Bridge Mode: Super Bowl Traffic, Smarter BGP, and the “Bang-for-the-Buck” MikroTik Wi-Fi Stack

Bridge Mode is where we get real with real-world operators—no vendor fluff, no theory-only takes—just the deployments, decisions, and lessons learned in production networks. In this episode, MikroTik Marc sits down with Tyler Casey from DMTech to unpack two things every ISP/MSP cares about:

  • What “event traffic” really looks like (and whether the Super Bowl still breaks networks)
  • How to make smarter, more resilient design choices—from upstream BGP balance to in-home Wi-Fi hardware that scales 

1) The Super Bowl Didn’t Break the Network… But the Charts Still Told a Story

The conversation starts the day after the Super Bowl with a simple operator question: Did traffic spike hard enough to cause pain? Tyler pulled up DMTech’s graphs and found a noticeable peak, but interestingly it appeared after the game—more in line with their normal evening streaming window than a “game-time meltdown.” Pasted text

One hypothesis they discuss: in some rural/less “OTT-heavy” areas, plenty of viewers still use traditional TV services(Dish/DirecTV), which can soften the kind of internet spike operators expect from major live events. Pasted text

Takeaway: Don’t assume “big event = outage.” Look at your own telemetry, and design capacity around your real peak windows.

2) Upstream Reality: When “Equal Advertisements” Don’t Mean Equal Traffic

Tyler then shares one of those classic multihoming surprises: the moment they brought up a second upstream and advertised prefixes evenly, most inbound traffic preferred one provider—turning “active/active” into something closer to “active/standby” in practice. Pasted text

Their pragmatic fix is the kind of ISP craft you only learn in the field:

  • Keep redundancy by advertising broader space to both
  • Use more-specific advertisements (e.g., selective /24s) to influence how the internet returns traffic, especially when you have room to do it (larger allocations) Pasted text

Why it matters: When your combined peak exceeds a single circuit’s capacity, failover isn’t “free.” Load distribution is what protects you from congestion when one side drops. Pasted text

3) Edge Performance Without Throwing Away Security: The L3HW + FastTrack Middle Ground

The episode also touches a topic that matters to anyone pushing real throughput: hardware forwarding at scale—and the tradeoffs.

Tyler describes how going “pure” L3 hardware forwarding can come with a brutal concession: no meaningful firewalling at the edge. Instead, they discuss using a hybrid approach where the first packet is inspected and then flows are fast-tracked into hardware—getting performance and keeping sane security posture. Pasted text

Operator mindset: Performance is great, but not at the cost of being wide open.

4) The MikroTik hAP ax³? Nope—The Episode’s “Hotness” Is the hAP ax²…S (and Why)

The big hardware segment is a deep dive into why DMTech is going hard on MikroTik hAP ax…S as a scalable “managed Wi-Fi” workhorse:

What they call out:

  • Insane price/performance for ISP-scale deployments (close to AC2 pricing with a huge leap forward) Pasted text
  • Triple-chain Wi-Fi 6
  • PoE in + PoE out
  • 2.5G SFP (not just “nice,” but future-proofing for what’s coming) Pasted text
  • Upgrade/reboot speed: compared to the AC2’s famously slow upgrade cycles, the new platform is dramatically faster to deploy at scale Pasted text

They also highlight a key technical point that gets overlooked in “Wi-Fi generational” talk:

  • 802.11ac is effectively “5 GHz AC + 2.4 GHz N”
  • 802.11ax brings real modernization to 2.4 GHz, making it genuinely usable again (huge for IoT-heavy homes and long-range scenarios) Pasted text

5) The Wi-Fi Debate That Never Dies: Merged SSIDs vs Split SSIDs

This part is pure real-world ops: they talk about why Wi-Fi can still be messy even with great gear.

  • Merged SSIDs can enable roaming—but client behavior is inconsistent and device-dependent.
  • Split SSIDs are deterministic—but customers often connect everything to the wrong band.

Their practical naming convention tip:

  • Name 5 GHz “FAST”
  • Name 2.4 GHz “FAR” (or “SLOW” for clarity, with the caveat that “slow” can be a weird customer-facing label) Pasted text

This is exactly the kind of conversation Bridge Mode exists for: there’s no perfect answer—just smarter tradeoffs.

Where Admiral Platform Fits In

This episode isn’t just gear talk—it’s a window into why DMTech calls Admiral “a massive game changer,” especially around managed Wi-Fi operations and improving customer experience at scale. Pasted text

If you’re running MikroTik in production—whether you’re a WISP, ISP, MSP, or enterprise operator—Admiral helps you move from “reactive firefighting” to repeatable operations:

  • visibility into what’s happening,
  • tools to standardize deployments,
  • and the leverage to support more devices with less overhead.

Want to Be on Bridge Mode?

If you’re a network engineer/operator with a story, a challenge, or a hot take you want to bring to the table, Bridge Mode is open to you.

Send us a note and let’s talk shop: bridgemode@admiralplatform.com 

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