Wireless newbie here. Are there devices from the “Wireless for home and office” (or “Wireless systems”) category that will allow me to broadcast on channel X for the backbone/uplink to the main AP and channel Y for the wireless clients, in the same spectrum (say 2.4GHz)? I am primarily interested in devices in the Home/office category. I know for example that the hAP ac lite shows the 2.4 and 5GHz as different interfaces so I suspect that I could use the 5GHz for the backbone link and the 2.4GHz for the clients. But can this be done in the same band, 2.4GHz, with 2 different channels? If yes, which models support that scenario? What am I looking for? Is it the number of chains? What is the characteristic I should look for in the device specifications page of mikrotik.com?
For what you want to do, the device would need two separate 2.4GHz radios and none off-the-shelf MT devices have it AFAIK. You could construct one if you took wireless device with possibility of adding another wireless miniPCIe card.
There’s Audience, which offers such functionality, but in 5GHz band (it has two 5GHz radios built in, you can see it in block diagram).
No, number of chains has nothing to do with it, it’s the MIMO rank for 802.11n (and higher). They all operate at the same frequency.
What you want to do is not possible and not recommended.
- co-locating two same band AP in one device without additional filter will kill all your performance
- Dificult to find free 2.4G band in normal environements.
- Theoretical throughput is still going to be low!
To achieve something similar what you want you can do:
Simple (use single band 2.4G device):
- use same channel for backbone AND client Wifi. Wifi capacity will be shared among the links but for low bandwidth needs
this can be acceptable. - On every Mikrotik device you can create several “virtual” Wifi interface in one band. Those can be “AP” or “client”=station.
With this you can make a range extender in 2.4G without any problem.
Better, (use dual band device):
Use 5Ghz as backbone and then 2.4G for client connection. Simple to setup and you can again create as well a virtual 5G AP on the device for also client connection.
Best:
Use tri band HW (Audience) which has 2 different 5Ghz bands to seperate front haul (client connection) from back haul (connection to the main AP or GW).
Pricing increases dramatically from 1 to 3 above.
So start with one (can use even a map for 20$ for this and see if this is what you need).
MU-MIMO is yet another alternative. As usual, both sides need to have the capabilities to utilize the full power of MU-MIMO.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2928725/how-mu-mimo-wi-fi-works.html
https://www.networkworld.com/article/3250268/what-is-mu-mimo-and-why-you-need-it-in-your-wireless-routers.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-user_MIMO
According to what @OP described he wants that’s exactly the same @WeWiNet explained (with virtual AP), just more effective. And, sadly, not applicable to MT hardware, AFAIK none support MU-MIMO (yet).