Hi,

we are looking for a new centralized wireless controller based wifi solution for our campus. So far, there are individual access points, equipped with ACLs, so that students connect to the access point and then set up a connection to the vpn servers.
All of our old access points should now be replaced. There will be about 80 access points (802.1x, indoor and outdoor, 802.11n support, simultaneous operation of 5 and 2.4 GHz), which should work with two (main and backup) wifi access point controllers.

We asked one of our main sellers to make an offer. According to him this will be two Enterasys server 4110 for 19000,-€, 80 access points 36xx for ~ € 48 000, 12 days of installation and setup for 7200, - €, 1 day training for 800, - €. Plus tax and service contract, of course.

Looking at the data sheet, well let´s say the features of those controllers is disappointing, for example, no NAT and no IPv6. Especially the last point, I personally consider to be unacceptable. In year 2010/2011 probably everyone should now have IPv6 support for its network components builtin, or at least have a road map for it.

But back to the topic. Talking about prices, this is too expensive for us.
Well, we are already using Mikrotik RB1000 for some time now for ISP connectivity and are very satisfied. So the question is, how Mikrotik wireless access points can be used in a controller based wireless solution setup.

So a wireless controller, through which the access points are managed, with access control lists, SSID setup, firewalling, NATing, automizied channel management. the access points should connect e.g. with GRE and all traffic is forwarded by the controller.

Is anyone running such a Mikrotik based controller solution? Did you make it on your own? What do you use? What would you recommend?

i also need wireless controler based solution for mikrotik , but there aren't any type of wireless lan controlers wich support mikrotik ...

A wireless controller for Mikrotik would be really great, but that is only another trend Mikrotik is missing...

What do you understand as "wireless controller"? What functionality are you missing? What Standard are you talking about?

Wireless controllers essentially turn the APs into just radios. All data that comes into the AP is somehow encapsulated and sent back to the central controllers, decapsulated, and dealt with there. The controllers does the actual bridging of the packet into the wired network, controls all handshaking, authentication, etc. Even traffic between wireless clients flows through the controller and can be firewalled there. Controllers also use the AP radios to draw an RF spectrum map. Because they get the data from all the APs they can then perform dynamic adjustment of channel allocation and transmit power to shift channels so there is a minimum of interference, provide coverage hole detection (an AP dies and its neighbors boost their power to cover the hole left by the dead AP), and detect, report on, and act against rogues by sending fake disassociation messages until the rogue is physically dealt with. Most controllers also support the idea of "monitor APs" that don't accept clients at all and spend all of their time monitoring spectrum. If you import map graphics you can get real time heat maps, and can locate stations on a map by what APs see them how strongly. You can also load balance clients by selectively ignoring station association requests on more heavily loaded APs for a few times to cause the client to instead go to APs less heavily loaded but further away (but still close enough to provide good service). The central management makes it trivial to roll out new SSIDs or change security settings in one place and have the change propagate. With the products I know latency between AP and controller can be up to 100ms, which means you can either build large meshes, or cover large geographical regions. Oh, and the controller can set up hand offs between APs beforehand so that the client doesn't have to shake hands with the new AP, which greatly improves roaming times, which in turn is important for things like VoFI (VoIP over WiFi).

They're very nice to work with. But also very, very expensive.

What you have described is the first version of wireless controller. They have a huge disadvantage => bottleneck in fast/large 802.11n networks.

Look at the Meraki-concept, if you want to see the future of wireless lan....

fewi - a good description.

For an example, Aruba wireless systems have used a simple GRE tunnel between the radio points and the controller. When a client is 'using' such a system, it can only 'see' one BSSID, i.e. one MAC address, one hardware AP device, even though really there are many. In this way the client does not roam, there is no handshaking delay when handing off from one AP to another. It is the controller that can see which radio has the best signal and thus can decide which radio to send and receive data to/from. It can also decide that it can see a client from multiple radios, but to load balance the system it is better that a client is communicated with via a radio that is further away, has a lower S/N ratio, but is a radio that has less clients' usage, thus improving the overall client experience.

Some systems (Aruba/Netgear) use dynamically allocated RF channels and power levels, so that all the radios are not interfering with each other and can dynamically adjust to interference (sometimes using specifically allocated monitor only radios or switching radios to monitor mode whenever the usage falls below a certain threshold) whereas other systems use the same channel everywhere and synch their transmissions to each radio in such a way that it does not interfere with itself (Meru).

Both have their pros and cons, but the throughput and reliability on 802.11n based systems using a controller are much greater than using multiple 'legacy' stand alone 802.11n access points.

I suggested to MT a year or two ago about supporting such a system, but I guess they are not interested in building a whole new system for use 'indoors'. Even the MT Routerboard cases have no keyholes in the back so they cannot be mounted easily on a wall! Luckily there are other suppliers who makes boxes for Routerboards that DO have keyholes in the back.

If MT could provide a raw data feed out of the radio cards, which could then be tunnelled elsewhere, to say a RB1100, then, yes it might be possible to develop such a system. But is there the global market for such a direction of development?

I would be interested, but just a few of us is not enough.

To make it clear, I want Mikrotik´s access points for this: (RB411ah + R52hn + two 5 dbi omni antennas (5Ghz/2.4Ghz)) * 80 + central POE switches.

I will have two SSIDs:

1. 802.1x, authentication with RADIUS, WPA/WPA2 plus ACLs on the access points
2. For those being unable to do 802.1X: an open SSID which everyone is able to connect. After that ACLs on each access points, allowing only access to the VPN servers.

Therefore I neee a kind of a centralized management software for controlling e.g. the radios, SSIDs, ACLs, ...
Does anyone know a software that will work?

u can control every radio and ap through winbox but then the clients have to be individually handled for each ap. but yes a wireless controller type mikrotik wld be awesome.

year : 2012

no update on the " Controller " issue from Mikrotik as yet.

normis... can you help us out with this.

Ubiquiti is offering the UniFi solution already.... if Mikrotik can give something similar or a centralized solution for indoor campus wide wifi it will be really very helpful.

i myself have 4 enquires pending for this kind of requirement.

regards,
-sid

There are two very different products here.

Centralised management of a large number of APs where you can make one change in one place and it is replicated to every other AP. That is not the same as a centralised controller which takes the raw packets from each AP and processing them in one location as if it were one AP. Like UniFi. I wanted Mikrotik to provide a means of getting the raw data out of an AP. But they've missed the boat now as we use 'other' products now instead. We couldn't wait any longer.

We have build our own system, accting like your description.

Its no centraliced controller, but a database, controlling all units parameters, and all config is auto generated.

http://www.mikrotik.com/mfm <- VikenAdmin

We have build our own system, accting like your description.

Its no centraliced controller, but a database, controlling all units parameters, and all config is auto generated.

http://www.mikrotik.com/mfm <- VikenAdmin

hello,

thank you for the reply. can we have that website http://vikenkomtek.no/ of yours in english please.