Dear All
I have MikroTik RBcAPGi-5acD2nD (cAP ac) and i would love to install openwrt on it but i didn't find any tutorial and as you know MikroTik RBcAPGi-5acD2nD (cAP ac) it has only 2 ethr port POE
and advice from your experience please?
with regards
I can now confirm that Openwrt 22.03 works fine on this device.
I used this info to flash mine - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48mcR4oGn_0
Hi,
after 2 days struggle I have installed openwrt on two cap ac devices. I would like to share two opinions with the world.
First is about instalation - it took me 2 days with two aproaches to succed. So there are some tutorials, so I will give few advices:
- You must downgrade routeros to version 6.45 then go system -> routerboard-> upgrade to downgrade RB firmware to version bellow 6.46, so I choose 6.45. Otherwise your openwrt will not boot from nand!
- I was using Tiny PXE server 10.0.0.23 to boot over bootp to openwrt. I had a lot of struggle with it, so finally I had to take devices off the wall, plug it in to my computer using old switch in between, separatelly from my home network. To run openwrt from ram I connected to eth1 to bootp, and after openwrt was running in ram I switched my lan cable to eth2 and then flashed openwrt to nand.
How openwrt works on cap ac. Why I did it?
I was reading different opinions about Mikrotik vs openwrt on cap ac. I am using cap ac as dumm AP, all interfaces in one bridge to provide wifi at home. I have one device at 1st floor and one at ground level.
I have just installed openwrt, configured IP and wifi, removed all router related config (firewall to ACCEPT, remove all forward rules, remove wan interfaces, left only with br-lan).
So I have configured wifi and turned on roaming with no configuration done to it.
I use WPA2-PSK with Force CCMP (AES is hardware accelerated I think).
My experience. It is big WoW! I find wifi very stable, but when I started speedtest I was walking from downstairs to first floor. Roaming was done before connection was stuck, smoothly! This is fantastic experience. With MT my phone (xiaomi 11) was holding connection to ap downstairs even thou I was already looaking at AP upstairs.
With openwrt my phone roams to first floor AP before I get to last two steps of my stairs. I find it amazing!
My thoughts about MIkrotik.
As over 20+ years fan of Mikrotik i got angry, as I have bought hap ax2 to get better range upstairs in the most remote corner of the house. It has appeard that I cannot benefit from smooth roaming as MT doesnt have fast roaming for cap ac. Basically MT said, replace both router you already have with new ones and learn to user capsman - then you will have roaming using 3 hap ax2 devices. I was loyal to their product and they left me in one way alley. Then openwrt saved me for free - they provided fast roaming for cap ac, while MT team seams that tried to even block this solution by making their bootloader (version > 6.46) prevent booting openwrt. I find it disgusting.
Conclusion
Mikrotik works nice for home router - i know the OS very well, but any other os can do the same actually. I will stick with what I am used to, so MT for main router.
Mikrotik for 60 GHz link is working very nice for me.
But for home Wifi Openwrt only. I am gonna sell my one month old hap ax2 and purchase maybe cudy WR3000 with openwrt, so I will have smooth roaming all over the house.
I find wifi in openwrt on cap ac work beautifully. The only thing I did I have installed irqbalance, I didint notice any difference with or without but some better testers said irqbalanced helps on 4 core cpus.
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Also using MTik HW, but with OWRT. (150+ HAP AC, 40+ MikroTik hAP ac2,..), but I prefer non-CT firmware (also with smallbuffers module) because they are more recent (2023 vs 2020).
Hint - for dumb AP you don't even need firewall4 or any nft* module so when you build your own image add "-firewall4","-nftables"....
Can You elaborate on this smallbuffers module?
I have one hap ac2 which I will flash soon to openwrt. I have just bought Cudy WR3000 as replacement for MT hap ax2. Cudy gives some snapshoot openwrt image, which can be replaced with stable openwrt also. Flashing is done over web interface. Will see how roaming will perform between 3 APs now. Finally I will have 4 APs running openwrt with roaming and I hope to move around house without disconnects.
I am to lazy to make custom firmware without firewall. Firewall is off anyway, if there is no rules, default accept uses no cpu time 
Edit:
I can confirm that Cudy WR3000 works very well with 23.05 which is current openwrt firmware today. WR3000 comes with some manufacturer firmware, but flashing is easy, first You download from Cudy website openwrt provided by the manufacturer (lets call it imtermidiate openwrt), which you can flash over a web page of the router like regular firmware update. Then when cudys openwrt boots you can flash normal openwrt by doing simply upgrade using the web interface.
It took me 30min to figure out and do it.
I can confirm that roaming between openwrt running on 2x cap ac and WR3000 works very well. No connection drop while roaming doing speedtest or talking on whatsup.
One more wierd experience:
My phone and my laptop had this issue, wifi was showing connected, but there was no internet, ip address disapeared on my wifi interface on laptop. I have disabled ipv6 on all my openwrt routers and probably this has solved the issue, however more testing is required.
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It's simple
Go to https://firmware-selector.openwrt.org/?version=23.05.0&target=ipq40xx%2Fmikrotik&id=mikrotik_hap-ac2
and under "Customize installed packages" add packages that you want or do not want:
As for smallbuffers:
kmod-ath10k-ct-smallbuffers - 5.10.176+2022-05-13-f808496f-1 - ath10k-ct driver optimized for CT ath10k firmware (small buffers for low-RAM devices)
kmod-ath10k-smallbuffers - 5.10.176+5.15.92-1-1 - Atheros 802.11ac wireless cards support (small buffers for low-RAM devices)
Later driver is newer.
Ok, but Mikrotik is not low ram device i suppose, at least mine works with standard build of openwrt. What are benefits of Your mod?
I had a similar experience to @k4cus and just gave up using routeros for wifi so I could use fast transition.
I must have been running into the not booting from nand issue with the capAC I had. Thanks for the tip
I have wAP G-5HacT2HnD w/ 64Mb RAM.
But it's not only ram.
The non-CT drivers are newer and "community build".
You can use "normal" and not "smallbuffers" version.
Ahh I see. Thanks for a tip.
MikroTik hAP ac2 has multiple cores and you can add package irqbalance in firmware so the load can be spread. It's not included in standard build - AFAIK.
Check output of : cat /proc/interrupts
Yes, true. On systems with 4 cores or more irqbalance probably is beneficial, howewer withouot it during wifi transfer load was spread among all cores anyway.
- Install irqbalance package in software instalation page in luci.
- Edit /etc/config/irbalance -> enable=1 as I remember
then - /etc/init.d/irqbalance start or reboot router
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i added irqbalance package in firmware build
and i use openwisp w/
uci set irqbalance.irqbalance.enabled='1'
uci commit