I just noticed that in several MT distributors’ websites, the hAP ac3 got pushed back even more to April. That’s pretty sad for it being a non-ax device meanwhile Ubiquiti is rolling out their entire line of it.
When 6E products are available and shipping, I plan/hope to add around 1-hundred Wi-Fi 6E APs to my towers which will co-exist next to our existing hundred-plus 5-GHz APs.
Regarding the fact MikroTik has not even a device with full ac/WiFi 5 support and no ax/WiFi 6 device in the pipeline there is not much chance to see a WiFi6E device soon.
A good as the routers are, the far behind is the MT WiFi. We had to stop using MT WiFi devices. Almost all tender criterias mandate 802.11k/v/r, band steering and MuMIMO. MT still lacks all of this.
MT always rolled its own WiFi drivers instead of using those form chip vendors. I suspect the dramatically increased complexity of recent WiFi standards brings much troubles to this approach.
You are 100% correct on this and I also think this is why MT has yet to put out a true WiFi5 or 6/6E devices. If you read the caveats for the wifiwave2 (https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/display/ROS/WifiWave2) package, it is not compatible with CAPsMAN.So I think they will have to rethink and rewrite the interface for CAPsMAN to make the newer hardware work correctly, and I think this will take some time.
For those complaining about those complaining about WiFi6 support.
Every review you see out there is WiFi6 in a home or business ‘WiFi’ use case. Nothing like a wISP. And what they aren’t showing you is what WiFi6 looks like when there is sporadic interference on it’s channel.
I’ve done extensive testing with about every WiFi6 radio you can currently buy.
WiFi6 has a killer feature that truly changes the game and that’s OFDMA. With your AC Wave2 radio on a big channel you can get tons of data. MU-MIMO also helps out here so multiple clients can get tons of data. But now take that radio outside where you don’t have walls to reflect off of and to attenuate other signals. Somewhere that there are a few neighboring netgear nighthawks etc smashing up the spectrum. Watch that performance fall flat.
Now switch to ANY WiFi6 radio that has OFDMA enabled (some early models/firmware dont). Indoors it will look a lot like AC Wave2 in the same channel. But take it outside and watch how the throughput holds. OFDMA allows the AP and receiver to tell one another what subcarriers are too noisy to use. That means dodging interference AND it means reducing retries. I’ve done bench tests putting an 'AC WiFi router at 20Mhz dead center of a 40Mhz channel on a WiFi6 radio and run iperf across the AC connection. Then hit a speed test on the WiFi6 AP and pull 250Mbps. NO AC radio can do this. That test will make every single AC radio fall dead flat because even a wave2 AC radio only has 4 carriers and sitting middle of the channel nukes 2 and OOBE shreads the other 2 on the edges.
This one feature enables the 160Mhz channel. each subcarrier can be as small as about 2Mhz do there are effectively 80 individual channels that can be selectively used to transmit. Add in 4x4 or 8x8 antenna arrays and you can see where that goes. Something AC/AC2 cannot do.
As a proof of concept I put 4 Eero Pro 6 units in ITE outdoor enclosures and put them in a grid on my house and 3 of the neighbors like A <> B/C <> D. Ie, D cant see A, blocked by a large metal shop. Now at D I can pull 500Mbps speed tests across this outdoor WiFi6 mesh. This is a suburban neighborhood and I can see 2 dozen netgears etc so this is performing this well over the top of all that noise.
For a wISP, WiFi6 is the largest single improvement ever in wireless performance on single streams, then stacking 4x4 and 8x8 radio options with 2 way MU-MIMO…
Now stack on an extra Ghz in WiFi6E.
Would love to see mikrotik lead the charge on this.
Time to wake up. To use wifi6 8x8, 12x12 outside, you will need a special antenna array. Which you will absolutely never see with a manufacturer like mikrotik.
You need to integrate the antenna with the radio chip. See how medusa from cambium does it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrb3aIFwWTM
That’s simply not true. There are literally a dozen WiFi6 products on the market with rather mundane multi-chain configurations including 8 diploes poking out of the body. If you look at breakdowns of some devices, they are just using PCBs with raised elements.
This is kind of the beauty of how 'ax handles MIMO/MUMIMO. The antennas can be in pretty unimpressive configurations. Existing sector designs can often be used by just un-bonding the elements. This is all a KP 4x4 sector is, it’s the 2x2 sector but with 2 scored lines cut between the sections and attached to separate N connectors. If you didn’t know what to look for any you disassembled them you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference. There is a guy using the ubiquiti Omnis for ePMP3k, he just pops the PVC cover off and separates the two sides (they are dual 180 sectors inside) and boom, 4x4 omni and it works in epmp3k’s split sector mode.
Also note that there are some really interesting setups that can be done with these. Demonstrated by ePMP3k and Mimosa’s A5c. You can take an 8x8 radio and put 4 2x2 sectors/horns on it and the 'ax chipset will essentially have each antenna as a MUMIMO grouping. So a single channel in 360 without GPS sync. Or 4 narrow sync horns with overlapping coverage. epmp3k has an RFE antenna with this design.
I’m referencing AC radios here, but that should really make the point that if AC can do it with it’s pretty basic MUMIMO support, AX has VASTLY superior MUMIMO.
No wake up. It is no longer the original company, no one’s eyes are shining anymore. Nor was it originally a Radio company. These are mid-level routerboards with interesting features. This line is great. Now there is a lot of money and the next step is just to make more money in conveyor mode with the old radio technique. Can employees make their own Radio challenges and products? Are there many who are interested in it? Are they communicating with us?
I would have been tired of it all for a long time.
Not tired of slandering MT and using it at the same time? It’s better to use what you like than cheaper or experiment with what you have. Life must be interesting and not full of complaints.
Hi!
Any news about that?
Contact support@mikrotik.com directly instead of asking other users,
without any decision-making power, with numerous unheard requests on the whole forum.
It would be welcome to hear any official information from Mikrotik on Wi-Fi 6E.
Contact support@mikrotik.com directly instead of asking on users forum
Re: ... Contact support@mikrotik.com ...
Hey what a good idea. Been there & done that a few times & I still have no idea if/when a Wi-Fi 6E is going to happen.
What did they answer to you, when did you write to them?
A year ago, I received some emails from Mikrotik.
- ... considering ...
- possible product operating fully in the 6 GHz could be in ....
I don't want to tip off what they said in their email(s) to me from a year ago , but I still have high hopes that a product is still in the works.
My WISP/ISP is 100-percent a Mikrotik shop for all wireless devices. Sooo, my waiting for 6 GHz Wi-Fi 6E Mikrotik products makes time run slow and waiting 1 year feels like waiting 4 years.
Here is a decent URL I check into from time to time to what’s happening with any new Wi-Fi news.
Another thing with 6E is that the AFC system for outdoor usage won’t be working until 2022, but of course I’ll be working on a way to bypass it (through dst-nat rules!) when it goes live.
any news here as ROS 7 RC releases come much more often, than beta releases
I would initially be quite happy with JUST WiFi6, 6E will be great, but I can use 6 today to great effect.
Seems that the WiFi is godforsaken.
No 802.11ax , no wifi 6E.
Ok, message undestood, Mikrotik. You have leave us.
AC Wave2 on the Audience got me the best performance I have seen out of a Mikrotik radio.
But a few things stopped me cold.
Can’t work with caps-man
VLANs are not clear
I am using it as a Zerotier bridge now.
WITH THE RADIOS TURNED OFF.