1st time Mikrotik user. Searched around for a while and don’t know exactly what I need to do, i.e. Multi-Wan or Equal Share etc… I just purchased 3 x RB411AH and a 17db Sector Antenna Array… I am fortunate to have a T1, DSL, and Cable on the border of a remote wilderness area with ZERO options for internet (all business internet accounts with no “resale” clause in TOS)… I also am fortunate that my residence is at the top of a mountain overlooking a valley of 3,000+ homes – of which several people have expressed interest in me setting up some sort of “WiFi Hotspot” or “Point-to-multipoint” base station.
After thinking about it and doing some research; I figured I could somehow bridge my 3 internet connections together to form a “fatpipe” and provide to my community. I decided to go with the following Mikrotik hardware for my AP:
3 x RB411AH
3 x 52 series ABG WiFi Radios (mini-pci)
The AP will consist of a L-Com Sector Array Antenna; 3 x 17db 120-degree Sector Antenna mounted on top of a 15 foot pole. Below that will be 3 outdoor enclosures containing the Mikrotik goodies; RouterBoard, WiFi radio mini-pci etc… Each Mikrotik AP will have a low-loss cable feeding 1 of the 17db Sector antennas running on ch 1, 6, and 11. There will be a total of 3 Cat6 cables running up this pole (1 per AP), the other end of the Cat6 cables will be plugged into my VLAN capable HP 1800-24G switch.
I now am seeking some guidance on how I should set my backend up – I have the above general idea of how my Antenna/AP base station will be setup — but don’t know what my solution will be to get network to the APs? I am looking for a solution that allows me to EASILY provision new accounts and provides me with some level of control over bandwidth based on what users are “subscribing” for… I would also like to be able to setup VLAN over WiFi as some of my potential customers are interested in VoIP (and while I know WiFi and VoIP isn’t the best solution — it is better than NO PHONE AT ALL!!!)
I have several 1U servers (3.0Ghz XEON, 4GB Ram, 4 GigE NICs, 80GB HD)
Could I possibly buy a Mikrotik license and use 1 of these servers as my “gateway” ? Can I setup Multi-Wan?
Any advice, instructions, directions, links etc… IS VERY APPRECIATED…
Equal share is if you control both ends of internet connection, which you wont. This leaf only Multi wan. Search for PCC in WIKI. Multi wan have drawback with secure connections and games. PCC is basically Multi wan with sticky connections, only from version 3.24 though. You can bridge but if you plan to have any thing above 50 users, rather go with routing. I ended up with using RIP, does all the routing and is very stable. Also make use of radius server to control users. Mikrotik has got one but have some short comings. I use mikrotik hotspot with radius server combination, works well for me
Okay so I am going to need some kind of “hardware” (like a server) to plug the 3 internet connections I have into — and then have a 4th NIC that goes OUT to my switch…
Can I use my 1U dual XEON 2.8Ghz machine for this purpose? Should I use Mikrotik or should I just build a custom Linux or BSD solution? I was hoping I could just buy a Mikrotik license and it would be an easy solution!
I have 4 or 5 of these servers, so I could also set one up to be a radius server I suppose? Is “freeradius” better than Mikrotiks radius solution?
What about billing, is there like an “all in one solution” that will do authentication and billing that I can install on a 2nd server?
You could go a couple of ways, regardless of what you setup as your billing solution an RB1000 would be a good start to use as your core router for all inbound traffic.
With regards to the billing you could:
Use the mikrotik user manager built into the RB1000 (or get a second RB1000 to run it on as a redundant box)
Setup your own system with a radius server and pppoe or hotspot authentication (depending on what sort of users you plan on having)
Lastly, although PCC would work for your connections, you may find you want to route traffic based on content and volume rather than just load balance.
Eg: say the cable connection is 10Mbps and the DSL only gives 5Mpbs, I’d route traffic with dst-port=1-1024 over cable and 1025-65535 over DSL
The other thing would be what sort of download limits (if any you have on each line). In Australia where I am we have a download limit or cost of some sort on nearly every low cost business connection (pretty much every DSL).