hAP ax3 and Capsman V2

I’ve used the old CapsMan for many years with my hAP and hAP ac2/3 APs. I recently upgraded to hAP ax3s and struggled, like so many, learning CapsMan v2. I finally figured it out and have listed simple steps below. I still wonder, however, even with the new Capsman provisioning just 3 hAP ax3s, it still chooses the same frequencies for the APs. Not all the time, but most of the time. Anyhow, here’s what worked for me:

I have an RB5009 router (no wifi) and 3 hAP ac3s. I use CapsMan to provision these. I recently upgraded all to hAP ax3s, and struggled to provision these with the new CapsMan. Here’s what worked for me. This is a minimum configuration, nothing fancy. This assumes that all APs devices are running the latest RouterOS with the Wifi-qcom package installed. This avoids the confusion about the various WiFi driver packages.

  1.  On The APs, start with no configuration. Add a bridge and all ports to the bridge. You will not need to add the WiFi interfaces. Assign an IP to the bridge and a route to the main router. Under the Wifi section, click the WiFi tab, then Cap on the right. Discovery interface=bridge, Capsman address = Router address, click enable. Now the APs are waiting to be provisioned.
    
  2.  On the router. This is the absolute simplest way to get going:
    

a. WiFi section, open the Configuration tab. Name your config. Mode=AP. SSID=Your ssid. Country = yours.

b. Channel tab: Band 2.4 AX. Width=20. Frequency=2412.

c. Security tab: your security or none. WPA2/3, Authentication CCMP, CGMP. Passphrase – your password.

d. Datapath tab: Bridge

e. Provisioning tab: action=create dynamic enabled. Master config=your config created above.

f. Back to WiFi tab. On the far right- CapsMan. Interface=bridge. Click enable/apply.

g. You should see your provisioned APs in this WiFi section.

  1.  Add 5GHz channels as above
    
  2.  Create other configs with VLANs etc. Add these as slaves configs in the provisioning tab.
    

If you want to have the CAPS's select their frequencies in a "smart" way, you can use the reselect-interval of the channel. Thsi property is used to periodically (depending on the interval) scan for better frequencies.

Alternatively setting fixed non-overlapping channels could be the best option. Unless your neighbors are interferring (and frequency hopping).