MLO causes rapid client disconnects with non-WiFi7 clients — happens both standalone and via CAPsMAN, known issue?

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

RouterOS 7.23.3. I've hit the same symptom twice, in two unrelated configurations:

  1. Standalone, no CAPsMAN: main router (hAP be³ Media) with 3 local WiFi 7 radios grouped into MLO via mld-interface. Clients near it would disconnect/reconnect repeatedly. Fixed by removing the mld-interface assignment from each radio directly.
  2. Via CAPsMAN: a second device (hAP BE Lite, mt7992) added as a CAPsMAN-managed CAP. CAPsMAN automatically grouped its two radios into MLO by default (mld-interface= on the dynamic /interface wifi entries). Same symptom: clients connect with strong signal (-23 to -36 dBm, confirmed proximity) but disconnect within 1-47 seconds ("connection lost"/"not responding"), bouncing repeatedly between this AP and others on the same SSID. Manager/CAPsMAN session itself stayed healthy the whole time — only client associations flapped. Fixed with multi-link-mode=disabled on the provisioning rule + forced reprovision (/interface wifi capsman/remote-cap/provision [find address~""], rule changes don't apply retroactively to an already-connected CAP).

None of my client devices (regular phones, sable, so they're not actually trying to useMLO — it looks like presenting an MLO-grouped AP confuses normal (non-MLO) client association/roaming behavior.

Question: is this a known limitation of the current MLO implementation with non-WiFi7 clients, or is there a correct
configuration so non-MLO clients aren't affee for actual WiFi 7 devices later on? Happyto share full config/log diffs for either case if useful.

2

For be lite, did you try firmware 7.24rc3 or later?
MLO is stable for me with 7.24rc3, but throuput with MLO is lower than without, so I disabled it again. But at least it should be working with both wifi7 and older devices.

I cannot say anything regarding the be3, since I do not have the device.

3

MLO is one of those features that looks nice on paper but everyone half asses the implementation so it becomes impractical to deploy.

4

I haven't tried it, but I ended up pausing MLO.

5

I completely agree; theory is not the same as the result.

6

@devilyec

If theory worked in the real world... I would have a thousand plus Mikrotik Radios out there running caps-man.

Results required Ruckus or Cambium.

7

It seems that the MLO interface on the CAP does not get its datapath configured correctly.

8

I get weird problem where on my be lite physical interfaces doesn't get correct vlan while virtual interfaces does. Even when I manually set correct vlan to physical interfaces clients can't obtain an IP address. I will test this further tomorrow.