How best to configure RB411AR with R52Hn as an AP for small office?

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

Hi, our office space is flooded with 2.4 Ghz and so want to switch to 5.8 to avoid issues / improve performance.

I’ve an RB411AR (v6.30), + 1x R52Hn (wlan1) with onboard radio (wlan2) disabled.

Have setup a basic AP with wlan1 and ether1 Bridged (bridge1), DHCP client on ether1 and DHCP server on bridge1. ether1 is connecting to an ADSL modem from where its receiving a WAN IP.

Wireless Mode is ap bridge, Band: 5GHz-A/N, Channel Width 20/40MHz Ce, Frequency: auto, Protocol: 802.11

Firewall NAT rule setup as: Chain: srcnat, Out Interface: bridge1, Action: masquerade.

A pigtail is connected to J4 (chain 0) with a 5DBi Omni antenna and chain 1 is disabled

With the above setup I’m able to connect from my laptop’s dual band radio, to the AP and connect to the internet.

My question are:

  1. How can I improve the above setup?

  2. To achieve a Max Rate of 300 (and general best performance possible), do I need to connect an additional pigtail and omni antenna to J5 and enable chain 1?

  3. If so what kinds of antennas / how should I position them to avoid issues?

We have ± 20 wireless devices, most with only single band (2.4) wireless radios that I’ll replace with Edimax Compact Wireless AC600 USB Adapters. 7 desktop PC’s connect direct to the modem via LAN cable. We use VoiP as only source of voice communication.

Thanks

2

Use the second same antenna and pigtail like you already have connected and enable the second chain. Then you will be able to use the 300Mbit rate for supported clients.

It is not clear whether your 411ar acts as router to wan or if it should act as pure bridging ap (expecting you have another natting router already in place). In the second case remove all firewall rules, switch off connection tracking and bridge interfaces together. Put dhcp client on the bridge instead the individual interface. This would ensure the best performance for you (especially with ros 6.30 where fastpath for bridges was introduced).

If the first case applies, try to use fasttrack, at least.

3

Ordered an extra antennae (which took some time to arrive.)
Configured AP as bridge as per your suggestion and all working well.
Thank you!

4

Your welcome.