Guide: CAPsMAN configuration with management VLAN (RouterOS 7.14.3)

[rrawstron]

Hahahahah fair comment @boxcee

I’ve updated my post/config examples to warn about this.
At the moment the config is based on extracting relevant config from a working setup.
If I find time/get motivated I might change the post to have a step by step config like the original post.

[Eksistenze]

Thank you for this guide. I know @mftovey mentioned having a switch in between the router and access points. Does anyone have an idea of the configuration for that?

I have internet on everything but all of my access points get IP addresses from the Ethernet pool instead of the VLAN pools I have setup. I believe that it’s a problem with my switch setup.
ap.rsc (2.27 KB)
router.rsc (22.6 KB)
switch.rsc (1.56 KB)

[rrawstron]

@Eksistenze You’re basically trying to setup what is shown in the diagram here however the devices on the right hand side are APs. https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/spaces/ROS/pages/103841826/Basic+VLAN+switching
The generally accepted setup is

• trunk (tagged) port(s) between router and switch
• trunk (tagged) port(s) between switch and AP
• access (untagged) port(s) between AP and client

I suggest ignoring the switch config for the moment so you can get a working config with

• trunk (tagged) port(s) between router and AP
• access (untagged) port(s) between AP and client

These posts have working configs for this setup:

• http://forum.mikrotik.com/t/guide-capsman-configuration-with-management-vlan-routeros-7-14-3/176344/16 if you want VLANed APs
  Use this if you want your switch/AP and CAPsMAN to get IP addresses from your BR1 192.168.69.0 network which is configured on the default / native vlan = 1
• http://forum.mikrotik.com/t/guide-capsman-configuration-with-management-vlan-routeros-7-14-3/176344/19 if you want VLANed APs and a management VLAN
  i.e. so you stop using the default / native vlan = 1 which is generally considered good practice when using VLANs.

Once you have this working then add the switch back in with the appropriate trunk port configuration to the switch and APs.


Having a quick looking at your configs I’m seeing a number of things which look odd.

• router
  /interface bridge port: all interfaces are access (untagged) when some interfaces likely need to be trunk (tagged).
• switch
  /interface bridge: guessing protocol-mode should be rstp not none
  /interface bridge port: all ether interfaces are access (untagged) when some interfaces likely need to be trunk (tagged)
• ap
  /interface bridge: vlan-filtering is not enabled on the bridge
  /interface bridge vlan: bridge1 is not marked as tagged

[epedersen]

I think I may have found the solution. In the Mikrotik documentation for configuring CAPsMAN, I found this notice:

If the CAP is hAP ax2 or hAP ax3, it is strongly recommended to enable RSTP in the bridge configuration, on the CAP
configuration.manager should only be set on the CAP device itself, don’t pass it to the CAP or configuration profile that you provision.

Both of my access points are hAP ax3, so I enabled RSTP on them. After that roaming started working properly with none of the associate/diassociate issues. The hand off is a little slow in being triggered, but I have seen several discussions on how to tune that. I will play around with that a bit. But the bottom line is that the roaming now appears to be functioning properly for me.

-Mark

Anyone knows is this also needed for non AX devices ?? (ac3, ac2, cap ac)
I have a deploy with 57 devices, most of then cap ac and some ac2 and ac3.
I migrated to wifi-qcom-ac with the new capsman and everything improved a lot on my wireless lan but sometimes I have weird capsman disconnections and I still dont know why, currently I have STP set to none and I want to know if the recomendation for AX devices also apply to AC devices

[itimo01]

@epedersen

I migrated to wifi-qcom-ac with the new capsman and everything improved a lot on my wireless lan but sometimes I have weird capsman disconnections and I still dont know why, currently I have STP set to none and I want to know if the recomendation for AX devices also apply to AC devices

No as RSTP for the AX devices is used to disable HW-Offloaded Bridge as the IPQ-PPE Switch chip HW-Acceleration is still buggy.
The AC devices use a different switch chip and for that reason can use HW-Accel.
Which will result in lower CPU Usage.

[lexfedoret]

This repository contains my MikroTik Wi-Fi configuration for Chateau R17 ax (as the main router) and cAP ax (as access points).

It’s intended to help others set up seamless roaming and Wi-Fi steering at home with clearer examples, since official docs can be a bit scattered.

Feel free to explore, adapt, or suggest improvements.

GitHub - lexfedoret/cliffhouse_network: repository to store configurations of cliffhouse...