Hi all!
I’m on the market to buy 3 new access points.
After some researching, I’m looking this 2:
-Mikrotik Audience
-Ubiquiti Flex Hd
Any information about best AP of this 2 and why?
TIA
I think both are so new no one will have a direct comparison.
I don’t have any experience with Flex HD, but I got nanoHD and Audience in hand, since Flex HD and nanoHD has almost identical hardware, this might be a good reference.
All tested with my 11 pro Max
Comparing nanoHD and Audience 5G2, both channel 149 and 80MHz
Speed : nanoHD 445mbps vs Audience 480mbps
Ping : nanoHD 10.5 Audience 9.7
Capacity : Audience has tri-band it’s physically better
Coverage : Tied
Stability : nanoHD always gave me the same speed while Audience’s speed will struggle between 200mbps~480mbps, seems to have a hard time to nego for higher speed
Conclusion : currently tie between both but Audience has better potential IF MT decided to move on with stock driver or they finally figure out how to bring the best out of Audience, nanoHD’s MTK chipset is alway the down side.
My best bet is to go with either of them, nanoHD will give you the best of it while Audience will MAYBE promise for better tomorrow, who knows?
nanoHD: much stable speed, better roaming with 802.11k/r(802.11v still missing)
Audience: logically higher capacity, lower ping for better surfing experience and better potential
For MT, we are tired for those potential talks, why don’t we talk about NOW!!??
The thing I don’t like about the audience is some of the channels are locked for use only by wireless backhaul with another audience, these should be unlocked for those not using it in this way.
The limitation is 5G1 can only use channel 36~64 and 5G2 can only use channel 100~165, this is very common limitation for tri-band AP, is to avoid user accidentally choose the same channel for both 5G wifi, there are no such thing as “locked for backhaul only”, you can use all tree bands for connection.
Thank you for the correction, apparently I misinterpreted the information.
Do you have the device?
Yup, currently using hAP ac2 + Audience
And what about wave 2?
Flex hd advertise that has, but I don’t see this on Audience…
Should I be worried if miss this feature on Audience?
Not only “to avoid accidentally choosing the same channel”!
Those separate bands are there for a RF-technical reason. When you have 2 APs in the same housing and probably sharing the same antenna, you need RF frequency filtering to keep them separate.
When one AP is transmitting and the other is receiving, the transmit power of one AP would overwhelm the receiver of the other when they were directy connected. That would negate the advantage of having a separate channel for the backhaul.
But with two different bands, it is possible to insert “band filters” (or even highpass/lowpass filters) between the radios and the shared antennas, and the transmit power at frequency 1 will not make it through to the other radio receiving at frequency 2 because it has to pass through a filter that will attenuate that signal.
It is impractical to have filters that are so narrow that they filter adjacent channels, but thanks to the gap there is in the 5 GHz band it is possible to make filters that separate the low channels (36-64) from the high channels (100-132 or 100-165 depending on the country). The behavior on channels 65-99 would be undefined, in practice this is the area where the filter starts attenuating but is not yet at the proper level of attenuation.