I know this has been said alot on the board, but PLEASE
do not use the NMP-8602 cards..i know they are cheap and powerful but they are trash.
having owned/used oer 50 over the past year and half, i can say about 60% of them have had issues..these were NOT bought at the same time..all different times across the past year.
Issues from terrible WDS links, to clients (usually wifi laptops) complaiing of random connection issues, links dieing, tx/rx rate rapidly fluctuating, deauth messages, tons more oh and the common 8602 issue of the cards RX sensitivity gradually loosing sensitivty over time (like 6mo-1y = -10 to -20 loss in total rx sensitivty, NOT tx just rx)
Have just about all been resolved by switching out the problem stations to R52, CM9 or SR2…without exception the 8602 ended up being the problem, when quite a few times i though MT SOFTWARE was the issue…not with any of the new cards.
RB 100s and R532s will crash or loop when using 8602s and changing the tx power or disabling the interface..
i’m just trying to warn people, thats my only intention with this post… you will save yourself alot of time and head aches if u stick with the good proven cards.
doesnt MT not offically support the 8602? i thought i read that some where..its an AR 5413 radio)
Not to argue, but I use these cards daily as backhauls on a few of my most important links. The only trouble I’ve had with them is if I use a 12v power supply on a Routerboard. I have only used these cards on RB112 and RB532 so I have no experience with MiniPCI to PCI adapters.
the manufacturer has fixed the issues of this card in the later revisions, and mikrotik has done some fixes on their side too. there should be no more problems
I had to band-aid an AP with one of these cards about a year ago, when our vendor was out of stock on SR2. It has been working fine in a WRAP2C for about a year.
We’ve used the NMP’s with very few problems (mostly for backhauls), but have also noticed problems if not giving the boards enough power.
We’ve found the Z-Com XG/XA series are a good replacement for them, however, as they tolerate lower power and we haven’t had any reported issues (users or backhauls).
I just tried one of these last week on an AP that previously used NL2511’s with great success. The 8602 was brand new…not old. As a 2.4 GHz AP it performed horribly. Only about 1/2 my clients even registered, and most of those were at very low receive signal levels. I put the 2511 back in and everyone came back strong. That being said, I’ve switched to an all MT solution for CPE’s with the 133c. These cards do work well as clients (I have about 100 out these so far), but I will never try one again as an AP.
My RB411 does not work with it. Everytime i enable the wlan then the system shut down. I realy need to have 400mw power becos i used to have 2 senao’s that had both 400mw and my connection was fine but now i upograde to a router board 411 and a 433, both are using r52 card. The dealer told me they are both 100mw. I dont have anymore cash to buy a higher MW card.
