Two hAP ac2 in Mesh

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

The goal is to cover more area in apartment.
Is it possible to create Mesh with two same devices? And do I need it?
The walls are thick and it takes about 3 meters from the device to archive appropriate speed of 5Ghz (300-350 Mbps). The next room drops the result down to ~100 Mbps even if the distance is the same.
I have two equal devices hAP ac2 and what I was hoping to do a Home Mesh quick set. And when I apply on one device that quick set - it totally disappears from visibility via wifi.
Can anyone, please, help me to understand of what to do and will it help at all?

2

Did anyone ever get back to you?

3

Nope! no reply…

4

Home Mesh mode is for Audience devices, which have a separate interface to form the mesh.

The hAP series only have a single wifi chip, so you have two options here:

  1. Connect them with cables and use CAPsMAN to manage both AP devices from a single device
  2. Use one as a main AP, and then use Repeater Mode, to connect the second unit, and “repeat” the signal. This will lose speed, but will not require cables.
5

It’s important to distinguish different setups and how to call them:

  • “wired mesh”: edge router + CAPSMAN configuration, so that additional APs could be easily connected by wire without need for any configuration
  • “wireless mesh”: Mesh by MT definition: APs are connected to the edge router wirelessly. You can do it using separate transport interface (what Audience does) or same interface (repeater mode)

Common use case and wish for homes that I often see is the first one and QuickSet Home Mesh configuration almost does that, but it needs a small annoyance to be fixed: on AC2 it sets up a nice edge router with firewall, VPN, CAPSMAN, DHCP etc and it also sets local wifi interfaces to be managed by CAPSMAN, but these fail because of missing firewall rule, so that local wireless interfaces dont see CAPSMAN server. Please fix it and many-many placed would start using CAPSMAN instead of wireless bridge configurations.

From wiki:
Home Mesh: Made for making bigger WiFi networks. Enables the CAPsMAN server in the router, and places the local WiFi interfaces under CAPsMAN control. Just boot other MikroTik WiFi APs with the reset button pressed, and they will join this HomeMesh network (see their Quick guide for details)

6

Ok, thanks, guys! Good to know!