Well no, there is hardly any Wi-Fi 6E available nowadays. Enterprise networking vendors like Aruba / Ruijie Networks will start selling Wi-Fi access points in Q3/Q4 2021.
re: … there is hardly any Wi-Fi 6E available nowadays …
Yea , but there is some stuff starting to come out on the market.
I know Linksys & Cisco ( and several other mfgs ) have some stuff ( did not see anything Mikrotik registered yet ) - spotted it in the Wi-Fi 6E certification/registration when looking up who has Wi-Fi 6E products.
re: … I thought Linksys was dead…
no - but they easily turn into a brick if the utility power flickers
also , NetGear wireless routers are a close 2’nd to Linksys for bricking/loosing-the-config when the power flickers.
I’m curious how you intend to use 6E in the US. The FCC rules allow very low power indoors only, out of the box. For outdoor use you will be required to register the coordinates with a service, which I suspect will require a paid subscription, and then the devices will need to maintain contact with the service to determine what frequencies they can use to avoid interference with licensed operations. Since Mikrotik can’t be bothered to provide the simple USA option to allow full legal PTP power in the 5.1 band, or allow 5/10 mHz operation near the 5.1/5.8 band edges (I know, I’ve asked) , I wouldn’t hold my breath on outdoor 6E.
Re: … I’m curious how you intend to use 6E in the US …
If you read the FCC docs on the new 6-GHz frequency band , you will find there is lots of wording about “Tribal” and “Indian” use. My understanding is this new additional 6-GHz is also intended for the use of Indian Native Sovereign Nations ( aka Indian reservations ). The ISP/WISP I work for is owned by a federally recognized Indian tribe - and there is also a presidential executive order which recognizes and endorses the Indian tribe I work for. We also provide Internet access within the reservation. The tribe I work for actually has a .gov ( dot gov ) domain.
I may need to perform more research , but I suspect we have the authority to use the entire 5.925 to 7.215 GHz band to deliver Internet to the tribal communities within our reservation.
The FCC has worked very nicely with us for a long time. We have on many occasions had many represent ivies from FCC and the Federal government visit our ISP/WISP business.
The FCC was even kind enough to allocate some 2.3 GHz spectrum we may use ( and we do use it in some locations ).
Although we have access to 2.3 GHz , the spectrum in narrow and equipment is expensive. This is why I am looking forward to utilizing the new frequencies in the 6-GHz spectrum - with multiple wide 160-MHz channels and lower cost equipment.
I see, and I wish you well. If there is very little licensed 6gHz MW in the area, you may be in luck. I just have my doubts MT will jump through all the hoops to develop a FCC type accepted outdoor product that can be imported anytime soon.
Question:
1st prior to my question: Another popular ( non-Mikrotik ) sold in the US is locked to to FCC frequencies. I discovered that if I completely wipe out the firmware and do a low-level re-install of the firmware that the wireless AP/client is no longer locked ( equivalent of SuperChannel ).
So my question is, with a Mikrotik , will a similar procedure do the same ?
What/were is the setting in the ROS filesystem/config that locks the device to a specific country code ?
From what I can tell, it’s saved on an EEPROM chip on the board itself. However, those chips are dead-easy to modify, so changing a US → International could be as simple as opening the device up, connecting a few wires, running a script on some PC, and that’s it.
Also, you don’t even have to mess with US versions in the first place. I had my cAP ac imported straight from Latvia so now there’s none of that junk to deal with. Fun fact: the international versions support the 2.4GHz band all the way down to about 2.3GHz, so you’d never have to mess with the expensive equipment for the reservations.
re: … the international versions support the 2.4GHz band all the way down to about 2.3GHz …
Well speaking of 2.3
Because we are a tribal ISP/WISP and because we service a reservation , we got some 2.3-GHz frequency assignments from the FCC a year or two ago.
Hmmm, can you guess how I was able to quickly jump into 2.3-GHz with my existing 2.4 GHz tik network(s) ??
Hey Mikrotik
We need Wi-Fi 6E to survive in our WISP businesses.
Almost all cell phone companies are using LTE-U ( 5 GHz band ) on their towers and they are stomping on almost everything in the 5 GHz band !!!
This is killing outdoor 5 GHz links to customers and it is also killing in-home 5-GHz wireless connections.
With Wi-Fi 6E , we at least have some clean clear frequencies we can use so that we can avoid the cell phone companies use of LTE-U 5-GHz ( # 46 ) that is stomping on everything everywhere.
note - Cell phone companies/towers add LTE-U 5 GHz transmit only channels to boost their data rates to cell customers using cellular data. This comes at the expense of killing or interfering with existing 5-GHz networks. And worst of all , LTE-U does not listen to see if the channel was already being used - it just stomps on the 5-GHz band and blasts out cell data stuff !