Manage hAP AC2 with CAPsMANv2

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

I’ve done pretty much everything:

1.) Uninstalled “wireless” package
2.) Installed “wifi-qcom-ac” package

Prehistory:

  • had 2 AX devices and 1 “main” MikroTik with CAPsMANv2
  • provisions:
  • 5G AX, create dynamic enabled, master: my-5g-wifi1, slave: my-5g-wifi2
  • 2G AX, create dynamic enabled, master: my-2g-wifi1, slave: my-2g-wifi2
  • wifi1s have vlan10, wifi2s have vlan20 defined in their respective datapath setting (on main router)

Difficulties:
hAP AC2 introduced 2 new wifi interfaces to my capsman, but they obviously can’t provision my current settings, as I don’t have AC configs. So I decided to add 2 new provisions:

  • 5G AC, create dynamic enabled, master: my5g-wifi1
  • 2G AC, create dynamic enabled, master: my2g-wifi1

Now I got 2 main problems:
1.) 2G interface of hap ac2 comes up with my2g-wifi1 provision, but claims “vlan-id configured, but interface does not support assigning vlans”
2.) 5G interface is not coming up, it’s selecting “5GHz AX” for band, and claims “no available channels”.

For 1.) I found in some thread, that AC devices are not capable of doing this, so we need to do this “manually” in bridge configs. I can do this, but can/shall I leave the vlan-id set in datapath (as my other provisions are using that)?

For 2.) I have literally no idea on why this radio chooses 5GHz AX whereas it’s only AC-capable.

2

My best guess would be that you set band=5ghz-ax in either channel or config…correct? If so, just remove it.

In regards to VLAN…yeah, some manualy things to do:
https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/spaces/ROS/pages/224559120/WiFi#WiFi-CAPsMAN-CAPVLANconfigurationexample:

Best would be if you share your /interface wifi export (remove serial and any other private info) from both CAPsMAN and CAP.
Very hard to help you without seeing the current situation.

3

Exactly. After I wrote this message I just have realized this. In case I remove band setting, what is the default behavior? Which band is selected by AX devices and ACs?

I've read this now:

Passing datapaths "MAIN/GUEST" from the start of the example to "wifi-qcom-ac" CAP would be misconfiguration, make sure to use datapath without "vlan-id" specified to such devices.

Meaning I have to remove vlan-id from datapath,
meaning it's better create different configurations for hap ac2, and leave the current configurations intact. Correct?

Configs for hap ac2 would be: datapath without vlan-id and band set.

4

According to the documentation:
https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/spaces/ROS/pages/224559120/WiFi#WiFi-Channelproperties

Frequency band and wireless standard that will be used by the AP. Defaults to newest supported standard.
Note that band support is limited by radio capabilities.

In regards to VLAN, yes…you are correct. As long as security (besides SSID) is shared you will have nice roaming experience.

5

This is a limitation of using Wave2 drivers on ac2: the only way to use VLANs with wireless interfaces is through bridge VLAN filtering. Unfortunately, it disables bridge hardware offload, so now all your bridging is done in CPU.