired ethernet island) by configuring one of ax devices as ap and the other as station … and then run EoIP tunnel between the both devices. There are a few threads on this forum discussing such a scenario. Of course there are a few gotchas …
Personally I wouldn’t hold my breathe while waiting to see 4-address-mode in wifiwave2 driver. Mt explained that wifiwave2 driver is largely (if not entirely) based on chipset vendor’s code and if that code doesn’t have necessary hooks build in adding necessary code might be a daunting task … So it may take a while before it’s done (if ever).
You can connect a hAP ac2 as an AP(ap-bridge mode) to an hAP ax2/ax3 as I have done which is always an option if you want to swap out one of your ax2’s for a ac2.
With capsman generally there’s a chicken&egg problem. Capsman provisions wireless interfaces but to create a bridge one uses wireless interface on one of devices for connection towards capsman so that one has to be up before it gets provisioned by capsman.
Next: while capsman-forwarding might help in this particular case, capsmanv2 (needed to “drive” wave2 devices) doesn’t support capsman forwarding (only local forwarding).
What good is such setup? For a bridge, the ap side has to support ap-bridge mode (OK, hAP ac2 would do). But at the same time the other end has to support either station-bridge or station-pseudobridge or station-pseudobridge or station-wds … and none of them is supported in wifiwave2 (at least not on my Audience running 7.9.1 and wifiwave2). If the other end only supports “plain” station mode, then there is no bridge (not on the level of wireless drivers).
He mentioned connecting two via ethernet. You can use one ac2 as AP and switch connected to an ax2(via Ethernet), also configured and used as router, switch and wifi access point. ac2 is configured as ap-bridge, ax2 is configured as ap. I was just giving an alternative instead of two ax devices that can’t be connected in such a way. Better than nothing
I still don’t see how your “first comment” is relevant for the discussion. I.e. what is the gain of such swap?
“it’s always an option to wire the home with single mode fiber” … IMO this statement is as relevant (i.e. not at all). @pekr purchased two hAP ax2 devices with express intention to create a wireless bridge between two wired islands as he’s not able to pull the wire between those. And replacing one of those hAP ax2 devices with an older device won’t change the thing a tiny bit. Replacing both (and running legacy wireless driver) would, but that means that statement by @pekr (about the ax2 devices being effectively bricks) is (still) true to the point.
Apologies, I misread the comment. I thought he was saying he couldn’t connect them due to the lack of modes in WifiWave2(irrespective of using a cable or not). My mistake, I see this now after some sleep
