anchor.diff:  
   ![SignalLevel](SignalLevel.jpg)
   
  -We went on to develop our own self service Portal on which you can send us a rating
  -to our company chat as well as chasing the issue yourself. We're also in the middle
  +We went on to develop our own self service portal where you can send us a rating
  +to our company chat as well as chasing the issue yourself. We're also in the process
   of open sourcing it and as soon as we get there you can use it however you like and
  -tinker with it, it should work on all CapsMan enabled Mikrotik Networks (Make sure to
  +tinker with it. It should work on all CapsMan enabled Mikrotik Networks (make sure to
    follow us on one of our channels to get the news as soon as it happens).
   
   ![Shazaam](Shazaam.jpg)
   
  -We've gone so far to even supply our guest with an Intranet Dashboard in which
  -you can check your WiFi Performance using Prometheus to save the timeseries and
  -Grafana to visualize them.
  +We've gone so far to even supply our guests with an intranet dashboard where
  +you can check your WiFi performance using Prometheus to save the timeseries and
  +use Grafana to visualize them.
   
   ![Dashboard](DashboardWifi.jpg)
  
positive.code: tags:
  ---
  
  As a Sysadmin at Panter you’re also responsible for the Infrastructure of Impact
  Hub Zürich a vibrant coworkingspace in the heart of zürich. On 3 floors and a
  total of roughly 2000 square meters, we’re making sure that all the members fit into our WiFi
  network, as always in such a crowded place there’s not much margin for errors.
  And because our Frequencies are almost as crowded with rogue WiFis like the death
  star’s having holes for thermonuclear missiles, this can be quite challenging and
  sometimes quite frustrating.
  
  [![Youtube:Steve Jobs 500 WiFi Basestations](jobs.jpg)]
  (https://youtu.be/1-oIL9cLHDc?t=19 "Steve Jobs WiFi")
  
  In this Blog post we'd like to give you a little bit of insight into our Configuration
  and how we're troubleshooting our Network. Our WiFi runs exclusively on Mikrotik
  devices because this gives us a lot of flexibility, their devices come at a fair
  price and we're not forced to pay fees to use their products.
  When we first got here we had nothing but an empty Rack, an old DIY Router and
  some broken cables, step by step we've built up the infrastructure adjusting it to our needs.
  
  ## The dawn of WiFi
  ![Shabby AP](ShabbyAP.jpg)
  
  We started with an emergency setup (2 access points) because we had to move on
  faster than expected, there was not much of a concept, but it worked for us Panters
  which were pretty much alone at that time. While we were having our office on a
  construction site which was quite dusty at the time, we even managed to nearly
  kill our Router because he suffocated in the dust (the whole rack was accidentally
  covered in dust) but it was nothing a little bit of compressed air couldn't solve.
  
  ![Bunch of Cables](CableBunch.jpg)
  
  Now working on a construction site has its downsides, but it also gives you the
  freedom to plan your LAN outlets and whatnot, or so we thought, but everything got built quite
  differently as planned so those outlets are still a vision. We had to reverse engineer
  every single one of a bunch of cables because documentation of the existing Network was nonexistent.
  
  When we moved here, our Rack was neat and clean and there were almost no cables,
  we also had to install the cables by ourselves because our top floor was a dusty
  attic which looked like it hasn't been touched for the last half of the decade
  it didn't have any cabling at all. Since then all visible and non-visible LAN
  outlets were patched and if you spot an outlet at our Colab feel free to use it.
  
  ![Before and after](beforeAfter.jpg)
  
  With the help of our Network crack (koa) we've got a solid setup and started to
  use Mikrotiks Capsman, which is a bit of a pain to get into but it works like a
  charm after the initial Setup (and 10 Factory Resets later) and a little bit of
  a hassle to wrap your head around it.
  
  ## Perception
  There's always a gap between sysadmins and users when it comes to quality, we're
  pretty much the only fans of cabled connection and we love the convenience of cables
  and because we had a lot of LAN Ports in this building where a school was located
  back in the day, we had this sweet vision of small AP & Switch combos on every
  table so people who preferred WiFi could get it from the ether and the other
  half could use cables as they desire, but well, that idea got chased out of town
  pretty fast (Except the [makerZspace](https://makerzspace.ch/) they love cables and got them).
  
  So we decided to aim for total 5g coverage and slowly starve out 2.4g, because it's
  way faster and it allows you to put up a higher density of AP's and if less people use
  one access point everyone will have a faster connection, and since we where living in
  the year 2015 where every device is capable of 5g there shouldn't be an issue with
  partially dropping 2.4g, right? **TOTALLY WRONG**
  
  ![ClientBandDistribution](ClientBandDistribution.jpg)
  
  As it turns out the 5g capable devices aren't consistently great with 5g connectivity,
  most of those devices only support the lower bands 5-036 & 5-044 and hollow glass
  bricks are apparently the death of every 5g connection, there are also quite some
  differences between mikrotiks different products, here's a list of a few of which
  we went through and the ones we're currently using.
  
  ### Legacy AP's
  
negative.code: for outdoors
  * [Netbox](https://routerboard.com/RB911G-5HPacD-NB) - Also DIY, pretty huge and
  not quite cheap, also not the most aesthetic ones
  * [cAP2n](https://routerboard.com/RBcAP2nD) - Plastic toy, not recommended
  
  ### Current AP's
  * [wAP](https://routerboard.com/RBwAPG-5HacT2HnD) - Aesthetic pretty good
  dualband access points with a good range
  * [SXT SA5 ac](https://routerboard.com/RBSXTG-5HPacD-SA) - With an angle of 90°
  perfect for the corners in our coworking space
  * [wAP ac](https://routerboard.com/RBwAPG-5HacT2HnD) - very fast, performant AP
  * [hAP ac](https://routerboard.com/RB962UiGS-5HacT2HnT) - like the wAP ac but with
  a built-in switch
  
  We were also pretty harsh when it comes down to kicking people out of our access points,
  because if you got a bad connection you're giving a bad time to all the other people
  using that access point. When we lowered the connectivity threshold to our sweet spot
  of 65dBm we had an awesome connection, but somehow all the other users were having a
  bad time. This is the point you have to realize that you obviously have another perception
  of "things going well" (although you're right). At the moment we're having 20 AP's on 3
  floors, serving over 300 clients during peak hours.
  
  ![ClientsPerAP](ClientsPerAP.jpg)
  
  With all those different devices and total freedom for our coworkers there are
  always some people having connectivity issues nonetheless, so the bigger we get,
  the more important is that we know how to monitor our network and how to distribute
  the load that's hammering on our infrastructure.
  
  ![TrafficPerAP](TrafficPerAP.jpg)
  
  ## Monitoring
  If you're responsible for something which quite a few people rely on every day, you
  as a sysadmin should be able to tell someone where the problem comes from.
  So it's quite important to monitor your radio waves, so you can start investigating
  rising issues before a lot of people are affected by it and to troubleshoot specific
  clients' issues.
  
  Having some schools and offices around us, we're sometimes experiencing
  a peak in traffic every time there's a bunch of school boys and girls in front of the office
  watching YouTube and whatnot over our free WiFi. Because that free WiFi is actually
  intended for the visitors of the co working Space it's important to drop clients
  that are too far away (across the street inside the school building). That's why
  we're constantly monitoring our frequencies and repositioning our AP's in order
  to supply our guests with a good connection (that's also where our fancy graphs come from).
  
  ![SignalStats](SignalStats.jpg)
  