Because my house is a combination Faraday cage and RFI generator…I need 2 APs inside, and 1 outside. I want the ‘system’ to auto handoff clients between APs.
House has wired network.
I have been searching for a best practices setup.
I am thinking a couple of wAPs and a hAP-AC lite…I am thinking a hEX for router.
I guess CAPsMAN will do the AP management. I also guess CAPsMAN will run on the hEX.
Will that hardware list do what I want it to do?
Do the APs have to be wired direct to the hEX or anywhere on the network is fine?
What is the licensing requirement?
Does CAPsMAN come with the license?
What questions should I be asking?
(my experience is setting up ad-hoc mesh networks, and about a decade of DD-WRT…as a hobbyist)
You did not mention the URS (User Requirement Specification).
In other words: What do you “expect”? Just browsing at at the end of the garden or do you want to organize a LAN party in the shed in the garden, with 15 people, downloading Gigabytes of movies…
So what do you WANT to achieve, and later you select what model / equipment you need.
For example: You want tot travel 100 km/h. How do you do that? With a car of course… But now you can choose from ANY car, from a simple VW Polo till a Hummer M2 and bigger. Both will do the trick (travel at 100 km./h).
But you did not specify more requirements like: comfort, gas consumption, environmental footprint etc…
But for now, to help a bit, some answers:
Do the APs have to be wired direct to the hEX or anywhere on the network is fine?Yes, they need to be hardwired to the hex or any switch. That way, install once, and forget about them. Also, you can power the remote AP by PoE, and power cycle if needed What is the licensing requirement?None. It comes with licence built in.Any Mikrotik device can do CapsMan Does CAPsMAN come with the license?Not applicable. CapsMan does not need a separate license
Thanks for the reply. I understand now that CapsMan comes on RouterOS…and the licensing was explained to me.
The big question is can I run multiple APs with the same SSID, and have RouterOS control which clients connect to which APs and direct handoff between APs to avoid conflicts. I assume so, but because I don’t know the technical/professional term for it, I can’t search for it.
I understand about 2.4 vs 5 for throughput. As I understand, RouterOS will not prioritize traffic to one freq band or another based on need…i.e. I can’t say 'the following slow clients only access through the 2.4."
I also understand that by definition ethernet backhaul, means they are connected via ethernet…I just don’t know if the hEX or equivalent running RouterOS has to use specific physical ports to direct traffic through specific APs, or if the APs can be hooked into any convenient switch that is connected through the house network to the router running RouterOS. I have a 16port 1gig switch in the box already…most locations in the house are wired direct…but a couple are wired through an intermediate switch before it gets to the switch in the box…one AP would be going through a switch prior to the box as it is wired right now.
Actually re-reading your answer lets me know that I should probably have them wired direct to the switch for the PoE control capability.
Correct. You can connect any amount of Mikrotik AP’s in a switch (with or without PoE). And have ONE Mikrotik router (usually the main router to the internet), control the CAPSMAN.
The Capsman is not perfect. It will not “perfectly” handover or handover the clients. It is the decision of the CLIENT to go to another AP or not. You “can” do some tweaks, like kicking weak clients form an AP and then the client will search for a better one (especially Apple devices have issues regarding the “sticking to the old AP”).
Some vendors did some research, and have good results like Aruba, Ruckus, Cisco, HPE etc… But that comes with an expensive (hardware) controller. If you have thousands to spend, well… go ahead.
I also have three AP’s, (Mikrotik, Ubiquiti and Cisco), and my BlackBerry Q10 and the Samsung A3 work without any problems. No Capsman is running. it is the trick, to have the powers set in such a way, that the AP’s do not overlap each other with signal. You can a site survey with InSSID-er or any other WiFi tools.
Unfortunately that is true and I have to advise you against using MikroTik for your AP setup. Apple product will simply not roam and will stick to the AP in another room with 1Mbps rate, while positioned next to the AP in the same room.
You will find suggestions such as “use access lists to disconnect clients under certain signal strength” on these forums, but that is a crude way of doing it and you will consequently loose signal in som parts of your apartment where you would normally still have it (10Mbps link is better than no link, but then its worse than 500Mbps you also have available).
You will also find reasoning that this is a client issue, but unfortunately you are in the networking business, not in desktop business, so you cant send all those Apple users home. Try Ubiquity.
running capsman with 3x hAP AC here without problems, almost only Apple devices here …
At our computer club meeting (4 times a year) I run 5x hAP AC to handle about 300 iOS devices in a community center, no problems
Great devices, you just need to know how to configure them !
Any chance you could enlighten the rest of us?
Of particular interest to myself is how to get the hand off working well, 5 access points over the farm makes that a bit fun at times.
Well just as an update for everyone else, I did get the handoff working quote well by setting all the AP’s with the same SSID. Leave the MAC’s as individual and it seems to work quite well without the need for scripts to “kick” devices off weak AP’s.