One of the better Mikrotik devices is the Audience – especially with newer wifi-qcom-ac drivers. Yet, all the other models have been “refresh” & no sign of newer Audience on the horizon (i.e. based the FCC filing).
My main grips in current model (specifically Audience+LTE6 model) are:
lack of PoE IN+OUT so it can be used to passthrough power to another router (or even just accept PoE power), today there is no PoE support which is limiting for AP usage.
Global 5G modem and/or M.2 modem slot for one
The current LTE antennas are pretty poor (while Wi-Fi one are best-in-class IMO) so some 4x4 MIMO antenna for LTE/5G, and/or SMA/QMA jacks for an external LTE/5G antenna — there are 4 sides to the audience so seems possible to use 4x4 MIMO…
I cannot be alone in wanted a newer Audience, including with LTE/5G support. The current Audience is limited to LTE6 and poor band support in North America.
Everyone likes the Audience, at least since first wifiwave2 driver. I just ordered more, which had me checking the FCC, and thus this post. It’s actually the vlan assignment in AX drivers that bigger issue for me than AX specifically & some better antenna design for LTE/5G (since it doesn’t even match wAPac which AFAIK uses same antennas internally).
But it’s a really nice device, yet I see every other device getting a refresh, except the Audience… So I wanted to get in my minor complaints, since hopefully one is horizon at some point.
Don’t ask me… They’re scared of commitment?
I take some different SKUs with North American variant of LTE modems, beyond the original R11e-LTE6. Even the current ATL is worthless in North America – even for just 4G… And all the 5G products are worthless too.
Well, the wAPac also had LTE variants – which have not come out… I just don’t want the same thing on some Audience AX, since our use case generally involve having LTE/5G. And they’ve done nothing for the US market. Basically everything lately has taken backwards steps IMO:
hAPac2 to hAPax2 loses USB
wAPax does not have miniPCIe/M.2 option
newer CAT18/5G Chateau/ATL with 0 bands for US
etc.
And current Audience has one additional benefit that it has 128MB flash, while same is not true for newer devices…
It’s actually quite frustrating – if someone can post roadmap PDF on Twitter… I have no idea why Mikrotik cannot post them on their website/forum. Or how to sign up for these communications with these PDFs.
There is PoE IN in the current generation. POE Out, IMO, is less important than more LAN ports, which would be a really nice replacement for switches near APs.