May i have your attention, please?

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

And now, may I ask your opinion? :slight_smile:

I live in the 4th floor, in a small square, with some cafe’s and bars and lot of people hanging around..
I also have an old RB133 with 3 wireless cards and 3 ethernet interfaces (do you remember them?).
Searching my warehouse, I found 2 2.4Ghz panels and one for 5Ghz. So, I’m ready to create a hotspot to offer free internet to the passing/sitting people.
RB133 will be in bridged mode of course, doing nothing except powering the wireless cards :slight_smile:

My first question is, should i give the same ssid name to all 3 APs? Different frequencies of course, but is there a problem with the same ssid ?
My second question is, since the 2.4Ghz panels have polarisation, should i have the one vertical and the other horizontal, in different directions?

thank you very much, in advance,

George

2

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. No. Not necessarily. Point them where you need.

3

If you want to do your guest users a favour, apply WPA2-security and embed the password in the SSID, e.g. The password is: free internet

Furthermore, you may want to set default-forwarding to no for each wireless interface, to prevent clients to be able to send frames to each other.

If you connect multiple wireless interfaces through a bridge, you additionally may want to set the arp to reply-only, the horizon of each bridge port to 1 and check “Add ARP For Leases” in the dhcp server associated with the bridge.

Bridge: arp=reply-only
Bridge port: horizon=1
DHCP server: add-arp=yes

4

This is my wireless setup.. All interfaces are bridged and another Mt router does the dhcp and routing job..

[admin@AP-2] /interface wireless> pr
Flags: X - disabled, R - running 
 0  R name="wlan1-2.4Ghz-right" mtu=1500 mac-address=00:0B:6B:81:7C:1F arp=enabled 
      interface-type=Atheros AR5213 mode=ap-bridge ssid="twmn::FreeWifi" frequency=2412 band=2ghz-b/g 
      channel-width=20mhz scan-list=default wireless-protocol=802.11 antenna-mode=ant-a 
      wds-mode=dynamic wds-default-bridge=bridge1 wds-ignore-ssid=no bridge-mode=enabled 
      default-authentication=yes default-forwarding=no default-ap-tx-limit=0 default-client-tx-limit=0 
      hide-ssid=no security-profile=Free compression=no 

 1  R name="wlan2-2.4Ghz-left" mtu=1500 mac-address=00:0B:6B:81:76:4C arp=enabled 
      interface-type=Atheros AR5213 mode=ap-bridge ssid="twmn::FreeWifi" frequency=2462 band=2ghz-b/g 
      channel-width=20mhz scan-list=default wireless-protocol=802.11 antenna-mode=ant-a 
      wds-mode=dynamic wds-default-bridge=bridge1 wds-ignore-ssid=no bridge-mode=enabled 
      default-authentication=yes default-forwarding=no default-ap-tx-limit=0 default-client-tx-limit=0 
      hide-ssid=no security-profile=Free compression=no 

 2    name="wlan3-5Ghz" mtu=1500 mac-address=00:0B:6B:81:7F:6F arp=enabled interface-type=Atheros AR5213 
      mode=ap-bridge ssid="twmn::FreeWifi" frequency=5220 band=5ghz-a channel-width=20mhz 
      scan-list=default wireless-protocol=802.11 antenna-mode=ant-a wds-mode=dynamic 
      wds-default-bridge=bridge1 wds-ignore-ssid=no bridge-mode=enabled default-authentication=yes 
      default-forwarding=no default-ap-tx-limit=0 default-client-tx-limit=0 hide-ssid=no 
      security-profile=Free compression=no
5

why do you say that ?

6

From https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/68748/free-hotspot-open-wifi-vs-wpa2-wifi-with-known-password:

A wireless network that is unprotected means that anyone can simply connect to your wireless access point, and collect all of your traffic. If users of the network aren't using HTTPS (SSL/TLS enabled) webpages then their passwords, usernames, and any other sensitive information would be unprotected.

Using WPA2-PSK, the wireless access point uses the common passphrase to generate unique encryption keys for each wireless client. Meaning that even if users aren't using HTTPS enabled webpages their traffic is still protected with WPA2.

7

and the final question..
should the two APs with the same ssid at 2.4Ghz, be in the same channel or in different ones?
_VRK0623.jpg

8

Different.