I LOVE Mikrotik and use their equipment in every possible situation. I’ve had great luck with cAP and hAP ACs for small offices or in larger CAPsMAN deployments with multiple APs but I’ve never yet done a “high density” installation. I have a banquet room with a maximum capacity of 300 people that I need to cover. I’ve read lots of mixed things on these forums about poor performance with lots of users on a cAP AC.
My instinct is to use about 5 cAP AC’s spread out throughout the room with tight access list rules (only allowing signals of about -30 to - 72 to each AP). I would greatly appreciate anyone chiming in who has experience with this type of room with around 250-300 wireless clients. Since it’s a banquet hall, I assume it will be pretty light internet usage from the guests (just checking social media and whatnot I would assume), with the occasional laptop streaming videos and music to a projector. My previous experience with Mikrotik tells me I’ll probably be fine, but some people on here are very extreme in their opinions.
If you think I absolutely need a special high density WAP from UBNT or another vendor, it will likely be the only one on the network with all of the other WAPs being Mikrotik so it would ideally be able to function as a standalone WAP without needing a UBNT controller in addition to my CAPsMAN router.
I’d strongly recommend not to use MikroTik wireless devices for high density applications.
The lack of any 802.11 roaming, band steering and adjustable beacon interval renders them useless for such deployments.
Better look into UBNT, Xirrus, Meraki, Fortinet/Meru, Everest Networks (in ascending budget order).
All routing, Hotspot, etc is more than just fine with MikroTik.
-Chris
Please decide if you really talk about capacity of the room or about expected amount of clients. By my experience, these are not the same.
I have several similar rooms around the city, each of them covered with a single AP. Never heard any complains. Keep in mind that only fraction of guests will use the wifi and only fraction of this fraction will do that in simultaneously. In these rooms, I usually see around 10-20 devices connected at a time. I don’t remember any single time it would go over 1/10th of the room capacity.
Avoid such setup at all costs! Access rules work the way, that when client tries to connect and AP will refuse him. Client tries again, AP refuse him again. and again… This creates huge overhead and not every client likes that. I have experienced some cheapish broadcom wifi chips which lost connection for over 15 seconds before they finally managed to “let go” and choose different AP which does not refuse them. Keep in mind that client does not know whether AP will accept or refuse him. Client will keep trying randomly all SSID it can hear and there is no guarantee it will start with the one which is closest.
If you think I absolutely need a special high density WAP from UBNT or another vendor, it will likely be the only one on the network with all of the other WAPs being Mikrotik
Do not combine multiple manufacturers. That is the easiest way to misconfigure them. I will not suggest you to avoid UBNT, because despite the fact I hate their software, their wifi actually works really well. (sorry mikrotik guys, its truth).
To sum it up:
rule of thumb is, that you add another AP, when signal is too low (usually due to distance/walls). You put better AP, when you need higher density.
If the density is really too high for any AP to handle, it is better to significantly lower TX power of the AP, than restrict it with ACL.
Always make sure that AP has unobstructed view over the whole room/area you want to cover. Ceiling mount is must-have.
One MU-MIMO AP is going to provide way better performance than several ordinary AP (as far as I know, only mikrotik model with MIMO is RB4011)
Do you have any specific recommendations for these models? I’ve never used any of these vendors and when I look at their product lines there are lots of options and sometimes they seem a bit gimmicky with the amount of clients their high-density WAPs say they can support. For example, the UnFi AP XG claims to be able to serve 1500 clients…that just seems impossible to me, even with good MIMO. Would you throw just one of these in the room and call it a day or still use more than one?
This sounds like good advice and I’d like to follow it. The problem I’ve had in the past is that lowering the tx power of a CAPsMAN interface, even just -3 or -5 seems to cause the clients to show a lower signal. Now you and I both know that a WiFi signal meter on an iPhone is pretty much useless, but my customers have really had a problem with it. “I’m standing right under the AP and it’s showing 3-4 bars, something is wrong!”. Then when I put the tx power back to default, I hear back from them that “It’s working so much better now. Full signals everywhere!”. I’d be curious to know your experience with this.
Ok, we are slowly getting to area, which might get us banned (or at least topic locked/deleted) and I don’t feel comfy with that.
XG is real beast. I agree with you that 1500 is made up number (together with all other “up to XXX clients”), but truth is, that if any device can handle many clients, its this one.
It has 2 independent 5GHz radios so it really doubles performance in 5GHz band. (and nobody really cares about performance in 2.4GHz band). On the other hand, it is overkill for most of situations and the price is ridiculous and completely unjustified.
As said earlier, I have several hospitality venues covered with this manufacturer (mostly UAP-AC-PRO, not my choice - inherited gear) and it works fine. I have to stress out that in our environment, the 1/10 rule applies. About every 10th visitor really connects to the wifi. Since the rooms are sized 100-300pax, we are looking at 10-30 clients during events. And lets be honest - that is relatively fine for any AP except some “lite” models. This might be different in your place and you will need to choose appropriately.
However, if anyone tries to tell you that you need to be ready for 300 clients in room sized for 300 people, they are most likely out of their mind.
My opinion about signal? Well, I understand what your clients say. Unfortunately. With TX-Power, it is a lot of playing and testing. Every place and client behaves a bit different and I don’t know about any general guide how to set it up properly.
I believe clients shouldn’t see less than full bars straight next to the AP. That most likely means you overdid it with lowering the value. Point of lowering the value is not to avoid any signal overlap. Point is to lower the value and help mobile clients to differentiate between strong and weak AP. If all AP are on max TX-Power and phone see several strong signals it is more likely to choose incorrect AP.
Thank you so much for your advice! I actually feel quite a bit better about using Mikrotik in this case since I think the 1/10 rule definitely applies here. It’s scary when they tell me they have large groups coming in and they HAVE TO HAVE GOOD WIFI but I know what you’re saying is correct. In this case, I’ll start with two cAP ACs in opposite sides of the room and do a lot of testing with the tx power. Then I can always try something else if for some reason I have any problems.
It likely also depends a lot on local situation in the country and the building.
Are most users likely to have 4G subscriptions, and is the 4G coverage OK in the hall?
If so, the users are unlikely to figure out how to connect to the WiFi as their Whatsapp already works OK.
If not, they may use your WiFi but still not all of them would.
I am operating a WiFi network with ~1000 users (~300 simultaneous) and 34 APs and I did not dare to use MikroTik.
It is using UBNT UAP AC HD. That is still a low-budget solution but better than cAP AC. There still are issues with
that system due to firmware quality, e.g. the boasted “fast roaming” is unusable in practice due to incompatibility
with a good fraction of the typical clients (Android phones), and sometimes the APs just crash (and usually reboot).
Like with MikroTik, there are frequent new releases and they appear to be really working on it, however in a product
in that price category it will not be perfect.