We are in the process of switching out an older Mikrotik 2.4 sector. Before swapping the antenna and radio to ePMP, we set the Mikrotik to 802.11 mode, updated encryption to WPA2 AES and switched all the clients to station wds. All were working in dual chain on the old sector, but on the ePMP we are only seeing one chain. Is there a setting I am missing or does MIMO not work in Wifi Mode?
We are changing out the clients with ePMP units and will switch it back to TDD when all switches are complete. I am just worried we have a physical problem that will not be resolved with the TDD setting. It did occur to me the sector is 45 deg slant, so mabe the H/V are only seeing that as one chain.
The Mikrotik SM's only show one chain. We will update some of them to ePMP SM's tomorrow. So from what you are saying, it should be MIMO. I am wondering if the dual slant antenna is throwing the Mikrotik SM's off.
So after repeatedly trying to get a Force 200 to connect in Wifi mode on the ePMP AP, we finally rebooted the tower. The client connected but transmit signal is horrible. All of the Mikrotiks are still connected and working, but only on a single chain. So we sent a climber up, (me) to check the connections on the radio to the antenna. All good there. Next we switched all the clients to TDD mode kicking off the remaining Mikrotik modems and what do you know, both chains start working. This meant driving back to a few customers we simply could not log into, but everyone is rocking on the TDD settings. The last of the SM's will be upgraded today.
So what i found and what I will do differently.
1. Put the Mikrotik AP in 802.11 mode and setup WDS.
2. Change all the SM's out to ePMP set to Wifi mode
3. Log into the SM's and move their settings to TDD.
4. As soon as last SM's is changed to TDD, replace sector with new ePMP AP.
My findings are the Wifi mode of the ePMP is not working terribly well. Even customers withing 200 yards of the tower were experiencing drops and service issues. The old Mikrotik modems were working flawlessly on the ePMP sector. Results in the end will be the same, we will just change the order.
End result, where we could send maybe 20 meg in TDMA mode (NV2) on Mikrotik, we can now pass upwards of 87 meg. The worst customer is 2.5 miles out and can pull 71 meg. Not bad for plain ole 2.4 GHz. We have several towers in the country we will be updating based on this, removing Mikrotik and UBNT equipment.
If anyone cares, I will be presenting this as a case study in Austin in early June for DoubleRadius.