i have a mikrotik routerboard 532 set up to provide a hotspot solution for a client. everything works fine off site, but as soon as we installed in the new building, ALL, and i mean ALL wireless signal just disappeared.
tried reconfig, diff channels and freq, to no avail. brought in a senao AP to test and the same thing. we even moved the board outside and we could still not connect to the AP. it picks it up maybe 3 or 4 times every half hour but loses it straight away.
moved the whole system back to my office - no problem, it all works. took it to my house - no problem. figured i must have made a config error, redid the whole damn thing, tested it at my office - all good. took it down to the client site, guess what. no signal.
i’m stumped. so is miro, the local distributor.
the site is part of a newly constructed mall, could it be EMI or something? there are no other wifi rigs anywhere close by.
Lots of things can cause this but what I ran into was a Radio Shack with 2.4 wireless security cameras. They will kill WiFi with wideband video. I picked up a little 2.4 video receiver and LCD monitor and can see their images quite a distance away.
Try and use snooper to look for activity in the spectrum. I was snookered by a similar problem for ages, changing channels up and down to no avail.
Snooper revealed all, and has since saved me in similar situations. You may see traffic, but no MAC or SSID to be picked up with a normal scan. If you have access to a spectrum analyser, even better - you’d be amazed how much noise out there is not WiFi.
I see you are from SA - try setting your country option to SA and use high channels, like 12 or 13 on 2.4…
I haven't used it in 2,4GHz environment, but in a 5GHz environment with
a routerboard on a pole togehter with 5 canopy the snooper ( + scan +
freq usage) does not see any "spectrum usage".
The canopy don't use 802.11a, just the same frequency range. So I
assume that a camera system won't be seen, either.