hAP ac vs hAP ac^2 - which to choose for home?

RouterOS Beginner Basics
1

I’m considering a new wifi router for my home (apartment). I think the best choices are eithet the hAP ac or the new hAP ac2. As I understand, the major differences are as follows:

  • hAP ac:
    • has an SFP cage :slight_smile:
    • has PoE output :slight_smile:
    • has triple-chain wifi :slight_smile:
  • hAP ac2:
    • costs half as much as hAP ac :slight_smile:
    • has a better CPU (?) :slight_smile:
    • has only double-chain wifi :frowning:

According to this topic, it’s unclear which one actually has a better wifi. I’m sure I won’t need the PoE output, and most likely the SFP cage will be unused as well… although maybe I’ll someday get optical internet, so then it could have a use… I don’t know.

But the wifi performance… that’s the part that’s unclear to me. Which one has better performance? How important is the triple-chain? And is the CPU on the hAP ac2 really better?

My current router has been going strong for over 10 years, and I expect this one to do likewise, so I want to buy it with a though for the future. Is it worth paying over twice as much? Is there perhaps some other serious advantage of the hAP ac over the hAP ac2 that I haven’t noticed?

2

Good questions.
I would say and this is only my very uneducated opinion ( so much so, that this could be a comedy sketch).

  1. Depends on how many devices will be concurrently using the wifi.
  2. Depends on how many VLANS/SSIDS you will be creating.

If (1) is above a certain number I imagine people will say the HAP AC due to number of chains
If (2) is above a certain number I imagine people will say the hAP AC2 due to the processor.

3

Personally, for home I would go the Hap ac^2, reasons:

  1. Quad Core CPU vs Single Core, althoufgh there routing throughput capabilities is similar, the ac^2 can handle way more packets per second
  2. Have hardware en/decryption of IPSec - VPN’s seems to becoming a big thing nowadays
  3. Have 2Gb/s path between Switch Chip and CPU whereas Hap ac only has 1Gb/s
  4. The triple chain will only benefit when you have lots of devices speaking wireless (I think)
4

I certainly won’t have lots of devices. At most we have 3 phones (well, in a few years there might be a 4th phone) and an old laptop (but that has an ethernet cable anyway). None of which are using lots of bandwidth at the same time. Come to think of it, What would be nice is a higher power/sensitivity for the router - it will be located in one corner of the apartment, and the opposite corner barely has any signal. Is there any difference there in this regard? I don’t intend to put up an external antenna or relocate the router.

The quad-core vs single-core - is that a fact? The spec sheet for hAP ac doesn’t say anything about cores at all.

I don’t foresee the need for IPSec or vlans at all. Buuut… if it could use an external USB HDD and function as a NAS… maybe that could be a thing one day. Just an idea at this point.

5

OK, thanks everyone! I think hAP ac2 it is. :slight_smile:

6

Now that you mentioned that you’d like have maximum wireless coverage the hAP ac looks slightly better than hAP ac2 … as it has slightly transmit power and slightly better receive sensibility. I guess third chain helps here even if client device isn’t capable of using third data stream.

7

Hmm, about that third chain… I wonder… Several questions, actually:

  1. How is the power of the router calculated in the spec sheet? Is it the sum of the power of each individual chain or is it the power for each chain? Could it be that the hAP ac has more chains, but each chain is weaker than hAP ac2? Thus a device which uses only 1 or 2 chains would actually have worse performance with hAP ac than with hAP ac2?
  2. If two single-chain devices are connected to the access point, will each use a separate chain, or will both use the first chain (the second and third being only activated with devices that support 2 or 3 chains respectively)?
  3. Both routers operate on 2 frequencies - 2GHz and 5GHz. Are there three chains for each of those frequencies (thus two triple-chain devices can work simultaneously if each uses a different frequency); or each of those chains can only operate on one frequency at a time?

It could be that some of these questions are meaningless because I don’t properly understand how the chains work - if so, please enlighten me. :slight_smile:

8
  1. CPU: hAP ac^2 has MUCH MORE powerful CPU (ARM) than hAP ac (MIPSBE). hAP AC is not possible to do bidirectional routing (from network A to network B and vice versa) simultaneously on more than 600 Mbit/s with CPU about 60%, while hAP ac^2 is capable of 940 Mbit/s with CPU about 3-5%
  2. AFAIK, it is not possible to use USB port for anything except 3G/4G modem or as a storage for RouterOS. You can not add there let’s say 1TB drive and think about it as network drive
  3. hAP ac^2 still seems to have some issues with WiFi, but I am using it regularly and have not noticed that after upgrade to 6.42.3

So for me… if you don’t want to use PoE out or SFP cage, go for hAP ac^2.

9



  1. No idea, I’d like to know that as well
  2. AFAIK WiFi transmits to single partner at a time. If partner supports fewer (rx) chains, not all tx chains will be used. Rx might work sligtly differently (I guess it depends on chipset implementation): if receiver supports more rx chains than there are tx chains in transmitter, surplus rx chains could be used for diversity thus enhancing rx and consequently allowing higher MCS. Actually the same could go with surplus tx chains as well (that would make tx diversity). Things work like this in mobile networks (LTE, GSM, …)
  3. a view of block diagram shows that both devices feature completely independant implementations per frequency band. Meaning that both hAPs can run both 2.4 and 5GHz bands independently of the other one. Number of chains need not to be the same for both frequency bands as it can be seen on hAP ac lite which has two chains on 2.4GHz and single chain on 5GHz.