Because of frequent power outages in Ukraine I’ve added the hAP ac2 as my “middle” wifi router to my network - it’s cheaper and easier to hold it working on 12V UPS for a longer time.
So I have ISP → hAP ac2 → main router (Unifi)
My aim why I choose Mikrotik with it’s configuration abilities:
set WAN → LAN1 (Unifi router) in bridged mode for max throughput and avoid Double NAT. I have 1Gbit WAN link from my ISP with MAC verification.
while WAN → other LAN’s + WiFi clients - with ordinary routing (using for internet access while main router is offline as a reserve)
It could be very comfortable using hAP ac2 with the same WiFi SSID and IP range / subnet without need to switch to main WiFi network manually each time for local network access when power restored, but as I understand in this case I should use the hAP ac2 as access point in Unifi UDM as DHCP router, but it goes offline frequently and for sure not supporting Mikrotik as WiFI AP.
But maybe there is some variant I don’t know about?
Absolutely new to Mikrotik maintenance and would appreciate any help with my question.
You can use same SSID and IP range, but it won’t help you, because they will be on wrong device, so anything connected to that won’t have access to main network when it’s online.
If it’s just about reconnecting to another AP being annoying, you could use Netwatch to monitor whether main router is alive and enable/disable hAP’s wifi based on that. So when everything is fine, there will be only main SSID. When main router goes down, different backup SSID shows up. When main router starts again, hAP’s wifi will be disabled and everything will be forced to connect somewhere else (=> to main router).
So the bridge is something you want, but don’t actually have yet? Because I was wondering how it works. It would be simple if you got two IP addresses from ISP, but otherwise I’m not sure how it could be done, at least not in any simple and straightforward way, without changing something on main router.
Made Netwatch main router online monitoring with appropriate reserve Wifi on/off
Work’s like a charm, made my life easier a bit )
Thank you for idea Sob.
Maybe there are some ways to avoid or minimize double nat impact, because it seems I would have to use two routers for a long time…
It depends, what’s your problem with double NAT? I’m not saying it’s great, it isn’t, but for many things it isn’t too bad either. If you have public address and want incoming connections, you can set it as NAT 1:1 and it will work for many/most things. It’s true that it can change behaviour of something like IPSec, but not completely break it. If you’re worried about performance, hAP ac2 should be pretty powerful. And even if it couldn’t do the full gigabit, I somehow think it would be the least of my worries.
It would be simple if you got two IP addresses from ISP, but otherwise I’m not sure how it could be done, at least not in any simple and straightforward way, without changing something on main router.