I have been running my hap ax2 for about 10 days now and i think it will become a permanent element of my home, I just wanted to thank Mikrotik for the user/config experience which is incredible for me as home user. I have created my LANs and tweaked them as per my needs as a home worker. only point to mention when you get about 5/10 meters from the device the signal strength already drops.
Anyhow I’m thinking of getting the hap ax3 for my second home which has rooms that are slightly larger, thanks to the ax2 experience i am now more confident in the "mikrotik " world!!
I know that the ax3 comes with a predefined config, can I factory reset and then upload the same config from my ax2 device? do you recommend? if yes can you share the process to follow to download and upload a config??
I guess the winbox I use for the ax2 is the same for the the ax3?
The ax3 is said by many to have worse wifi reach that the ax2, search the board, there are contrasting reports, but the issue is raised too often to be completely unfounded.
If you are happy with the Ax2, you would probably be better served by another Ax2 and an added access point or repeater in your other larger house.
You cannot “really” copy configuration between devices, not even the same exact make/model.
There is a sort of backup/restore mechanism that is intended to be used ONLY on the same device, DO NOT even think of using that.
What you can do is export your full configuration, and then with some patience and a lot of attention, copy from it relevant lines or sets of lines and paste them in the configuration of the new device.
It is not difficult, but it takes some time, and some attention, the biggest issue is AFAIK, even with relatively simple configurations that the lines need to be pasted/inserted in the new configuration with a logic order (which is not necessarily the order of the lines in the export) otherwise they will be rejected because (example) you are changing a setting on something (like an interface or routing table) that has not yet been created on the new device.
In this way - and within limits - you can actually replicate a same config even on other devices (different hardware model).
hAP ax3 should have better antennas and better coverage. By looking at those reports, it seems that either a few users have not properly attached their external antennas, or there might be some hardware defect. I suggest to email support if you have a unit that performs worse than ax2
Come on Normis, most people reporting those issues know where their towel (and their antennas) are.
Anyway, no matter if Ax2 or Ax3, due to the limitations in transmit power (by regulators) and of the peculiarities of wi-fi, if you want to cover larger surfaces, particularly with 5 GHz, you are generally speaking better served by more access points.
Sure it will cost something more, but the (perceived/publicized) superiority of Ax3 over the Ax2 even if it exists at all (which is what is doubted by many) isn’t probably enough to cover a bigger house.
If OP is happy with the Ax2 for his smaller home, in a bigger one an Ax2+an access point will be needed, an Ax3+access point would do essentially the same, but spending some 40 dollars/euro more, an Ax3 alone (as well as an Ax2 alone) would probably not be enough.
If an Ax3 is required for any other of its features (superior to the Ax2) that is another thing.
I work in the telecoms ecosystem as PM for interco relations and large telco SIP network design.
I’ not a network engineer and getting my hands dirty for the first time with networking IPs and things with Mikrotik!! Cisco is not for me!
I have been researching the topic for months because I work from home many days and wanted to get a nice device for my work space and at the end Mikrotik came into the picture, a mikrotik reseller/trainer told me that mikrotik was not plug and play and to go with ubiquiti, every day this grew as a challenge.. so here I am with my ax^2!!!
the ax^3 costs 113 Euros on wisp.store ( amazon 146 Euros)
Regardless of what has been said I will get the ax^3 device and tweak it more or less like the ax2
so all I ask to you gurus be there in the moments i will need you..
Tx power helps client to hear AP better. Rx sensitivity helps AP to hear better. So they are pretty unrelated.
The difference in Tx power between ax2 and ax3 is 2dB at most, different in antenna gain is another dB or two, so they won’t make much of a difference. It’s illusive to expect any notable difference in coveeage between these two devices.
Well, that should not be true and when you discover a case like that you should report it as a bug.
I have seen this problem in the past, but with the version I currently use (7.12.1) it is no longer present, I think.
As mentioned, it is not easy to transfer configuration from one MikroTik device to another, but the problems should be limited to commands that are valid on one device but not on the other. E.g. refer to an interface that does not exist.
Also, when just pasting parts of export of one device into another, you can run into the situation where a command of the “add” form tries to add something that already exists on the destination (due to default config). Commands that “set” something do not suffer from that.
In some cases doing the same “add” twice will not be rejected but will result in nonsense- or wrong configuration (e.g. firewall rules).
So indeed it is tricky, but not for the reason of “order of commands”.
Happy to learn that it is not (anymore?) the case.
I am pretty sure (but I cannot point to a specific case) that when I was doing (crazy) experiments (in CHR/GNS3 with 7.11.2) it happened to me.
I use now an excel spreadsheet to compare the “final” exported configuration from one device with the already present default configuration of the new one.
It is not that bad, though it cannot be automated as essentially the same command can result different due to comments or (say) an automatically added disabled=no.
The auto-before-reset.backup is created when you reset the settings to defaults.
You can remove that file when you no longer need it (and you can skip the creation of the file when doing the reset).
To backup the config there are two ways:
backup. that creates a .backup file which is a binary file THAT CAN ONLY BE RESTORED ON THE SAME DEVICE IT WAS CREATED ON.
export. that creates a .rsc file which is a text file with a list of commandline commands that would create the same configuration.
Advantage of backup is that it is easy to restore. When you still have the device. When the device breaks and you buy another, it is useless.
Advantage of export is that you can print it or load it into an editor and see what is going on. And you can copy/paste sections of the file into a commandline window to put back parts of a configuration or transfer parts to a new device.
But it requires some knowledge of commandline mode, and the structure of the export file. Plus some understanding of how
commands affect the configuration (e.g. the difference between “add” and “set” commands).
I have the connections tab open on the Firewall to see what is happening.. sometime i see apple IPs that are the source connectinbg to my iphone and tghen my iphone conenctiong to the APPLE IPs..
i guess apple connects to peoples iphones?? what are they scanning for would you know??
Another advantage of Backup is that the file is AES encrypted with a password of your choosing. This means that if you lose control of it (e.g. it’s on a USB stick that you leave somewhere by mistake), there’s an almost zero risk that someone can work out your configuration. An .rsc file created with “show-sensitive” is just a text file and will contain ISP and wireless passwords. So you need to be more careful protecting it.
Default export in ROS7 uses show_sensitive=no. So unless you explicitly set that to yes, no passwords should be exported (and even then not everything comes through… been there, done that).
(BTW In ROS6 it was named differently yet result was also different: hide-sensitive=no)
Security is important, but it is not entirely unlike when you loose your house keys.
The probabilities that they are found by a thief are small.
Even if they are found by a thief, unless you have a tag on the keychain with the exact address of the house, the thief has a little probability to know which door(s) they open.
And anyway a thief would have no issues in opening your door without your keys.
Even if there are no vulnerabilities in the RoS, it is much more likely that your (mine, everyone’s but those by real security experts) setup has this (or that) one weak point.
And it is not like you cannot put the .rsc file in an encrypted archive, a simple .zip or .7z with a password (yes, the one you will have forgotten when you need to review the file) is more than enough to implement some (minimal but good enough in practice) security.
having this file ios awesome I can copy this into a new router piecewise as I wish!!! even the firewall chains!!!
ok this below is my wifi configuration from the file can you take a look? is there anyhting that I am missing in this config? all is working fine but maybe there are tweaks I am unaware of!!
