I’m configuring a hAP ac2 as a wireless client and ran into a peculiar issue. When I do a scan, I don’t see some networks, including my own 5GHz AC access point sitting right next to the router. I actually have two hAPs. I switched the spare one to the new qcom-ac driver and voila, the missing networks showed up on the scan. I can connect and use them.
I know some features are not available in the new driver (and vice versa). But I didn’t expect the old wireless driver to not even see the networks. I did not try this before upgrading to 7.13, so I don’t know if this is a new issue. I don’t want to downgrade just to check. Presumably nothing major was done to the old driver, it was just separated out into its own package.
Does anyone have an explanation for this? My own WiFi is AC Wave 2, and the other missing networks appear to be AX, but it’s supposed to be backward compatible with Wave 1 clients. Technically, even pre-AC standards are compatible.
On a side note, I wish the CPE option was available in QuickSet with the qcom driver. It was very convenient to watch the connection strength graph while moving the router around to find the best spot. Not that I need QuickSet functionality, didn’t use it for anything else.
Which channel is used by AP (running wifi-qcom-ac driver)? I believe that wifi driver supports U-NII-3 channels (5720MHz and upwards), it seems that they are even preferred. Legacy wireless driver might not support them (or it supports them in a weird way, I couldn’t make it use proper channel centre frequencies in that frequency range on hAP ac lite).
You might be onto something. I don’t use MikroTik as an AP. I use the hAP strictly as a client, connecting to a third-party APs (one is a Ruckus, another is a public WiFi). I just realized both networks are indeed using higher frequencies, one is 5785 (channel 157), another is 5745 (channel 149). And scanning the neighbourhood with the old wireless driver indeed lists only 5240 and below.
I never used MikroTik for wireless, does it really limit you to channels 36-48, the lower U-NII-1 band? That’s really just one channel in 80MHz width configuration. At least it could support U-NII-3 as a client, but I suppose if it’s a driver limitation, it makes sense to behave the same for both AP and client mode.
My experience with a few legacy MT wireless devices is that they normally work up to around 5700MHz (country regulations permitting), so U-NII-1 and U-NII-2 (A,B and C). Higher than that they are iffy.
I don’t think this is well documented in official documents (if at all).
I guess I’m not surprised there are so many complaints about MikroTik wireless. But the good thing is the new driver breathed a new life into these older devices. Definitely a move in the right direction.