What we have here is a failure to communicate? I’m not understanding Josh’s suggestion, you mean do 4 SSIDs?
Currently WAP1 has SSIDs Office and Office-5G. WAP2 has SSIDs TVRoom and TVRoom-5G. So there are already 4 SSIDs. But each WAP is fed from an Ethernet port on the Mikrotik. And when a wireless client moves between WAPs, it is moving between Mikrotik ports. I believe the 5 minute ageing time on the Mikrotik bridge means that MAC address persists on the original port for 5 minutes after it has appeared on another port. Maybe I’m wrong about this, but that’s what appears to be happening. The Bridge table shows the MAC address only on one port, but the traffic makes me believe it is actually being flooded to both ports. This doesn’t really seem right to me. On a switch, I would expect a MAC address to move pretty quickly to the new port, or if it isn’t in the table at all, to be flooded to all ports. And yes I don’t think the customer needs 2 WAPs to cover his house, but the customer is always right. And the Mikrotik is leased/managed, the Netgears he owns. But I get sucked into it because ... well, do I really have to explain? From: Paul McCall Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2015 8:37 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] 2 wireless APs on bridged Mikrotik ports +1 on Josh’s suggestions From: Af [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Josh Luthman Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2015 9:27 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] 2 wireless APs on bridged Mikrotik ports Nope, you already have my suggestion. Can you try your idea of a 10s timeout? Josh Luthman Office: 937-552-2340 Direct: 937-552-2343 1100 Wayne St Suite 1337 Troy, OH 45373 On Oct 22, 2015 12:28 AM, "Ken Hohhof" <[email protected]> wrote: There are 4 SSIDs. But customer has each device “join” each SSID. I expected the devices to pick one SSID and stay with it down to 1 bar, but they seem very fickle. Or are you saying make all the SSIDs the same? I don’t think it matters, there are 4 wireless networks, even if they are all named the same. From: Josh Luthman Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2015 11:03 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] 2 wireless APs on bridged Mikrotik ports Why not do 4 SSIDs? Add the profiles once and then done. I think your issue is probably the APs, not the bridge/switch part but it doesn't really help. Josh Luthman Office: 937-552-2340 Direct: 937-552-2343 1100 Wayne St Suite 1337 Troy, OH 45373 On Oct 21, 2015 11:59 PM, "Ken Hohhof" <[email protected]> wrote: I have a customer who insisted he needed 2 dual band wireless APs 25 feet apart in his ranch house. So we have a managed non-WiFi Mikrotik RB2011 in his basement, feeding two Netgear routers in wireless AP mode. I have the LAN ports bridged rather than using the switch chips, since there's plenty of CPU power and it gives more visibility into the traffic. So counting 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, the customer has 4 SSIDs and I think his devices like iPads are jumping back and forth between networks. And I think bad things are happening because the bridging table can't keep track of which port the clients are on. I see weird things like the same amount of traffic going out the ports to both wireless APs. I never see a MAC address on both bridge ports, but it is acting like the Mikrotik is flooding traffic to both ports. Should I be tweaking parameters like reducing the ageing time below the default 5 minutes? Should I be using the switch chips and not bridging? Is this a typical problem when devices can choose between multiple APs close together on the same bridged LAN?
