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Smoerrebroed
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wAP ac or NetMetal ac²?

Sun Feb 07, 2021 10:05 am

Hi All,

I am currently planning the WiFi setup for my new home. I would like to have one AP to cover the garden area which will be approx. 20 x 15 m² in size. At first I thought to use the new wAP ac, but now I found the NetMetal ac². They seem to use the same/similar hardware (except for the antennas), so I was wondering whether the NetMetal ac² would give me a significant advantage over the wAP ac in terms of coverage/signal quality and/or durability. (The higher price is nothing that concerns me.)

FWIW: The AP will be on the south-facing side of the building, so it will have direct sunlight during most of the day.

Cheers,

Smoerrebroed
 
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normis
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Re: wAP ac or NetMetal ac²?

Mon Feb 08, 2021 7:58 am

They are very different devices for different purposes. Netmetal is more sturdy and is designed for long range links, where the client device is also a MikroTik outdoor device.

the wAP is more designed for a situation like yours, where devices like laptops and phones will connect. Netmetal doesn't have an advantage if the client devices are phones, because the limitation is the phone antenna in this case.

In short, the Netmetal can be used for more professional setups with bigger distances, but will not have any advantage with end-users as clients.
 
anuser
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Re: wAP ac or NetMetal ac²?

Mon Feb 08, 2021 3:28 pm

I wouldn't buy the new wAP AC nowadays as it has only 128MB of RAM and will therefor not work with new WifiWave2 driver of RouterOS V7, neither would I buy the NetMetal ac2 as it has only 16MB of storage, i.e. the current WifiWave2 driver package is too big to install it on the access point.
 
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Smoerrebroed
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Re: wAP ac or NetMetal ac²?

Wed Feb 10, 2021 8:24 am

Thank you for your opinion, anuser. I am not looking at a high-volume deployment, so I believe the aforementioned devices will do just fine. Thanks, normis, as well for your input. I understood that the devices serve a different use case but would nonetheless both fit my requirements. Having said that, I believe that there will really be no benefit of the NetMetal ac² over the wAP ac as I am not going to have another such device as a client, so wAP ac it is. :)

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