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Megakoresh
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How to build a 2.4+5Ghz home network using hAP AC and wAP?

Tue Apr 04, 2017 8:54 pm

Hello! I have some questions about a setup I want to do for my home network. The setup itself looks somewhat like this:
home network.png
Explanation:

I will have (once it arrives) a Mikroptik hAP AC router on the first floor with 4 connected ethernet ports. The first one will go to wAP on the second floor, the second will go to one of the PCs, the 3rd will go to a switch that separates Internet TV console and a laptop (done to minimize lag on the tv when someone's using internet) and the 4th one will go to my (main) PC on the second floor. My PC is connected to a shared printer and scanner via USB for now, but I plan to swap them for a WiFi printer+scanner solution sometime this year. Both the router on the first floow and wAP on the second floor will support 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz WiFi.

My aim is to have a single SSID WiFi network to which any device may connect through EITHER wAP OR hAP AC. That last one is the tricky part. Most devices these days can select to which physical WiFi antenna they connect based on signal strength, interference and so on, and those that can't will just connect to the first one they see, so that's not a problem. The problem is that the wAP must relay DHCP, DNS, etc. requests to hAP AC, but according to my experience with the current RB951Ui-2HnD, when those devices subsequently switch to the RB951 after having been connected to the wAP, the RB951 does not recognize them (even though it was the one that gave them the IP addresses in the first place), and does the whole DHCP leasing again, which makes it quickly run out of DHCP pool. Thats not the only problem - for some reason DNS lookup through the wAP is also horribly slow when connected to the 5Ghz antenna, even though both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz are on the same bridge.

I am not completely new to networking (I have CCNA1 & 2 training), but I am still quite a noob, and I think I am doing something wrong with the bridging. Can someone advise me what are the steps needed to achieve what I want to do. Heres a recap or my requirements:
  • Have a dual mode 2.4/5Ghz WiFi network with same SSID/password
  • Have that network propagated by two devices: hAP AC and wAP(connected to hAP AC ethernet0)
  • Have that wifi network bridged with the wired devices at hAP's ports eth1(switch + tv console + pc), eth2(pc) and eth3(pc). That is, they should all use the same DHCP pool.
  • Allow client devices to seamlessly switch between hAP and wAP based on signal strength
My theory up to this point was that I need to bridge wifi and ethernet interfaces on both wAP and hAP, but I am not exactly sure how do I "bridge" the wAP and hAP themseleves, if that even makes sense. I mean right now wAP is a client of the hAP (i.e. main router), whereas I want it to act more or less like an "extended antenna".

UPDATE: I figured it out thanks to the suggestions below. Scroll down to see how.
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Last edited by Megakoresh on Sun Apr 23, 2017 3:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 
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JohnTRIVOLTA
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Re: How to build a 2.4+5Ghz home network using hAP AC and wAP?

Tue Apr 04, 2017 10:47 pm

Use capsman and cap on both devices - hAP AC with capsman of course, to me it works perfectly !
 
Shadeofspirit
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Re: How to build a 2.4+5Ghz home network using hAP AC and wAP?

Tue Apr 04, 2017 11:01 pm

as JohnTRIVOLTA had sad, the best way is to use capsman. it will allow to have one place for managing all wifi APs. I suggest to connect wap to the 5-th port of hap ac (on 5th port there is poe out, it will allow to power wap by ethernet). in capsman there will be 2 configs: one for 2,4ghz and one for 5. smth like roaming will work on 2.4 (you should create acl rules ) but there will be no roaming between 2.4 and 5 ghz
on wap you can just enable CAP - all other will be made by capsman (it creates a udp tunnel between capsman and CAP access point)
 
Megakoresh
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Re: How to build a 2.4+5Ghz home network using hAP AC and wAP?

Tue Apr 04, 2017 11:10 pm

Thanks for the suggestion, I never even knew what CAPSMAN is. Will try it. Unfortunately I can't utilize the PoE out because wAP on the second floor has to connect to the ethernet cabling embedded into the house, which was constructed in 2006 and doesn't have PoE support. But that's not a problem, I'll try the capsman and report here on the result, once the hAP arrives, thank you!

PS: BTW do I need any other special config besides the acl rules for roaming profile or will it just otherwise work with default settings?
 
Shadeofspirit
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Re: How to build a 2.4+5Ghz home network using hAP AC and wAP?

Tue Apr 04, 2017 11:21 pm

Thanks for the suggestion, I never even knew what CAPSMAN is. Will try it. Unfortunately I can't utilize the PoE out because wAP on the second floor has to connect to the ethernet cabling embedded into the house, which was constructed in 2006 and doesn't have PoE support. But that's not a problem, I'll try the capsman and report here on the result, once the hAP arrives, thank you!

PS: BTW do I need any other special config besides the acl rules for roaming profile or will it just otherwise work with default settings?
actually, there are no real roaming. you should "tell" the client to disconnect when the signal is not good and to allow connections with good signal. so, you should to create 2 rules in capsman access list (one to connect, one to disconnect), there are some examples in wiki and on forum, but particular values of "dbm" you should find in your particular situation .
 
Megakoresh
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Re: How to build a 2.4+5Ghz home network using hAP AC and wAP?

Sun Apr 23, 2017 3:40 pm

UPDATE:
While figuring out how to deal with SPF connector wavelengths I decided to setup this CAPsMAN thingy, and after many factory resets I THINK I have it working (can't rightly say yet if the clients can properly switch based on signal strength, and I have not yet added ACL rules for that). For sake of posterity (maybe someone will find this useful in the future), here are steps I followed in winbox which resulted in everything working (steps done on hAP, unless explicitly stated otherwise):
  1. Connected all cables - internet to ether1, wAP to ether5 (PoE out as suggested: turns out my house does support it after all, even if built in 2006 - who would've thought!), other devices in-between and powered on
  2. Updated both wAP and hAP to the same RouterOS version (this is very important - wAP was on 6.34.1 and could not see the CAP server on hAP, which was 6.38.5 until I updated, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why)
  3. Created a bridge and added ports ether2, ether3, ether4 and ether5 to it (NOT wifi or CAP interfaces)
  4. Created a DHCP client on ether1 and waited till IP is aquired from ISP
  5. Enabled remote DNS requests (IP>DNS>Allow Remote Requests)
  6. Added an IP address (in IP>Addresses) for the desired default gateway (192.168.88.1 on 192.168.88.0/24 network) on the bridge interface I created earlier
  7. Added the 192.168.88.0/24 network to DHCP server > networks
  8. Followed "DHCP setup" wizard to create a DHCP server for that network on the bridge interface I have created earlier (if your DHCP client works ok, it should automatically fill in the DNS servers provided by your ISP. If the ISP doesn't provide DNS servers or their DNS is bad, just use Google's 8.8.8.8). Put the IP I added earlier as the default gateway.
  9. Added a DHCP client on wAP (IP>DHCP client>+) on ether1 interface (the one that links to ether5 on hAP), ticked "Use Peer DNS" and "Use Peer NTP" and set "Add Default Route" to "yes". Waited for IP to be aquired from hAP
  10. Added a NAT rule to masquerate the bridge. IP>Firewall>NAT>+, set the Src Address to the network I created for the DHCP server (192.168.88.0/24), set Out Interface to ether1 (the internet out) and Action to masquerade.
  11. At this point wired connections should all work. Pinged my DHCP server's default gateway from wAP and all wired clients.
  12. Created a CAPsMAN configuration for 2.4Ghz network (where you set up the SSID, password, etc.). Set the bridge to the one I created earlier.
  13. Created a CAPsMAN configuration for 5Ghz network (same shit). Set the bridge to the one I created earlier.
  14. Created a CAPsMAN provisioning rule for 2.4Ghz network - action is create-dynamic enable, set the configuration for 2.4Ghz as master
  15. Created a CAPsMAN provisioning rule for 5Ghz network - action is create-dynamic enable, set the configuration for 5Ghz as master and set the Hw. Supported Mode to ac (this last step is important or the manager won't know what provisioning rule to use for the 5Ghz antenna)
  16. Enabled CAP manager service (CAPsMAN>Interfaces>Manager>Enable)
  17. Added both antennas on hAP to CAP (Wireless>CAP), ticked "Enabled", added wlan1 and wlan2 interfaces and set the CAPsMAN Address to 127.0.0.1 (localhost, since manager is running on the hAP)
  18. Did the same on wAP, but set the CAPsMAN Address to the default gateway I set earlier for the DHCP server on hAP (the same one I pinged)
  19. Connected some WiFi devices and checked that they connect to all antennas based on signal strength at the time of connection. Since managed antennas don't show any traffic info on wAP, this needs to be observed on hAP in CAPsMAN settings.
Please feel free to tell me what I did wrong, literally the first time I ever did anything like that. I hope this helps someone.

Note: Apparently changing provision rules doesn't actually affect managed interfaces. After changing you have to remove the interface for the antennas affected by the rule and then go to Radio and manually click "Provision" for those antennas again to re-apply the changed rule.

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