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TheLorc
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Wireless access point recommendation?

Sun May 28, 2023 9:51 pm

Hello everyone,

Have you got any wireless AP recommendations? Sorry if this is not allowed here.

I would like a gigabit speed AP (if that exists?) that is PoE capable (without the use of an injector)

I will look myself but if any of you have any recommendations let me know

It would have to be wall mountable, powered by PoE switch, for use in an office and I would possibly buy 2 or 3 of them for wifi access around the building. It will be for people to connect to the wifi with their phones/laptops and must have the ability for VLANs
 
gigabyte091
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Re: Wireless access point recommendation?

Sun May 28, 2023 10:00 pm

Well, from Mikrotik you have new cAP ax:

https://mikrotik.com/product/cap_ax
 
holvoetn
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Re: Wireless access point recommendation?

Sun May 28, 2023 10:04 pm

But no gigaspeed over wireless.
Current MT products do not have that capability.

If other vendor, wrong place to ask. :lol:
 
TheLorc
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Re: Wireless access point recommendation?

Sun May 28, 2023 10:06 pm

But no gigaspeed over wireless.
Current MT products do not have that capability.

If other vendor, wrong place to ask. :lol:
Cap AX says 'Wireless 5 GHz Max data rate 1200 Mbit/s' would that not be gigabit?
 
TheLorc
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Re: Wireless access point recommendation?

Sun May 28, 2023 10:07 pm

Well, from Mikrotik you have new cAP ax:

https://mikrotik.com/product/cap_ax
Hi, do you know how I can know if my PoE switch will power this AP, or if i will need a separate little power injector? I bought a different AP from a different vendor and it doesnt work with my switch, so it becomes a pain having to use the injector. Its much easier just having everything be powered by the poe switch and its corresponding network sockets around the building :)

My PoE switch is Zyxel GS1920-24HP
 
holvoetn
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Re: Wireless access point recommendation?

Sun May 28, 2023 11:01 pm

Data rate is not real speed.

Poe is 802.3 af/at. Check speciation.
 
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anav
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Re: Wireless access point recommendation?

Mon May 29, 2023 3:40 am

What is your budget.........
Also what is wrong with sticking with same vendor.........https://www.zyxel.com/global/en/product ... wax620d-6e
 
gigabyte091
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Re: Wireless access point recommendation?

Mon May 29, 2023 6:18 am

Maybe your AP is not working at 48V but at 24V or maybe it's 48V passive poe and your switch is active poe i presume.

So when you have passive poe there is no negotiation between switch and powered device. Instead you always have 48V (or 24V) present at the ports (for eg. cap ax ether2 is passive poe out)

So maybe your AP is passive poe only which means he expects 48V to be present without negotiation with switch and your switch is not enabling poe on that port because well, it didn't got the request for poe output. And injector work bebause it's just injecting 48 or 24V
 
holvoetn
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Re: Wireless access point recommendation?

Mon May 29, 2023 10:11 am

All MT cap use 802.3 af/at.
 
gigabyte091
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Re: Wireless access point recommendation?

Mon May 29, 2023 5:04 pm

Yea, but he said that he bought different AP from different vendor and it didn't worked with poe switch. Maybe that AP is using 24V.

I had TP-Link that was powered by 9 or 12V via poe injector.
 
TheLorc
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Re: Wireless access point recommendation?

Tue May 30, 2023 2:14 pm

Yea, but he said that he bought different AP from different vendor and it didn't worked with poe switch. Maybe that AP is using 24V.

I had TP-Link that was powered by 9 or 12V via poe injector.
POE Switch: GS1920-24HP
https://www.zyxelguard.com/datasheets/GS1920-Series.pdf

TP Link AP: EAP110
https://static.tp-link.com/upload/produ ... rsion).pdf

I am not sure exactly why. But I believe its to do with the fact the EAP110 is '24V Passive PoE'. I believe my switch may only work with Active PoE devices which are able to tell the switch what voltage they want. Not sure. In future I will only buy APs that are Active PoE. I think my switch can work with 802.3 af or "802.3 at poe plus" devices.

The EAP110 is supplied with a little PoE injector device, it works fine with that but I dont want the burden of having to use that when every single other PoE device will simply work off my switch and its wall sockets around the building.

For now I bought an EAP610 but I think I might look at getting a cAP too
 
TheLorc
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Re: Wireless access point recommendation?

Tue May 30, 2023 2:20 pm

What is your budget.........
Also what is wrong with sticking with same vendor.........https://www.zyxel.com/global/en/product ... wax620d-6e
I currently have two zyxel nwa1123-acv2 but one of them is turning off repeatedly 5 times a day. It turns off and comes back online randomly a few minutes later.

Also it appears to me they cannot be locally managed and must be managed in the cloud - plus I am having an issue with managing them in the cloud. The password for the SSIDs on them seems to be going back to some default value in the cloud, yet the real password to connect to the wifi SSID is the original one set (even though when you check on the cloud, its not that password) e.g. You set password to 1234, then it will change back to the default one 'oZxL1!', but '1234' is the password you must type in to log into the wifi SSID lol.

Anyway don't mind this, I dont want it to turn into a support thread for Zyxel APs as that is not allowed here :)
 
 
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mkx
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Re: Wireless access point recommendation?

Tue May 30, 2023 2:27 pm

But I believe its to do with the fact the EAP110 is '24V Passive PoE'. I believe my switch may only work with Active PoE devices which are able to tell the switch what voltage they want. Not sure. In future I will only buy APs that are Active PoE. I think my switch can work with 802.3 af or "802.3 at poe plus" devices.

You're right, EAP110 PoE is 24V and thus not compatible with any 802.3af/at PoE switch (which is 48V). So when looking for new WiFi gear, check for 802.3af/at PoE support (or passive 48V at least).
 
holvoetn
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Re: Wireless access point recommendation?

Tue May 30, 2023 2:34 pm

All MT cap use 802.3 af/at.

Small repeat :lol:
 
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mkx
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Re: Wireless access point recommendation?

Tue May 30, 2023 2:47 pm

All MT cap use 802.3 af/at.

Small repeat :lol:

For those who can't enumerate (and describe tech specs in detail) complete list of Mikrotik's gear during small hours: @holvo is mentioning Mikrotik device models with "cAP" in their name (not to confuse with CAPsMAN functionality).

Other MT wireless devices don't necessarily share the same powering characteristics. E.g. hAP ax2 or hAP ax3 can only accept input voltage up to 28V and are thus not 802.3af/at compatible.
 
pe1chl
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Re: Wireless access point recommendation?

Tue May 30, 2023 3:38 pm

But no gigaspeed over wireless.
Current MT products do not have that capability.

If other vendor, wrong place to ask. :lol:
Cap AX says 'Wireless 5 GHz Max data rate 1200 Mbit/s' would that not be gigabit?
Always remember that such speeds (not only for MikroTik but also for all other manufacturers) are "salesman talk", not real speeds.
You can more or less compare them between manufacturers, but you will never be able to achieve them. Expect half of the specified speed.
 
holvoetn
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Re: Wireless access point recommendation?

Tue May 30, 2023 3:45 pm

Always remember that such speeds (not only for MikroTik but also for all other manufacturers) are "salesman talk", not real speeds.
You can more or less compare them between manufacturers, but you will never be able to achieve them. Expect half of the specified speed.
I still need to get my hands on cAP AX (on it's way, currently in Poland for last hop to delivery).
But ... comparing to AX2 and AX3 (same chip set, same resources), I also see 1201/1201 being reported as data rate.
Real speed I can achieve over those devices (with my internal setup towards iperf or internal openspeed server) is 800-ish (sometimes even a bit more).
I'll admit, that's when I am in the same room as the device and ideal conditions (no interference visible from other access points on the used frequency).
With a real thick brick wall in between, it drops to around 500 (which in my view is still pretty decent).
 
pe1chl
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Re: Wireless access point recommendation?

Tue May 30, 2023 4:13 pm

I also see 1201/1201 being reported as data rate.
What is reported there is the RADIO datarate. The radio is halfduplex and it has additional overhead for the radio protocol.
So unlike a 1Gbps ethernet link which gives you very near to 1Gbps actual throughput in both directions at the same time, a Wireless link will never achieve that.
You need to subtract overhead for the radio protocol (beacons, re-transmissions, sync time etc) and even then it remains half-duplex so when there is considerable traffic in both directions you need to add that together.
Furthermore, the radio channel is shared with other users and other APs.
 
TheLorc
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Re: Wireless access point recommendation?

Tue May 30, 2023 4:23 pm

Thanks everyone for the help. I know now why the TP-Link AP wouldn't work (it only takes 24V Passive PoE which my switch cannot provide)

I have bought an EAP610 but will look into getting a cAP AX (which will work with my switch as its active PoE :) )
 
holvoetn
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Re: Wireless access point recommendation?

Tue May 30, 2023 4:39 pm

I also see 1201/1201 being reported as data rate.
What is reported there is the RADIO datarate. The radio is halfduplex and it has additional overhead for the radio protocol.
So unlike a 1Gbps ethernet link which gives you very near to 1Gbps actual throughput in both directions at the same time, a Wireless link will never achieve that.
You need to subtract overhead for the radio protocol (beacons, re-transmissions, sync time etc) and even then it remains half-duplex so when there is considerable traffic in both directions you need to add that together.
Furthermore, the radio channel is shared with other users and other APs.
While all of your remark is quite correct, my remark was about your indication towards 50% expected real life speed.
1201Mpbs date rate (yes, RADIO data rate. After all, we are talking about wifi), translates on AX device to 800Mbps-something speed. Over Wifi.
That's a bit more then 50%.
That's the only point I wanted to make.
And ofcourse, other devices sharing the same AP will limit this throughput. But that's not different from an ethernet cable (you can't run 2 PCs towards an iperf server with 1 link to the router for upstream and expect 950Mbps on both ...)
 
pe1chl
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Re: Wireless access point recommendation?

Tue May 30, 2023 4:45 pm

While all of your remark is quite correct, my remark was about your indication towards 50% expected real life speed.
1201Mpbs date rate (yes, RADIO data rate. After all, we are talking about wifi), translates on AX device to 800Mbps-something speed. Over Wifi.
That's a bit more then 50%.
Ok, when I test it myself I rarely get more than 50%. I guess it depends on many factors.
 
holvoetn
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Re: Wireless access point recommendation?

Tue May 30, 2023 5:21 pm

Main point (and I see this return on many threads where performance issues are being reported) is to make sure your chosen frequency is CLEAR from interference by other APs.
Select the frequency yourself after checking what's being used, don't rely on "auto".
And then you can reach those speeds.

But surely you already know all of this.
 
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Re: Wireless access point recommendation?

Tue May 30, 2023 5:49 pm

I never use auto, here are some tests from today. I have Big Ears... Huge Ears with ax210

hAP ax vs cAP ax but the hAP is on channel 144 vs cAP on 44, slight version change as well on both.
First test is just a pass-through speed test hAP ax to cAP ax, secound test is best effort WiFi test PC to hAP ax and the third set of Wifi tests are me moving the PC/Laptop closer while testing mutiple times to the cAP ax.


Sanity Cable Speed test hAP ax2 to cAP ax

status: done
      time-remaining: 0s
    ping-min-avg-max: 167us / 215us / 401us
  jitter-min-avg-max: 0s / 25us / 147us
                loss: 0% (0/200)
        tcp-download: 938Mbps local-cpu-load:85%
          tcp-upload: 921Mbps local-cpu-load:62% remote-cpu-load:59%
        udp-download: 945Mbps local-cpu-load:42% remote-cpu-load:38%
          udp-upload: 957Mbps local-cpu-load:57% remote-cpu-load:29%


hAP ax2 7.10_RC1 5g(149) to PC WiFi test Best effort
status: done
      time-remaining: 0s
    ping-min-avg-max: 1.79ms / 2.49ms / 7.55ms
  jitter-min-avg-max: 0s / 260us / 5.21ms
                loss: 0% (0/200)
        tcp-download: 814Mbps local-cpu-load:65%
          tcp-upload: 899Mbps local-cpu-load:39% remote-cpu-load:1%



cAP ax 7.10_Beta5 5G(44) to PC WiFi test Best effort Moving closer!


              status: udp download
      time-remaining: 17s
    ping-min-avg-max: 1.81ms / 2.80ms / 21.5ms
  jitter-min-avg-max: 2us / 597us / 18.7ms
                loss: 0% (0/200)
        tcp-download: 769Mbps local-cpu-load:45%
          tcp-upload: 727Mbps local-cpu-load:29% remote-cpu-load:2%
  

              status: done
      time-remaining: 0s
    ping-min-avg-max: 1.81ms / 2.47ms / 4.49ms
  jitter-min-avg-max: 3us / 220us / 2.22ms
                loss: 0% (0/200)
        tcp-download: 876Mbps local-cpu-load:50%
          tcp-upload: 876Mbps local-cpu-load:32% remote-cpu-load:2%
        


              status: udp upload
      time-remaining: 4s
    ping-min-avg-max: 1.78ms / 2.64ms / 23.7ms
  jitter-min-avg-max: 2us / 619us / 21.3ms
                loss: 0% (0/200)
        tcp-download: 898Mbps local-cpu-load:50%
          tcp-upload: 927Mbps local-cpu-load:33% remote-cpu-load:2%
        

              status: done
      time-remaining: 0s
    ping-min-avg-max: 1.76ms / 2.56ms / 17.9ms
  jitter-min-avg-max: 1us / 533us / 15.5ms
                loss: 0% (0/200)
        tcp-download: 950Mbps local-cpu-load:53%
          tcp-upload: 923Mbps local-cpu-load:32% remote-cpu-load:2%
        

              status: done
      time-remaining: 0s
    ping-min-avg-max: 1.45ms / 2.67ms / 50.3ms
  jitter-min-avg-max: 4us / 677us / 47.8ms
                loss: 0% (0/200)
        tcp-download: 926Mbps local-cpu-load:48%
          tcp-upload: 928Mbps local-cpu-load:32% remote-cpu-load:2%
 
pe1chl
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Re: Wireless access point recommendation?

Tue May 30, 2023 8:06 pm

Main point (and I see this return on many threads where performance issues are being reported) is to make sure your chosen frequency is CLEAR from interference by other APs.
That is a good joke!
But I do not live in the desert...
 
holvoetn
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Re: Wireless access point recommendation?

Tue May 30, 2023 8:44 pm

:lol:

Me neither.
On 2.4GHz it is a bit crowded ( though everyone follows 1/6/11 scheme quite nicely) but where I live, plenty of opportunities on 5GHz channels.
Or home owners not able/ willing to change default settings on their routers, making them all sit together on 3 or 4 lower channels. Which obviously I avoid completely and I am not going to educate them.
 
pe1chl
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Re: Wireless access point recommendation?

Tue May 30, 2023 10:16 pm

When I run a scan, I see about 100 APs on 2.4 GHz and 40 APs on 5 GHz. The entire 5GHz band is used, the high channels too. And I run my own PtP link on 5520 so don't want to be close to that either.
 
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Re: Wireless access point recommendation?

Tue May 30, 2023 10:39 pm

Waiting for the 60Ghz iphone :-)

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