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millenium7
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CAPSMAN - Surely there's a simpler/cleaner way?

Wed Jul 27, 2022 8:49 am

CAPSMAN with nothing but 2.4ghz gear, fine, easy, neat
However 2.4ghz and 5ghz devices is a total mess and a pain in the ass, but maybe there's something i'm missing? (i'm hoping so)

It's really simple, I just want 2.4ghz and 5ghz with the same name, but obviously subtle differences like 20mhz channel width with 2.4ghz and 20/40mhz with 5.0ghz. Limited to certain channels so as to not overlap
The problem is I can't do this with a single config. I need to duplicate every.... single.......... entry........... because anything that contains the typical 2.4ghz channel list of 1/6/11 causes 5ghz to fail completely because of invalid frequency. Leaving it on auto sucks because 2.4ghz channels are all over the place, and I also can't leave channel width on auto because 80mhz on 5ghz is terrible, as is 20/40mhz on 2.4ghz. These are the defaults
Also need to duplicate all provisioning and add Hw Supported Mode

This is rubbish, surely there's a better way? A lot of our deployments contain more than 100 different SSID's (unique for each room) - Swapping out WAP's with WAP AC's means adding a lot of extra config to the router

And thirdly there's a problem with 2.4ghz and 5ghz being treated as completely separate interfaces and CAPS tunnels. So they cannot talk to each other, a PC on 5ghz will not be able to print to a printer on 2.4ghz with the same network name due to bridge horizon rule. Changing to local forwarding mode is not ideal and creates yet another mess
 
holvoetn
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Re: CAPSMAN - Surely there's a simpler/cleaner way?

Wed Jul 27, 2022 11:00 am

You will need two configs.
And based on e.g. MAC address of the radio, apply the correct config in provisioning.

And when you think about it, it's logical. 2.4GHz settings are not the same as 5GHz settings.
They ARE different interfaces in HW too.
 
millenium7
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Re: CAPSMAN - Surely there's a simpler/cleaner way?

Wed Jul 27, 2022 11:18 am

And when you think about it, it's logical. 2.4GHz settings are not the same as 5GHz settings.
They ARE different interfaces in HW too.

I think about every single other wireless controller i've used and how ridiculously illogical CAPSMAN is in its config/provisioning in comparison, its rubbish
It was clearly been designed to really expect a single wireless interface, and that was probably fine back in 2009, but it really does not need to be so convoluted and difficult to set up

Every other controller manages to be immensely more user friendly and logically set up. Want to include 5ghz? yep you just tick that 1 box and its in the same bridge group and treated as it should, it doesn't try to apply 2.4ghz settings to a 5ghz radio
CAPSMAN should ideally allow you to enter both 2.4ghz and 5ghz settings in the same configuration. With separate options for individual radio's and not needing to double up on everything

What happens if/when we get 6ghz? triple the config?
Last edited by millenium7 on Wed Jul 27, 2022 11:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
 
holvoetn
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Re: CAPSMAN - Surely there's a simpler/cleaner way?

Wed Jul 27, 2022 11:25 am

I think about every single other wireless controller i've used and how ridiculously illogical CAPSMAN is in its config/provisioning in comparison, its rubbish
Every other controller manages to be immensely more user friendly and logically set up
Yes and no.
I've had short stint with OpenWRT: DISASTER for my mind. I simply couldn't get how it is supposed to work.

The power of Mikrotik is that you can control almost every setting. Capsman is already a layer above that but still you can control a lot more then quite some other devices I've had my hands on
(Netgear, HP, TP-Link, Devolo, Sitecom, ...)
But I completely agree: user friendly it is not.

Once you get the way capsman works, it is very logical. BTW Wifiwave2 (for those devices which support it) works in more or less the exact same way. So someone must be convinced there is added value in that approach :lol:

You may want to have a look at these MUM presentations, pretty good stuff.
https://mum.mikrotik.com/presentations/ ... 209343.pdf
https://mum.mikrotik.com/presentations/ ... 286214.pdf
 
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woland
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Re: CAPSMAN - Surely there's a simpler/cleaner way?

Wed Jul 27, 2022 2:36 pm

I think about every single other wireless controller i've used and how ridiculously illogical CAPSMAN is in its config/provisioning in comparison, its rubbish
Every other controller manages to be immensely more user friendly and logically set up
Yes and no.
I've had short stint with OpenWRT: DISASTER for my mind. I simply couldn't get how it is supposed to work.
Hi!
OpenWRT is not a controller, there is OpenWISP for controlling OpenWRT. (Both of them are not really simpler than using MT, but it also depends on, how deep you go.)
Besides: yeah Capsman is not easy to use. I needed a few days of researching the web and forum and sweared a lot. But I still LOVE the fact that it just needs an AP to run on!
Some big vendors solutions (for moderate sized networks) come with requirements like >64G RAM, >2GHz CPU x2 and >128GB of disk and cost thousands of $$.
:D
 
holvoetn
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Re: CAPSMAN - Surely there's a simpler/cleaner way?

Wed Jul 27, 2022 2:55 pm

Correct !
I was mixing AP and controller (but still, openwrt made my head explode :lol: )
 
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anav
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Re: CAPSMAN - Surely there's a simpler/cleaner way?

Wed Jul 27, 2022 4:07 pm

Easy dont use capsman. I dont and dont regret it all. I have not lost one nanosecond of my life and when I see the gazillion of threads, with hair pulled out, teeth gnashing and the like, I just have to smile, knowing what I avoided.
 
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woland
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Re: CAPSMAN - Surely there's a simpler/cleaner way?

Wed Jul 27, 2022 4:43 pm

Easy dont use capsman. I dont and dont regret it all. I have not lost one nanosecond of my life and when I see the gazillion of threads, with hair pulled out, teeth gnashing and the like, I just have to smile, knowing what I avoided.
Very radical opinion as always from anav. I still have kept some of my hair for the future wifiwave2 + Capsman integration. :)

Still MT WIFI is probably suboptimal.
 
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anav
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Re: CAPSMAN - Surely there's a simpler/cleaner way?

Wed Jul 27, 2022 4:46 pm

LMAO, nice, glad to see you are planning future horror episodes!
 
Zacharias
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Re: CAPSMAN - Surely there's a simpler/cleaner way?

Wed Jul 27, 2022 4:58 pm

Easy dont use capsman.
Nice solution.

Actually capsman is really good... Especially in networks with many APs.
 
millenium7
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Re: CAPSMAN - Surely there's a simpler/cleaner way?

Fri Jul 29, 2022 12:55 am

Easy dont use capsman. I dont and dont regret it all. I have not lost one nanosecond of my life and when I see the gazillion of threads, with hair pulled out, teeth gnashing and the like, I just have to smile, knowing what I avoided.

When deploying dozens/hundreds its great. Back in the predominantly 2.4ghz only days it allowed 'regular staff' to effortlessly deploy them because they just had to plug it into an ethernet socket and it went live and gave out wifi for that unit, straight out of the box with no config. And/or you can whitelist them ahead of time with just the MAC address (so the dodgy ones couldn't just buy their own WAP and get a free unit online)
The really good thing is no IP addressing required, so customer facing points were secure because there's no IP connectivity yet CAPSMAN will grab and onboard/upgrade/configure
So when you have an environment of unmanaged switches this is a very good thing. Just treat the whole network as unsecure and give no internet access, but CAPSMAN will do what you would want it to do

Most other vendors will require IP connectivity so now you need to add complexity to the network, via much more capable switches that can dynamically tag VLAN's based on mac address, or appropriate firewall rules to allow an AP to get an IP and internet, but not some other random device etc. It's either more costly with equipment, or more costly in administration

Now along comes 2.4ghz and 5ghz dual band devices and it all turns to shit. The added complexity and time involved is not in any way justified, its just stupid. And even with doubling up on your config there's still the issue of 2.4ghz and 5ghz being treated as separate tunnels and not allowing traffic between them (still waiting to hear a sensible solution to that.
(No, creating separate bridge interfaces for every single unit is not sensible)

We're now using Grandstream devices and holy hell, anyone who praises CAPSMAN would be blown off their rocking chair. It's minutes (can probably get it down to seconds) to setup a new site in the cloud controller with all the relevant details. Scan a bunch of bar-codes to get the mac addresses and device password into excel, import that into the controller and they're all white listed for that site. Never even need to take it out of the box just drop it onto site, plug in and off you go. Every device will provision and work perfectly without the idiocies of CAPSMAN and finnicky pointless stuffing about. By far the easiest and most user friendly implementation i've come across so far
 
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Re: CAPSMAN - Surely there's a simpler/cleaner way?

Fri Jul 29, 2022 1:06 am

Finally someone has found a Grandstream product that works!!! :shock: :shock: :shock:
 
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Re: CAPSMAN - Surely there's a simpler/cleaner way?

Fri Jul 29, 2022 8:38 am

Finally someone has found a Grandstream product that works!!! :shock: :shock: :shock:
He, he :D
 
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Re: CAPSMAN - Surely there's a simpler/cleaner way?

Fri Jul 29, 2022 8:59 am

anyone who praises CAPSMAN would be blown off their rocking chair.
I new Mikrotik AP do not even look at the sticker. :D
I connect the point, press reset for 10 seconds to switch the device into CAP mode and go to connect the next one. You just need to set up the Capsmans properly
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
 
millenium7
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Re: CAPSMAN - Surely there's a simpler/cleaner way?

Fri Jul 29, 2022 11:25 am

Finally someone has found a Grandstream product that works!!! :shock: :shock: :shock:
Old ones are shit
New Wifi6 gear is fantastic

I have zero brand loyalty, I look at individual products on their own merits. Brand loyalty does not work in technology, smart people come and go from a company (often brilliant products are the product of one or a handful of talented people involved, not the company itself) and politics, penny pinchers, greed or just plain stupidity and ignorance of management can and do ruin the results of previously acclaimed companies

Just look at the history of mikrotiks wireless performance :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:
 
millenium7
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Re: CAPSMAN - Surely there's a simpler/cleaner way?

Fri Jul 29, 2022 11:31 am

anyone who praises CAPSMAN would be blown off their rocking chair.
I new Mikrotik AP do not even look at the sticker. :D
I connect the point, press reset for 10 seconds to switch the device into CAP mode and go to connect the next one. You just need to set up the Capsmans properly
Now create 130 unique SSID's. You'll need a rather pointless 260 provisioning and 260 configuration entries because.... reasons? I guess? so there's 520 lines in the config file
Oh and use tunneling mode. Now tell me how you get devices on 2.4ghz and 5ghz in the same unit to talk to each other as if they were part of the same network? That's going to require 130 unique bridge interfaces as well, and occupy bandwidth across the switch links (possibly 100mbit limited? depending on cabling)
 
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Re: CAPSMAN - Surely there's a simpler/cleaner way?

Fri Jul 29, 2022 2:23 pm

Easy dont use capsman.
Nice solution.

Actually capsman is really good... Especially in networks with many APs.
I dont disagree that the premise is excellent but as per all the home wifi devices, takes far too much tweaking to get to work and then few understand it well.
I would luv to see an updated capsman interface married to wifi6, and then it would be really really good.
Millenium points out the technology and ease at which a modern interface approach can work......... I would add
that MT normally allows more granular control over traffic so they need to ensure future capsman handles the basics (like grandstream) efficiently but also
the more granular control in a relatively straight forward manner (dont need bpwl chained to the hip).
 
gotsprings
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Re: CAPSMAN - Surely there's a simpler/cleaner way?

Sat Jul 30, 2022 2:43 am

I love the concept of caps-man, and the integration. The actual radios performance, make it a "hell no" for me.

Mikrotik Wifi ACv2 is still incomplete and incompatible with caps-man.
 
UpRunTech
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Re: CAPSMAN - Surely there's a simpler/cleaner way?

Sat Jul 30, 2022 3:49 am


CAPSMAN should ideally allow you to enter both 2.4ghz and 5ghz settings in the same configuration. With separate options for individual radio's and not needing to double up on everything

What happens if/when we get 6ghz? triple the config?
Like everything Mikrotik you can split hairs and need to do every little step atomically that is usually hidden or grouped with other systems. I think this is neat. Sure it feels tedious but it can give great flexibility especially once you get scripts involved. Now that said there is no problem mixing 2GHz and 5GHz. I often have config presets like this I paste into the controller.
/caps-man channel
add band=5ghz-n/ac extension-channel=Ce frequency=5180 name=5G-40-A
add band=5ghz-n/ac extension-channel=Ce frequency=5220 name=5G-40-B
add band=5ghz-n/ac extension-channel=Ce frequency=5260 name=5G-40-C
add band=5ghz-n/ac extension-channel=Ce frequency=5300 name=5G-40-D
add band=5ghz-n/ac extension-channel=Ce frequency=5500 name=5G-40-E
add band=5ghz-n/ac extension-channel=Ce frequency=5540 name=5G-40-F
add band=5ghz-n/ac extension-channel=Ce frequency=5660 name=5G-40-G
add band=5ghz-n/ac extension-channel=Ce frequency=5700 name=5G-40-H
add band=5ghz-n/ac extension-channel=Ce frequency=5745 name=5G-40-I
add band=5ghz-n/ac extension-channel=Ce frequency=5785 name=5G-40-J
add band=5ghz-n/ac extension-channel=Ceee frequency=5180 name=5G-80-A
add band=5ghz-n/ac extension-channel=Ceee frequency=5260 name=5G-80-B
add band=5ghz-n/ac extension-channel=Ceee frequency=5500 name=5G-80-C
add band=5ghz-n/ac extension-channel=Ceee frequency=5660 name=5G-80-D
add band=5ghz-n/ac extension-channel=Ceee frequency=5745 name=5G-80-E
add band=2ghz-onlyn extension-channel=disabled frequency=2412 name=2G-20-A
add band=2ghz-onlyn extension-channel=disabled frequency=2437 name=2G-20-B
add band=2ghz-onlyn extension-channel=disabled frequency=2462 name=2G-20-C
/caps-man channel
add band=2ghz-onlyn extension-channel=disabled frequency=2412,2437,2462 name=\
    Chan2G tx-power=20
add band=5ghz-n/ac extension-channel=Ce frequency=\
    5180,5220,5260,5300,5500,5540,5560,5700,5745,5785 name=Chan5G-40 tx-power=\
    20
add band=5ghz-n/ac extension-channel=Ceee frequency=\
    5180,5260,5500,5560,5745 name=Chan5G-80 tx-power=20

For provisioning I'll use the hw-supported-mode option to select which radio gets a 2GHz or 5GHz config.

/caps-man provisioning
add action=create-dynamic-enabled hw-supported-modes=ac master-configuration=\
    5G-Config name-format=prefix-identity name-prefix=5G slave-configurations=\
    5G-Slave
add action=create-dynamic-enabled hw-supported-modes=b master-configuration=\
    2G-Config name-format=prefix-identity name-prefix=2G slave-configurations=\
    2G-Slave

Other times I might add in an identity regexp like "(WAP1)" or "(WAP1)|(WAP3)" to assign specific configs using certain frequencies to specific WAPs (where the name is the actual identity name of the WAP). There is usually no bridge horizon blocking traffic between 2GHz and 5 GHz, in your datapath section you need to get the bridge assignments right.

Are you using non-local or local forwarding? This is a pratfall for many to not get this right.
 
anuser
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Re: CAPSMAN - Surely there's a simpler/cleaner way?

Sun Aug 07, 2022 9:55 pm

Finally someone has found a Grandstream product that works!!! :shock: :shock: :shock:
Besides some xxx MikroTik cAP ac leftovers we use Aruba AP-5xx and Grandstream access points. Nowadays we use Grandstream´s manager software running locally on CentOS Linux.
We started with GWN7630/LR (Mediatek MT7615 802.11ac chipset) and use GWN7660 (Qualcomm IPQ60xx 802.11ax chipset) with success. Of course it has no RouterOS and I cannot run BGP on it, but that´s not what I want and need on an access point. Instead I have features like 802.11k, 802.11v and 802.11r. => "Seemless" roaming works with video and audio without any loss of connection or noticable drops of audo/video packets. Dynamic VLAN assignment with RADIUS: works, Band steering: works, Customer support: works, Airtime fairness feature was activated after a feature request.

Grandstream´s manager software is for managing only, it doen´t support tunneling traffic between an access point and the server, though.

I´m not a fan of Grandstream´s older HT-xxx VoIP ATA which I was not able to register on our PBX about 10 years ago, but wireless just works. And did I mention that those acccess points are rather inexpensive, aswell. ~100€ including taxes for one GWN7660. When MikroTik releases its "cAP ax" within some weeks/months, this will be its main competitor.

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