I wonder what I was doing wrong with the sync buttons.  Do you have to pay 
attention to which one you power up first, or having a live Ethernet connection 
or something?  I would push the button at each end for 2 seconds, the orange 
lights would flash for a couple minutes, but no pairing.  It seems like if they 
don’t know whether they are supposed to be CCO or station they keep jumping 
back and forth.  I think maybe one time I got them to pair but they didn’t seem 
to  remember it.  Probably I was just doing something stupid, wouldn’t be the 
first time, but I tried it over and over before giving up and manually 
programming them which worked fine.

 

 

From: AF <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Mathew Howard
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2019 4:48 PM
To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Mikrotik PWR-LINE AP

 

I ran a TCP test from the one on the far end back to a different Mikrotik 
router, and got around 60Mbps (I only tried one direction). I just used the 
sync button to get two of them to connect together, and it seemed to work 
alright, but that seems like it would be way too easy for customers to screw 
up. I haven't checked if there's a way to disable all the buttons yet.

 

On Fri, Feb 22, 2019 at 4:37 PM Ken Hohhof <[email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]> > wrote:

OK, based on my bench testing (actually in my house), I recommend not trying to 
use the Sync button to pair them, especially if you anticipate having more than 
2 of them.  I had nothing but frustration that way.  Log in via the WiFi or 
Ethernet interface, you can use Winbox to find neighbors and connect via MAC 
address if you want.  Then manually enter the network key in each device, set 
the one by the router to “always” so it will always be the CCO, and the others 
to “never” so they will be stations.  I’m still a little worried what happens 
if customers start pushing the Sync button and unpair them, given that I had no 
luck pairing them with the button.  I was using 6.43.12 FW.

 

UDP Bandwidth Test between units was only giving me around 20 Mbps each 
direction, far less than the 200 Mbps the Qualcomm chip claims, it should be 
noted that my house has a hodgepodge of wiring so maybe in a pristine 
environment it would do better.  WiFi signal on my laptop was unimpressive from 
first to second floor but the thing does only have 1.5 dB antennas.  It seemed 
to work OK though.  And you would only be using these to fill in coverage 
holes, not as the main WiFi trying to cover the whole house.  It is single 
band, 2.4 GHz only.  It uses the MIPSBE firmware and seems to have all the 
RouterOS features just like a SOHO router, limited of course by only having one 
Ethernet port (plus WLAN and powerline interfaces).

 

I don’t recommend leaving the default bridge configuration, at a minimum the 
WiFi needs to be secured.

 

 

From: AF <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > On Behalf 
Of Steve Jones
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2019 4:08 PM
To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> >
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Mikrotik PWR-LINE AP

 

That would be great, we use cambium routers, but customers constantly have 
coverage issues in their house and even though best buy carries power line 
stuff they always sell them an 88 dollar garbage nighthawk. Id like to just 
have a cheap solution to get them into

 

 

On Fri, Feb 22, 2019 at 3:29 PM Mathew Howard <[email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]> > wrote:

I just got some... it seems like a good idea, but I'm not quite sure how we'd 
use them yet. 

 

If you already have another Mikrotik router, using RoMON to manage them could 
be an option. 

 

On Fri, Feb 22, 2019 at 9:56 AM Ken Hohhof <[email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]> > wrote:

Anybody else evaluating or using these?

 

They are smaller than I thought from the brochure photo,  which is good.  I 
worry a bit about customers pressing the little buttons though, you know how 
customers love to push buttons, plus you could accidentally push a button while 
plugging the unit into a wall outlet.

 

The instructions aren’t correct, it doesn’t have an IP address of 192.168.88.1 
by default, it is set up as a bridge with a DHCP client and nothing else.  You 
can access it from Winbox by MAC address, or I guess you can connect it behind 
a router and let it get an IP address via DHCP.

 

How are people setting these up?  Our intent is to use them where the customer 
already has a leased, managed Mikrotik router from us and they have WiFi 
deadspots but don’t want any cables run.  But if we’re supplying it as part of 
a managed service (we bite the bullet on the cost if there is a WiFi coverage 
problem within the house), then I want to be able to monitor and manage the 
router and any powerline APs remotely.  Winbox via MAC address would not seem 
adequate.  I guess we could give each powerline device an identity which I 
assume will show up as the hostname in the router DHCP server and then we could 
temporarily put in a port forward to access them remotely.  Or we could assign 
them static IP addresses like 192.168.88.2 and 192.168.88.3 which is how we 
handle PTP links and routers behind a customer router.

 

If we just leave them as a bridge with a DHCP client, they technically don’t 
need configuration, you can just push the Sync buttons to pair them.  But like 
any newly released device I think we’re going to want to upgrade the firmware 
at which point we can change the configuration if we want to, at least set 
System/Identity and maybe IP address.

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