RB922UAGS-5HPacD/RBM33G+R11e-5HacD comparison: which one should I use?

Hardware MikroTik hardware general
1

For a short distance (2,5km) PtP link I’m considering two candidates as radios (probably I will use 16dB, 16°, 2x2 panel antennas with them):


  1. RB922UAGS-5HPacD (QCA9557/QCA9882 - 128MB RAM / 128MB FLASH - Lev 4 - 1GBE + 1SP, 22dBm tx power / sensitivity -72dB @ MCS9)
  2. RBM11G / R11e-5HacD (MT7621A/QCA9882 - 256MB RAM / 16MB FLASH - Lev 4 - 1 GBE, 19dBm tx power / sensitivity -72dB @ MCS9)

Both apparently use the same SoC for WiFi but:


  • the first design is well proven (I guess it belongs to the same series used in NetMetal 5), it has a decent storage size, higher tx power and more I/O than needed, and in the market it’s plenty of well made, compatible boxes, antennas and so on. On the other end it’s more expensive and above all it has a very weaker CPU.
  • The second one is pretty new, it’s less expensive it has lots of RAM for an antenna and it sports a pretty fast and capable CPU (but is the MT7621A artificially bandwidth limited, as it is in Ubnt router gear? I hope no). On the other hand, on this combo more likely unknown defects or issue may arise, there are probably less available options for pre-made boxes and accessories, and above all it has half the tx power and a ridiculously low size storage (why just 16Mb FLASH in 2018?).

Is there anything wrong in this brief comparison? Is there anything else I should consider? In your experience, how much will raw CPU power impact an 802.11ac AP-Station PtP link performance/stability?

Well, please take note that I never used RouterOS-based hw, and I just wanna give a try to MT gear on this new link.

2

I was thinking about the same. Which did you pick?

3

The Boards are not really different, the Performances of Mikrotik AC Gear is not the best,
So you will see no difference between them.
Wave2 is not supported yet ( and it looks like it will never be supported)

But the Antenna makes big difference and 16dbi ist to small for 2,5km, use something
With higher gain, and if you are in noisy environment something with good shielding and small
Sideloobes

Mistry7

4

I was more thinking about the actual routerboards. This is for a LTE-solution with 18 dBi tube mimo antennas. I’m a bit concerned about the 16MB flash on RBM11G and if in any way will force ROS to run in a limited way?

5

There are quite a few routerboards with only 16MB NAND (including hAP ac2). ROS runs just fine, it seems like RAM disks are used for some operations on those devices (such as download of ROS update packages). IMHO more important is to have enough RAM … some low-end devices only have 32MB RAM and there are (almost basic) things you can not do on such devices (e.g. longer address lists for firewall block rules).

6

How much higher were you thinking of?

7

None of them, actually that link hasn’t done yet.
Now I’m thinking to rely upon an Ubiquiti AC solution: ubnt won’t offer Wi-Fi Interop but they’re quite economical and still offer a good throughput.