Today i’ve got my MT cAP ac (model: RBcAPGi-5acD2nD) and upgraded to the latest RouterOS and Firmware (today’s release 6.45.3) but reading/spending a whole day on MT forum just to figure out why WiFi and Ethernet has absolutely terrible performance i decided to write my down my 1 day experience with MT cAP ac.
Little background on me: I’m an IT professional who has experience configure Ubi/Meraki devices and support both Apple/Windows devices on a day-to-day basis.
I was really excited because many of my friends/colleagues recommended this model as cheap but good (bummer) and my mom doesn’t need 1Gbps throughput OTA. I purchased this unit for my mom to have wifi all over the house (yes i have wifi now but ISP’s router’s built-in wifi is not that strong, can cover one room) and little bit in the front garden. I brought a UAP nano/AP HD (yes to AP which way more powerful than this little MT) with myself just in case the MT is not sufficient enough. After setting up the device i noticed that something is not right: often drops devices from wifi or new devices report “no internet” when they connect. Reset, update/upgrade done, reset config again (just in case). Start configuring (with this retro windows 1.11 theme) it took me 10 min to figure out where is the SSID on both wifi networks, setup sec profile (WPA2PSK), changed SSID, wireless protocol 802.11 ( i guess other protocols are MT specific, never heard of them), and did not set country because i wanted to control TX power (which turns out has no effect on signal strength, at least i couldn’t see any difference. Started reading on the forum how ppl get over the poor 20/30Mbps download rate (yes, my mom has 500mbps FTTH) via the 5G (she has one windows laptop, one iPhone/iPad), the house has cat 7 (one of the advantages of working in IT and cables just fine, tested by download a 100GB game via steam with each (2 of them) cat 7 cable basically maxing out the internet as it should be. Now i setup the Ubi nanoHD (which took 20 min bc my mom was interested how wifi gets done and she worried that i swear a lot over the MT while configuring (i’m not the swear-a-lot-while-config guy) so she asked me to show her to stop swearing), as should i expect the nanoHD maxed out the wifi speed (via 5G) within 15 meters and one brick wall between the test machine (same changes as on MT: SSID, password). So after this i was a bit skeptical about why ppl keep recommending this while it has nearly the same perf as a 2G wifi which is built into a router.
So i’ve searched on this MT server and i can see 5 out of 10 ppl complaining about poor perf, i’ve run the bandwidth test (Tools > Bandwidth Test) and used the details from the Bandwidth test forum, and turns out the unit caps at 30 mbps (2.7MB/sec), i even turned off the advertising speed under 100mbps (and the half ones too) no luck, so i’ve got even frustrated and used the Ubi AP HD second port to pass the POE to the MT, yet the speed capped on MT on eth01 at 30, cables have been tested, i even tried cat 5 and 6 just in case doesn’t like cat 7, same issue.
Best part: when Iphones and ipads connect to 5G (if it has internet on it) over a brick wall it drops to 1 dot or one line, 2G is fairly stable and good, but the reason i wanted to setup MT bc of recommendation and capable for 5G. Also the unit is unusually warm/hot (about 50//60 C degrees
I am confident that the unit defect rate is quite high (comments on forum and ppl overall low satisfaction rate on this model and i’m planning to return it if nothing changes over the couple days.
Do you think default settings on MT can affect eth speed? if so how can i improve it?
Thanks for the your answers in advance.
PS: You guessed right that i’m pissed off of MT right now and if i have any typo/logical error, apologies for that.
This tool is pretty old, and is known to be able to saturate CPU on its own. If you want to test the routing performance never test from/to device, always test through device (for example use two computers + iperf or similar). Talking about your problem, it’s unlikely on the Ethernet side, but rather on the wireless side.
The “latest RouterOS” is not always the best thing to use, I’d suggest you to always stick to the “long term” update channel, unless there’s a new feature in either “stable” or “testing” that you absolutely cannot leave without. Which mean the first thing I’d suggest you to do is to downgrade to 6.44.5 (go to System → Packages, click “Check For Updates”, select “long term” in the “Channel” drop-down list then click “Download&Install”). I myself have cAP ac at home currently running 6.44.5 and working just great.
I have two cAP ac at home. They have become unstable when I have chamged power supply from 24V do 13.8V buffer power power supply. They require voltage 17-57 VDC!! It took me quite long getting pissed of, because my pc was disconnecting randomly. It didn’t look as power supply problem, RB didn’t reboot, didn’t log anything!! So it was quite tricky. Then I have realised that problem has appeard after changing power source to more stable one with battery. Therefore I would suggest cheking voltage and cables. Connection must be firm as voltage can drop under load if wires have to high resistance. What I will do in my case, I will add DC-DC step up converter and set power supply to 48V standard. This way I will make sure that Mikrotik has enough power.
Remember that power is equal:
Power = IU,
but U will drop while significant current wil be taken by Mikrotik. Voltage drop U= I R, where R is resistance of cables/connections.
Maybe this is obvious, but maybe it will be helpfull for someone.
My cap ac together with USB3.0 tplink card performs very well while transfering big files.
Good luck.
You should always set country and installation / distance to indoor to ensure the channel configuration matches what the client device is allowed to use. Out of the box, MT devices need quite a bit of configuring to get to a usable state - disable legacy protocols, enable WMM, etc.
What did you expect ??? Taking the thing out of the box, refusing to set the regulatory domain and country code and antenna gain, and then hoping everything will max out???
Setting SSID is quite easy. Only you didn’t know the application interface. Nothing fancy there.
You must set regulatory domain/country and antenna gain. Otherwise you will use the wrong frequencies and power settings. Too strong is very bad for performance as well and illegal. The radio may overheat. The default frequencies may not be the ones for your region, and so clients will not even use them.
Never rely on “auto” frequency selection or bandwidth selection. Do a freq usage scan and see what can be used. Use 20 MHz bandwidth in 2.4GHz and only channel 1,6 or 11, bring down the 80 MHz bandwidth to 40 in 5 GHz if needed. Avoid overlapping frequency bands at all cost. Co-channel interference is much better, than that destructive adjacent channel interference. “Auto” settings on many AP’s do it completely wrong, and will disturb your signal, so you will have many retransmits.
Avoid the 802.11b for sure, even 802.11g if not needed.On 5 GHz the interface rate should be 400 till 800 MHz for 40 or 80 MHz bandwidth and dual spatial stream.
Check the wireless interface “registration” information. Don’t run down the MCS rates, but check what you get!
The number of bars on wifi reception is NOT and indication of a good wifi signal. This is not radio/TV broadcasting. The AP may be very strong and give more bars, but that’s not how wifi works.Wifi is half duplex for one and needs timely ACK’s from the client side to send out. By setting the AP too strong, you have reflectons and interference on your own, and you fool the clients algoritmes on how to connect.
And indeed check your PoE voltage from the UBI AP; I hope the data flow is not restricted by the UBI AP, and the UBI wifi signal is OFF while you test.
i like reading that kind of stories. The tragic hero, IT professional with decades of experience in rocket science IT. First time has to do Mikrotik and fails hard because of that Latvian vodoo. Then visits Mikrotik user forum to vent. The end.