6 ms·

i'm interested in your setup. are you using macos or another bsd? what kind of ap's do you use? what does your mesh look like? special antennas? thank you.

by glasz 9y ago

4ad 9y ago
My setup is actually very simple. Actually I have several setups in multiple locations. I use Mikrotik[1] APs managed by Mikrotik controller (so centralized management for all APs). Look for the ones that support dual-concurrent tripple-chain 802.11ac like hAP ac or wAP ac. I use 5GHz everywhere although I do have 2.4GHz also. There is no interference on the 5GHz band as it doesn't penetrate walls (YMMV). I use a lot of APs, usually one AP per room if I want 5GHz coverage in that room. The power used is very low. More power just means more interference. The bottleneck is the transmit power on the client, which is very low. More power on the AP just make everything louder. I've set up power level based on this document: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203068 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203068. Unfortunately only Apple documents this stuff, but works pretty well for everything AFAICT. I don't have any special antennas. If you need to cover a large space with a single AP you might need one, but the best philosophy on 5GHz is to have many smaller APs. All my APs are connected through ethernet (actually everything is PoE powered). I don't use any mesh stuff (although Mikrotik can be used in that configuration, I don't recommend it). All my APs are simple bridges, I don't use the Mikrotik tunnel stuff. I don't use 802.11r because Mikrotik can't do it yet. I am not sure if anyone except Cisco can do it. I wish I had 802.11r, this is my Achilles' heel. Everything works very well, but you get what you pay for. Mikrotik is really cheap compared to the real stuff out there, which means much less polish, more bugs, and no real documentation. If I were to do it again I might chose Unifi[2] instead. Don't get me wrong, this all works very well, but the level of polish is what you'd expect out of a GitHub project compared to some real commercial product. For example while you can set antenna gain in standalone AP mode, you can't do it in managed AP mode. Minor stuff like that. I also run a RADIUS server and I create user accounts for all my wireless users (WPA2 Enterprise). At different locations users have the same credentials. I use all kinds of clients (Linux/BSD/macOS), but the ones where I'm most interested in speed are the Macbooks. [1] https://routerboard.com https://routerboard.com [2] https://unifi-hd.ubnt.com https://unifi-hd.ubnt.com
- glasz 9y ago
  perfect. thank you. upvoted.

i'm interested in your setup. are you using macos or another bsd? what kind of ap's do you use? what does your mesh look like? special antennas? thank you.

by glasz 9y ago

i'm interested in your setup. are you using macos or another bsd? what kind of ap's do you use? what does your mesh look like? special antennas? thank you.

4ad 9y ago

My setup is actually very simple. Actually I have several setups in multiple locations. I use Mikrotik[1] APs managed by Mikrotik controller (so centralized management for all APs). Look for the ones that support dual-concurrent tripple-chain 802.11ac like hAP ac or wAP ac. I use 5GHz everywhere although I do have 2.4GHz also. There is no interference on the 5GHz band as it doesn't penetrate walls (YMMV). I use a lot of APs, usually one AP per room if I want 5GHz coverage in that room. The power used is very low. More power just means more interference. The bottleneck is the transmit power on the client, which is very low. More power on the AP just make everything louder. I've set up power level based on this document: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203068 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203068. Unfortunately only Apple documents this stuff, but works pretty well for everything AFAICT. I don't have any special antennas. If you need to cover a large space with a single AP you might need one, but the best philosophy on 5GHz is to have many smaller APs. All my APs are connected through ethernet (actually everything is PoE powered). I don't use any mesh stuff (although Mikrotik can be used in that configuration, I don't recommend it). All my APs are simple bridges, I don't use the Mikrotik tunnel stuff. I don't use 802.11r because Mikrotik can't do it yet. I am not sure if anyone except Cisco can do it. I wish I had 802.11r, this is my Achilles' heel. Everything works very well, but you get what you pay for. Mikrotik is really cheap compared to the real stuff out there, which means much less polish, more bugs, and no real documentation. If I were to do it again I might chose Unifi[2] instead. Don't get me wrong, this all works very well, but the level of polish is what you'd expect out of a GitHub project compared to some real commercial product. For example while you can set antenna gain in standalone AP mode, you can't do it in managed AP mode. Minor stuff like that. I also run a RADIUS server and I create user accounts for all my wireless users (WPA2 Enterprise). At different locations users have the same credentials. I use all kinds of clients (Linux/BSD/macOS), but the ones where I'm most interested in speed are the Macbooks. [1] https://routerboard.com https://routerboard.com [2] https://unifi-hd.ubnt.com https://unifi-hd.ubnt.com

glasz 9y ago
perfect. thank you. upvoted.