Mikrotik cAP ax experiences?

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mattlach

Active Member
Aug 1, 2014
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Hey everyone,

Having used Ubiquiti Unifi devices for ~15 years now I have been considering moving on for some time, as I just don't like the direction they have been going for quite a while.

When they were new and focused on just AP's I got a great vibe from them, but ever since they expanded and tried to sell an entire networking infrastructure with firewalls, routers and switches, they have left an increasingly bad taste in my mouth. I briefly used Unifi video until they forced users away from locally managed controllers and into their cloud service (I refuse to use anything "cloud" what so ever). And then promptly had their cloud service compromised a few years back. That was the final straw for me.

I couldn't justify it for a long time though, as the Unifi UAP-AC LR units I bought still worked and were more than fast enough for my limited wifi use.

(My philosophy has always been "if it doesn't need to move, it should be wired", so only phones and laptops wind up using WiFi, and network performance doesn't really matter much for phones and laptops as they only do light things like web/email)

Anyway, during my last softwate upgrade/test cycle on my server the old Unifi controller install (in an Ubuntu Server VM) ran into MongoDB dependency hell, so I decided if I am going to have to go through effort to make this work, I might as well switch now.

I have been following the Ruckus thread with some interest for a while now, but I also wonder about other alternatives.

The Mikrotik cAP ax came up in my search. I already have some Mikrotik switches, and I've been very happy with them, so I figured maybe I'd give their access points a try.

I like the fact that I can still manage them from a VM install of CHR using CAPsMAN. (I don't know why, I just don't like using one of the AP's as a management device, it's just asymmetrical. I also hate all things cloud, so this works for me)

So, I guess this is really just a really long winded way of asking, has anyone here used the cAP ax models? How did you like the experience? Any notable issues to be aware of?

Much obliged,
Matt
 
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