Should Mikrotik achieve Wi-Fi Alliance certification on popular APs?

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

I’ve had some larger Mikrotik AP designs based on cAP ac units rejected due to lack of WiFi Alliance certification.

Is anyone else of the opinion that it is a win-win for Mikrotik to achieve Wi-Fi certification on their most popular units, ie cAP ac, perhaps hAP ac3?

[Sidenote - Mikrotik can get ahead with the opensource validation tools the Wi-Fi alliance publishes at https://github.com/Wi-FiTestSuite]

2

If Mikrotik wants anyone to take their WIFI products seriously, they really need to do this. Just look at the WIFi alliance page, all other vendors are there with certified products, even cheap TP-Link and NETIS are certified.
It would also mean Mikrotik will finally have to implement some required features like roaming support. Right now there isn’t a single Mikrotik device that would pass any of the certifications, not even WIFI 4.

3

Certification means $$$$, so it depends.
Maybe the concern is that since the Capac is not really fully wifi5 capable it would FAIL certification,a worse outcome perhaps than just simply not being certified.
Going forward, perhaps with new products, based on commercial chipsets (and not proprietary work), this will be a more feasible path??

All pure speculation of course…

4

Example: Even cheap devices like the Grandstream GWN7660 or GWN7630LR access point with Qualcomm IPQ6000 or Mediatek MT7615 chipsets are Wi-Fi certified nowadays.
WFA110473 (Outdoor Long Range 80211ac Wave2 4x44 WiFi Access Point).pdf (72.9 KB)
WFA113007 (80211ax 222 WiFi 6 Access Point).pdf (75.8 KB)

5

Does anyone actually ask for the alliance certification?
In my opinion, it is an expensive sticker with no added value.
Correct me if i’m wrong, because I have never ever seen one contract that asked for this. It’s the right to use a sticker with their logo, nothing else.

6

from the WiFi Alliance’s page

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ is an internationally recognized seal of approval for products indicating that they have met industry-agreed standards for interoperability, security, and a range of application specific protocols.

Certification means that a product has been tested in a variety of ways to validate interoperability with other Wi-Fi CERTIFIED equipment operating in the same frequency band.
…

A company must be a member of Wi-Fi Alliance® and achieve certification to use the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED logo and Wi-Fi CERTIFIED certification marks.

https://www.wi-fi.org/certification

I think:

  1. I don’t know enough to be sure, but this could be a solution for others on the wireless board asking for 802.11k/v/r support
  2. If this is done, it will drive up the cost of Mikrotik hardware. everything about how the above is worded screams “we need to get paid”
  3. It’s possible that Mikrotik rolling their own wireless drivers impacted this in some way (IDK I’m not smart enough to be sure and could be spouting lies on this one)
  4. some jobs for enterprise customers may be more easily acquired if they were to use WiFi certified hardware. The increase in profit may offset increased hardware cost for them…on this vein need to remember that job bidding is not always handled by the techs and the engineers…its handled by the sales and marketing teams who have little technical experience and only know the checklist of requirements their engineers gave them…no sicker no sale.
7

The certification is pretty low on my list of concerns.

All those support files I submitted when various 2.4ghz only clients couldn’t stay connected… (Universal Remote Controls, Wireless printers, point of sales credit card readers, etc, etc, etc)

Considerably lower throughput that competitors solutions.

Several MONTHS of back and forth emails, taking weeks between emails with vague configuration change suggestions, that never addressed the problems.

To finally get that one email, that stated that my “environment was the problem”.

Which is a bit of an issue when my “environment” was across a couple hundred sites.

That translated too: I had to go back and replace the Mikrotik wAP ACs and cAP ACs out of my own pocket.

We lost a lot of customer’s confidence during that debacle. But it was also a wake up call, to really pay more attention about HOW MIKROTIK does wifi. Specifically their use of their own proprietary drivers over the years. Leading to issues that are reported on the forum for years, never being fixed.

I was absolutely blown away by my early testing of caps man. When I started applying the flexibility of routerOS to caps-man, I was really excited by all the things I could do with it. SSIDs that could shut down if a gateway was unreachable. Per device passwords. ACLs. Near instant feed back of every client across the entire site!!!

This was my own fault, as I should have judged the radio performance at keeping clients connect, not the features of a connected client.

“If caps-man could control a good radio… It would be incredible!” I say this and hear it daily from MSPs I work with… As we credit back clients to replace their radios…

But having WiFi 4 not fully supported in 2021? Having Wave 2 drivers only work on a few wireless radios… And none of their cAPs or wAPs. Caps-Man specifically being incompatible with WAVE 2. And WAVE 2 while providing the best throughout I HAVE EVER SEEN FROM MIKROTIK SERVING A WIFI CLIENT… that only works on AC clients. After a day of operation… 2.4Ghz devices still get dropped and not return until the radio was rebooted. (Cameras, theromstats, etc.)

Now a days, clients specifically ask for Wifi 6 on the bid now. This disqualifies Mikrotik wireless devices immediately. And there is no proposed timeline for a hardware solution.

There are now several vendors out there, that “only make (sell) commercial switches and Wireless Access Points.” They don’t bother with Routing because they can’t produce a router of quality, that fits their ecosystem and price range. Fortunately… Mikrotik routers work great for those systems.

Edit:
It’s also very important to note. Mikrotik confirmed there was no problem with my configuration or my devices. The problem was the environment they were in. Mikrotik simulated my environments at their office and confirmed the problem.

8

From personal experience, my WiFi users asked for 3 things: 1. performance, 2. performance, 3 performance
As long as acceptable performance (range, throughput, …) is not reached, no way to have satisfied customers (or even customers at all :wink:)).

PS: I’ve read the CAP XL AC has best performances while being ceiling mounted.
I think designing an AP for wall mounting, no matter how ugly the AP would be, would be worth the effort, as for cabling reasons, you often can’t really choose where you mount APs.

9

So there you have it the experts agree, it has to work, seamlessly and not require that much support effort.
So Normis, lets see you and MT start providing some stable WIFI6 products sooner rather than later, I honestly have no clue why you wasted time on the Capac XL, unless it was made specifically for a large project/client worth enough beans to make it worthwhile. When I am looking for a home AP I am looking for a cost effective wifi6 solution.
The question is do I want to spend $150CDN on wifi6 2x2 mim or $250 CDN on 4x4 wifi6, because the 1K+ price tag fore wifi6E is out of my league.
A stable $120 MT or stable $200 MT “stable and bpwl approved” models would be my FIRST choice!!
Guess what, BIG players like TOM, also want both wifi6 and wifi6e for their significant WISP projects so they can keep ahead of wifi interference and stay competitive.

So, suggesting spending less time here, chatting about wifi logo stickers and MORE time getting WIFI 6 to production , for which we will all be happy.
I even promise to buy one wifi6 MT product in the future and one wifi6E product in the future… (but for goodness sake, hire bpwl to help you figure it out).

10

I believe it all comes down to sales margin and volume to justify the value proposition of WiFi Alliance certification, else it wouldn’t be achieved and maintained widely elsewhere.

In the cases I have seen, the lack of WiFi Alliance certification was identified as a concern before contracts were drawn up, so I do agree with Normis here. I do think the logo and statement in the product specifications affords decision makers higher security in choosing long-term equipment vendors, so is only partially a technical benefit of course.

I hope the economics allow for this to be a net win at some point.