Much hope for 2.4 or 5.x thru trees?

[valenti]

I'm trying to connect a new customer, just under one mile away. I've been working with Trango 900 and only have a poor connection to date. The AP is now at 95', terrain is level, I would guess 50% of the distance has trees, typical tree height here is 60'. Customer end is about 30' AGL.

I should probably work on aiming the yagi on the customer's house for a better signal. But knowing that the best speed the Trango will ever do is 3Mbs, I'm wondering if there is any hope for a connection with a War2 and CM9.

The customer's house is on a lake, there are probably more than 100 houses around it. They already have cablemodem service up to 6Mb available. I can see several roofs from the AP location, and suspect I have LOS to houses on the far side of the lake (but not my current prospect).

Any hope for a 2.4 or 5.x connection? If so, would cloaking help?

Obviously I should be trying SR9 here, and I will eventually. But I don't have any on-hand. I'm really confused by the poor performance from the Trango. At my first site, I've had little trouble going 2 miles, I can even have a client radio in my basement a mile away from the AP and it still works. And I have the Trango going 9+ miles silo to silo, clear LOS. At this new site I have 3 attempts at one mile connections and it has either been no-go or a poor connection.

[lonnie]

Can you use one of the other houses as a repeater?

[go.fast]

just under one mile away. I've been working with Trango 900 and only have a poor connection to date. The AP is now at 95', terrain is level, I would guess 50% of the distance has trees, typical tree height here is 60'. Customer end is about 30' AGL.



I don't think anyones 900MHz goes through 1/2" mile +/- of trees.
I have a bunch of Trango 900 and from experience I can tell you 900MHz is a flashy word for disapointment.

To date the best 900MHz performance I've ever had came from RF Linx 900 UDC's. You can buy them in various output wattages, probably mostly ilegal to use.

Playing 5 gig repeaters on top of the houses is a better investment if you can get that line of site out to your network...

[valenti]

Thanks for the advice, I should have thought of repeating off the LOS side.

Conveniently, they have already lined up someone in a good spot that wants service. I'll give that a try if/when my WAR order ever shows up.

And go.fast, thanks for the Trango 900 comments. At least I know it isn't just me! I was able to get them running this evening. 77/78 should be a solid connection, and it is from AP to SU. The other direction I'm getting 70% packet loss. This is my first customer in the suburbs/denser housing, I'm wondering if it might be interference from some other 900MHz device.

[lonnie]

It is always better to go around an obstacle than through it, unless you are talking dirt bike or 4x4, then over it is way more fun.

[wirelesseye]

Try the 17 dbi 5Ghz antenna from Wifi+ I can testify that they go through pretty much anything. http://www.wifi-plus.com/antennas.html

[rafamous]

What kind of distance have you seen with these?

[wirelesseye]

I've never used them for a link that has much distance. Furthest I've gone with these is ~2 miles. I only use them where there are A LOT of trees as they are so expensive. For distant links we use Pac Wireless 26dbi grids. But if you have to go through trees, these things are awesome. I just replaced a 1Mbps 900Mhz link today with a PTP 5.8Ghz setup using the 17dbi antenna on each side. I now have a 36Mbps link (24Mbps without cloaking). Mind you, this link is only about 1.5 miles, but there were 19 trees between each side.

[valenti]

Sounds too good to be true. The website shows a test report from 2004, so this has been around for a while. Seems like WISPs would be all over it by now.

And the price is about $200, which wouldn't be unreasonable if it works.

Wirelesseye, where abouts are you? What kind of trees do you have? (thanks, I'll check into it more) Do you have a picture of this path?

[wirelesseye]

It does sound too good to be true. I actually found out about these from another person in my industry that use to work with me years ago.

I bought a pair to test and they did very well for the first project we installed them at. I can't tell you the difference because with the Pac Wireless grids, we couldn't even associate. But with the Wifi+ stuff, we got -75/-90.

I live in central California. I don't know much about trees as far as identification, but I do know some of the trees are Oak and all the rest look to be some sort of pine trees. I don't have any pictures as of yet, I'll try to take some.

[go.fast]

If you say you are getting good results, then your one of the first to say this. Can't ever recal anyone posting a good result on the various lists.

I haven't used these things before. But I have heard lots of hype over the years and plenty of negative feedback from those that have tried them.

They had a booth at Chicago WINOG a couple years ago and I talked to the both person about them.
They are basically small enclosed yagi's mounted at a 45 degree angle, so they are not Vertical or horizontal.

I thought they would be good for maybe a diversity type antenna array, possibly a mimo type set up.

Problem I was forseeing is if they aren't V or H, then I would have to probably use those things for the client end as well. Or just on a hotsot for laptop type access.

[soulmata]

I've had great success with the SR9 and getting through trees. It isn't a miracle by any means, but it's let us pick up 10 subscribers we normally wouldn't have had a chance to get.

[gunther_01]

I think he is refering to the antenna link mentioned earilier http://www.wifi-plus.com/antennas.html

[wirelesseye]

You can use them for client or access points. Like I said, they aren't for every-day use, but we have had really good results using them. It's been nice not having to use 900Mhz.

[valenti]

OK, I was back at this lake tonight, on the "LOS" side. I couldn't see my silo (more trees leafing out every day), but the Trango 900 got a great signal from the back deck (~65 just sitting on the railing).

They seem happy with the idea of being a repeater site for other people on the lake. Turns out there are about 200 houses on this lake. Competition is the cable company and it sounds like everyone hates them.

I'll try some WARs using 2.4 or 5GHz connections later. What would people recommend for antennas to use on this house? Seems like it will be OK with them up to 3 or 4. Maybe just an omni, or two sectors going opposite directions up and down the lake? The lake is irregularly shaped, the section they are on is a 1/2 mile long oval by 1/4 mile across.

[lonnie]

5 GHz backhaul, say a 29 dB dish. Then 2 sectors pointed opposite directions up the lake. Keep a third unit ready for 2.4 GHz for more service or 5 GHz to extend to another repeater. This is the perfect microcell.

[valenti]

Sounds like you are trying to sell me a WAR4. :)

[lonnie]

You asked what I would recommend and from experience the plan I presented is very workable and will serve almost any situation. We find it is nice to standardize and over build a bit. Radios are cheap and many times we have truly appreciated having the radio already in place. Simply connect an antenna, config and point. No downtime. It changes the way you look at problems when you have lots of spare radios that are cheap and available. It tends to allow you to do it right rather than to compromise and make do.

[rbolduc]

You asked what I would recommend and from experience the plan I presented is very workable and will serve almost any situation. We find it is nice to standardize and over build a bit. Radios are cheap and many times we have truly appreciated having the radio already in place. Simply connect an antenna, config and point. No downtime. It changes the way you look at problems when you have lots of spare radios that are cheap and available. It tends to allow you to do it right rather than to compromise and make do.

I agree, I have never been unhappy installing a war4/metro and I left the other 2 cm9's disabled.. Want a cloaked ap? Antenna, Cable and 5 mins of config.. POOF 1 cloaked AP.. Wanted to play with 900, change a cm9 to sr9.. now I have 5ghz in, 900 cloaked 2.4 cloaked and 2.4 old school.. quickly.

Reed

[valenti]

Yes, it makes a lot of sense and I expect to start buying WAR4s later this summer.

WAR APs seem like a great value to me. I started looking at Canopy 2 years ago, a full cluster was 6 APs and about $12,000. I moved along to Trango plus an omni, about $1700.

Now I'm working with WAR2 at < $300, and that includes two radios. Plus you have ssh and better performance. Who can complain?

I ran across a concept Sun calls "Fail in place". If a disk goes bad in their big disk array (30 disks?), they don't even plan on replacing it until the array gets updated in five years. A friend suggested I follow this model and pre-stage an extra AP at my POPs. Sometimes there are week long periods in winter that I wouldn't want to climb a grain leg - ice storms/-30 wind chill. So I'm hoping to incorporate this thinking. Even if I do have to climb in poor conditions, the radio is already mounted, just need to run a cable.

[wirelesseye]

This thing about it is StarOS and WARs/Metros are a great deal. I've used some Araya stuff in the past that was much more expensive and not nearly as robust IMHO. I'm considering doubling my AP's on one of our towers from a (4) 90 degree sector (each with their own WRAP) array to a (8) 45 degree sector (with 2 Metros) array. I think that's a trick setup. I just hope the Metros can handle all of the data, as it is multiple constant streams of video.

[lonnie]

The Metro can move an aggregate of 100 mbps, so about 20 mbps per card, since there is some overhead when it is split among several radios but 20 mbps should provide decent video.

[wirelesseye]

Awesome. Thanks!