O got my RB951G-2HnD some years ago and it has seen a fair share of use and re-configuring.
Currently it’s my only WiFi device at home, handles the internet connection with QoS rules, has a guest WiFi network and OpenVPN so that I can connect to it from outside to handle some of the web apps I have in my nas.
It was placed on a magical place which covered both floors on my house, plus the garden.
I had to move the tv furniture were it’s located, and now WiFi upstairs sucks.
Since I have set up 2 Ethernet cables connecting both floors I decided to get a 2nd tik and learn about CAPsMAN.
Should I set the new device as the main one (I guess it’s a better, more powerful device?), somehow transferring all of my config, and get the old one to be the upstairs AP (also replacing a switch I have there), or not bother at all, place the old one as master still upstairs and the new one downstairs connecting my tv and nvidia shield tv by cable to my network and providing WiFi as slave to the old one?
2nd option is WAY less work, but dunno if I am missing on stuff that way.
Set up caps-man on the router. Set the config to use local forwarding. Have the local radios set up as caps, by setting the interfaces in wireless. Then Press and hold the reset button on the other unit as you power it up until is ends up in caps mode.
Then you should see 4 radios list on the router’s caps-manager. Select radio channels for each 4 radios (2.4/5.0-5. in the 2 physical devices.
As your current device is capable of performing all routing needed, I’d decide the future place of both devices based on expected wireless usage. RBD52G (hAP ac2) features 5GHz radio while RB951G doesn’t. My brief measurements showed that RB951G (having wireless settings on 2.4GHz the same as RBD52G) gives slightly better signal coverage … good for covering backyard. If your physical infrastructure allows it, you can keep the routing setup on RB951G even if you move it to the other location.
The new lower floor location is right by a window leading to the backyard, so it will be fully covered (its an all glass widows).
My house, like most in Argentina, is made of bricks and concrete, so there is 0 signal penetration through walls.
For some reason, the original TV furniture location allowed the signal to go upstairs with no problem i sitll can’t understand how), but the new one almost fully blocks its (i find that reasonable).
I am now in the process of configuring capsman on the old device (upstaris wifi is only used when we go to bed or wake up and by a chromecast, first gen), and my 2 ethernet cables will power my new mikrotik (and from it, the tv) and the nvidia shield tv.
I am following the most basic capsman guide from mikrotik now, what i am unsure of is if i will be able to keep guest wifi with it or if i will need modifications.
If i enable “forbid” on “all” in the capsman manager, even tho i allowed the bridge, the local wifi of the main mikrotik (old device) can´t connect as CAP.
The 2.4ghz radio of the new device (or de 5.0ghz, depending on what i choose in CAP) is not managed.
My old guest wifi is not in CAPSMAN.
Repeating some steps of the basic guide i could create a different config/provission for the guest wifi, but CAPs can only connect to a singule wlan/with a single wlan.
Will have to read more to go forward.
Hi, this file should answer your questions about CAPsMAN VirtualAP Setup, Dual Band CAP, CAPsMAN and CAP in one board: https://mum.mikrotik.com/presentations/BR14/Uldis.pdf
(little outdated, November 2014, but still nice explaining)
Was failing miserably when i got to the dual band setup, until i noticed i could (and should) add extra interfaces to be managed by capsman when enabling CAP.
I kinda miss why i need to create 3 configs and 3 provisionings for the dual band stuff, if i leave just 1 config with no constraints (and the same with the provision) it just works.
I didnt get to the local forwaring part, but i did not get the objective of that with a separate config.
Separate configs are for various devices you want to manage from CAPsMAN. Then you push the correct config to the device. E.g. 2,4GHz only config to older 2,4GHz only CAP.
If all your CAP devices support the same standards you can have only one config.
I wanted to try and move my capsman config from my old device to the new one, keeping the old one for upstairs wifi, firewall / QOS / OpenVPN server, DNS (maybe) and backup DHCP server.
I more or less succeded, except for the guest wifi (its more of a whim than a necesity).
Guest wifi actually allows me to connect, but i only get an IP address if i set up a guest dhcp server on the new capsman (downstairs newer mikrotik).
The normal wifi worked fine without me doing that, but i ended up creating one, just to test, and it still works.
What i can’t acchieve?
with the new device as the capsman, get the guest wifi to obtain IP from the old device guest dhcp
with the new device as capsman and guest dhcp, access internet from the guest wifi.
I noticed that the old device is unable to ping anything on the guest network, except its own address.
The new device is able to ping anything but the old one. (always talking about guest network)
Then i disabled all the capsman config in both devices and all the new dhcp config of the new one.
I tried my old device for normal/guest wifi, and it worked.
I also configured the new one for stand alone wifi, and the main one works, but guest wifi gets no ip.
My guess is that i don’t know how to get the new device to talk to the guest network on the old one (no vlans, just different ip range and rules for speed and no connection to the main network).
… then i remembered that i had only virtual wireless interfaces on the guest-bridge… so the subnet i use for guests was not interconected between mikrotiks.
Is there somethin akin to cisco’s “trunk” in mikrotik ? (i run cisco @work)
I am using the backup cable for this now, but i would love to use only 1
in the 2 physical devices.