Here is my new projet, I’m planning to deploy a Wifi solution in an Hotel, I’ll need multiple AP per level and my only backbone is at level 1, to reach the other level I’ll need to push the communication in Wifi no network cable are present. I red a bit on WDS but what I can see is, i’m losing alot of power at the end of the line. I also plan to establish from the level 1 to level 2 a link in 5ghz and from there add another AP in 2.4 for the client.
The main goal is the be able to roam seemlessly for one ap to the other without reconnecting and also to get the maxium power per AP.
I saw from Ubiquiti, they have something called Unifi they seem to do exactly what I need, to add another AP and another with the seemless function.
From Mikrotik there is a way to do something like Ubiquiti Unifi ?
First don’t believe everybit of advertising hype you read and it is not always totally factual?
To roam seamlessly from one AP to another is not easy as the client will stay connected until the signal drops so low as to disconnect then the client will search for a new signal, with Mikrotik you could quite easily set wireless to disconnect clients with low signal and have all AP use the same SSID, with the limited number of channels on 2.4 careful selection of channel and power setting is important.
Another option to consider which if suitable for this location is powerline networking.
Hi,
i had lot’s of Mikrotik and moved to 40 x UNIFI 3.0 about 3 month ago.
I am very unhappy with the decission and now i install the old mikrotik side-by-side.
Why:
UNIFI seems to be simple - it is. But i don’t know why - it is EXTREAMLY SLOW.
Users send me tons of pictures with 300kbit/800kbit UP/DOWN where the near-by MIKROTIK is getting MBits
(both 2.4GHz N).
And: There is nothing to tweak - because it is so easy - there is nothing where you can change things to speed up in UNIFI.
Last but not least: Mikrotik is perfect with SNMP - you can see in dude how many clients each accesspoint servs …
The HOTSPOT-Feature shurely is with mikrotik - not with UNIFI.
So to Mikrotik:
Please do a NICE (beautifull) package with Dual (2GHz and 5GHz) incl. antennas - and i will buy lots of them.
Something like RB951 will be ok. I am happy. And maybe you can manage a simple mass-setup in dude where one can group Accesspoints and give them WLAN and BRIDGE-Settings in group… woulb be perfect replacement for controller like UNIFI.
We install millions of dollars of Ruckus kit each year and were now looking at UniFI in instances where Ruckus is too expensive.
You mentioned the Wireless controller many, many months ago, but no updates since.
If you could do an enterprise AP , Ie - Anything with 802.af for power , Dual band nice, but not essential and we’d be installing TIKs everywhere rather than just as a Gateway. Our external external installs are all Mikrotik.
Uni-fi is a good solution but it has a flaw in design (atleast from my point of view). The flaw is that you need a Windows machine in order to run Uni-fi controller software which has to be in the same subnet as the AP’s (it searches and communicates with AP’s via layer2). This sets up price much higher for the working solution. Other then that it’s a seamless system that once you setup you will forget about it. It will have no problems, no need for extra attention. We use 4 dislocated uni-fi systems without a problem (Other then annoying winxp machine:( ). With Mikrotik you will have to invest much more time to get a stable working solution and to be honest it’s stability went down, down, down from Ros 3.30. If you can afford to implement a Windows machine I would recommend Uni-fi anyday over Mikrotik. Even if I take under consideration that RoS v.7 will have wireless controller embedded, we must admit that it will probably be full of bugs for the next 6 months or more. Uni-fi works out-of-the-box without the need of making a supouts and sending them to support etc. I was 100% Mikrotik until 6 months ago, now we migrate wireless systems to Ubiquity and core to Cisco.
I am still 100% Mikrotik and have very few issues ( of course I would like zero issues…)
Mikrotik is very powerful and offers many options of customization, this is its strength but also its weakness,
Made for Mikrotik suppliers need to offer complete working solutions for their products, rather than
“Yes – a Mikrotik board will fit into the antenna….”,
If I am to switch it will be for much higher throughput and for no other reason I can think of for now.
1.THe controller runs on Linux, Windows and MAC.
2.The controller can be L3 connected, no need for L2 using either simple DNS or DHCP option setting.
The newest version of the controller is multi-tenanted as well, meaning you can use the one controller for your who (isolated) estate.
Took us around 15 minutes to install our controller in the Cloud, and set up DNS (unifi) as a static DNS entry on the Mikrotik acting as gateway. Works a treat.
Avoid Ubiquiti Unifi at all costs. It is so slow it should not be on the market. I have lost weeks, and so many installs. They must have used paid reviewers because even a search on “unif slow guest” pops up with page one hits. Trying to push down the legitimate reviews. Scroll a few pages and you will see this for yourself.
It looks great, but is so so so slow. It’s so slow it makes the internet in the 90s seems fast. It’s so slow that snail mail would be a viable alternative. It is so slow that you will lose one’s reputation. Avoid Unifi at all cost. Unifi must be a scam it’s so slow.
I was given the choice of this enterprise toy called Unifi and MikroTik, and I choose wrong. If I can help one person avoid this hell, the time writing this post will be worth it.
Actually, where other fails, Unifi reach the target.
I just change 120 APs from old “nerd fashion” mk to ubiquiti.
Just another planet, speed, reliability and ease of management.
No way, MK can be useful for very particular cases for peculiarities of the OS, but for large, high density environment, and for perfect roaming features go with unifi.
I would love to see an enterprise wireless option from MikroTik as well.
The ubiquity devices are nice, but it’s not MT
My biggest problem with MT, is that in a large office it simply doesn’t have enough range to cover a big area, whereas the Ubiquity Unify AP Long Range can cover a 200m radius.
Even though MT is a router, it should cover wireless devices as well. Too many users have mobile phones, tables, laptops and mobile TV’s to run cables to them.
Another nice feature on the Ubiquity, which I wich was on MT, is the bandwidth management. You can quickly see who uses how much bandwidth and easily limit them very quickly.
What I usually do is I create a script that would automatically create a simple queue for devices in the DHCP leases list and use the scheduler to run every few min to add/remove new and old devices from the queues
You say “network cable” is not present, but I would assume their are phone lines ran through out the building? You could very well buy a used VDSL DSLAM off of ebay or something and push 200mbs+ links to a remote AP plugged into a DSL modem. Or even have one DSL modem per floor handling an aggregate of WiFi links. Perhaps something like serve out 2.4ghz wifi and use the 5ghz radio to backhaul back to a single AP that is plugged into the dsl modem. Might work
