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Spectral scanning in dual band devices
Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2021 2:43 pm
by Cablenut9
I know that the pure 802.11ac devices don't support spectral scanning at all. However, some of them (Metal 52ac) are dual band and so support 2.4GHz too which has no .11ac component because ac is only for 5GHz. Do these support spectral scans for 2.4 or will I have to get some old 802.11n AP just for scanning?
Re: Spectral scanning in dual band devices
Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2021 3:31 pm
by r00t
Metal 52ac does have ac radio so it doesn't support spectrum scan.
Re: Spectral scanning in dual band devices
Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2021 4:19 pm
by Cablenut9
Metal 52ac does have ac radio so it doesn't support spectrum scan.
I'd think so, but the Wiki states "ac devices do not support spectral scans (e.g. QCA98xx, IPQ-...)" and all devices with that chip are pure 5GHz, while the 52ac has support for both and has a different range of chip where the 2.4GHz is just limited to b/g/n.
Re: Spectral scanning in dual band devices
Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2021 5:48 pm
by r00t
According to this block diagram it's single dual-band AC radio:
For comparison, here is block diagram for wAP AC (which have very similar HW compared to Metal) and you can clearly see dual radios:
Re: Spectral scanning in dual band devices
Posted: Mon Jan 11, 2021 5:24 pm
by mfr476
I don't think mikrotik will develop spectral scan for the new wireless equipment. The mikrotik wireless equipment goes by others of all the others
Re: Spectral scanning in dual band devices
Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2021 1:01 am
by r00t
Actually, the wifiwave2 contains spectral scan kernel module - it's just not used for anything (yet?).
But main limitation is the version of the radio chipset, AFAIK you have to pay more for advanced version that supports features like spectral scan, phase constellation view and TDMA/GPS timesync and also finer tuning of bandwidth and other parameters. At least that's how it was few years ago. I haven't read any recent Qualcomm documents (mostly because they require NDA to obtain)... but it's clearly not just driver/software issue if the support is not in the hardware...
Re: Spectral scanning in dual band devices
Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2021 1:39 am
by Cablenut9
Actually, the wifiwave2 contains spectral scan kernel module - it's just not used for anything (yet?).
But main limitation is the version of the radio chipset, AFAIK you have to pay more for advanced version that supports features like spectral scan, phase constellation view and TDMA/GPS timesync and also finer tuning of bandwidth and other parameters. At least that's how it was few years ago. I haven't read any recent Qualcomm documents (mostly because they require NDA to obtain)... but it's clearly not just driver/software issue if the support is not in the hardware...
wifiwave2 is nothing more than an early alpha right now and we don't know what The Big Mik is doing behind the scenes with respect to internal testing of these unused features. I suspect they're going to add support in future (802.11ac-wave2/ax?) models if the current chipsets really are not capable of it. However, with the position they have in the networking world as a super-performance-for-value brand, I'd be surprised if this was actually the case.