I work for a company that's looking to roll out 5GHz APs at many of our sites. However, I have not found anything that exactly meets our requirements. I'm hoping that someone else may know of something that better fits our needs. We want 5GHz APs as we are experiencing lots of issues at many sites with interference affecting the 2.4GHz spectrum. Getting APs that use a licensed band is not possible for us at the moment as we are not big enough for that to be a viable option. We do not care at all about the other benefits of 5GHz APs. Speed does not matter (1 Mbps is adequate). However, reliability is crucial. We want an AP that almost never loses connection to its clients. The following are a list of requirements (non-negotiable):

Weather proofing (with an official IP rating)
Beam width of at most 180°
Minimum POE input of no more than 12V
Voltage monitoring capability

Preferred features:

Endurance rating >= 200,000 hours
Minimum POE input <= 8V
Flash size > 16MB
Support for spectrum scan function (ac WiFi is unimportant to us)
SXT mount
High gain


We currently use SXTG2HnD and RB912UAG-2HPnD with an outdoor antenna enclosure. SXT 2s have been adequate for us. We have had performance reliability issues with them (performance drops to an unacceptable level every now and then). RB912UAG-2HPnD boards have been phenomenal for us. Their performance reliability has been great and they include basically all of the features we want without the frills we don't care about. However, the outdoor enclosures we used to buy are not available any more which is why we now use SXT 2s. The RB912UAG-5HPnD boards look ideal for us. However, we have the problem of not being able to acquire outdoor housings for them anymore. Therefore, the BaseBox 5 looked like a good option for us (we would prefer a device that has a built in antenna but it is not a must) but it does not appear to have an official IP rating which is a deal breaker.

The other issue is that we are based in South Africa. It seems to us that outdoor enclosures for the aforementioned routerboard seem to be easier to find in other countries. Thank you in advance for the help.

For example: https://mikrotik.com/product/RB921GS-5HPacD-19S
or https://mikrotik.com/product/mantbox_52_15s

Or https://mikrotik.com/product/RB921UAGS-5SHPacD-NM with your antenna

Thanks very much for the reply, honzam.

That is where I landed. It seems like something from the mANTBox line may be where we end up. My main hesitation is that (at least to my knowledge) none of them support spectral-scan.

spectral-scan = only with 5Ghz-N hardware

I know. That's why I have hesitations with the mANTBox line.