Licensed microwave manufacturers tend to play leapfrog. At any point in time, one of them is leading on performance, features, or price. A year later, another is in the lead. The good news is mostly they all work well and perform as advertised. Occasionally one of them goes out of business.
The other good news is that unlike multipoint where you buy into an ecosystem, PTP links can be isolated buying decisions. The past 2 years I have been buying Cambium links. That doesn’t make my old Trango, Exalt or SAF links stop working or incompatible with anything else in my network. But there is a learning curve and spares to stock (radios and accessories), so once you have a few links from vendor X, and given that they all work pretty well, you tend to keep buying from that vendor. Until some event makes you recalculate. Like you are buying a large number of links. Or your vendor goes to their next generation platform and it’s not interchangeable with what you already have. Of course even if the radios are not interchangeable or interoperable, you may be able to just bolt their new radio to your existing antenna with the existing power supply, etc., so there may still be an inertia effect. Some things that keep advancing like max modulation may not be as big a deal as they seem. The throughput difference between 1024QAM, 2048QAM and 4096QAM is actually the difference between 10, 11 and 12 bits per symbol, it’s nice, but more incremental than revolutionary. And modulations above 1024 are hard to achieve in the real world, especially on longer links, and can’t be counted on during rain fades. A bigger deal in my mind is getting >1 Gbps without external LAG, which means SFP+. That’s the biggest thing I think the PTP820C lacks compared to a couple competitors that have leapfrogged them. I believe the PTP850C will have this, but I’m scared to ask at what price. If you don’t have existing licensed links with spares on the shelf, and can choose any of the vendors, that’s a great situation because there are some great choices. A couple years from now, today’s #1 may be #2 or #3, but they will all still be great choices with just subtle differences between them. I do wish Ubiquiti would focus on advertising their strengths – great price and by all reports very reliable and easy to deploy – rather than making false claims like having the best spectral efficiency. Also I think someone pointed out that if you need the best system gain, they may fall short of competitors like Aviat and SIAE. And of course most of the conventional licensed microwave vendors have a full line covering all the frequency bands 6/11/18/23 plus 24 and E-band. Rather than cherry picking a couple of the bands. From: AF <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Gino A. Villarini Sent: Friday, January 10, 2020 9:50 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Ubiquiti AF-11x licensed links AVIAT > Ceragon / Cambium IP20 / 820 Gino Villarini Founder/President @gvillarini t: 787.273.4143 Ext. 204 m: <http://www.aeronetpr.com/> <https://www.inc.com/profile/aeronet> <https://www.facebook.com/aeronetpr/> <https://www.instagram.com/aeronetpr/?hl=en> <https://www.linkedin.com/company/aeronet-broadband-corp> <https://twitter.com/AeroNetPR?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor> <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr2Q9WBrAYVm3Fn970Jd6VA> <http://www.aeronetpr.com> www.aeronetpr.com | Metro Office Park #18 Suite 304 Guaynabo, PR 00968 From: AF <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > on behalf of Adam Moffett <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Reply-To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Date: Friday, January 10, 2020 at 10:45 AM To: "[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> " <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Ubiquiti AF-11x licensed links Support. One thing about the IP20/PTP820 is that it's not obvious how to configure it correctly. Plan to spend some time with the manuals or plan to call support. I put in a ticket to Cambium support and they set my link up for me and I didn't have to do anything and never had to touch it since. --and I ended up paying about the same price as I would have paid Ceragon. I don't know what Ceragon support is like in general, but when I called them about an IP10 some years ago and I didn't have a support contract they wouldn't even provide firmware. I'm sure they're awesome when you pay them. On 1/9/2020 8:44 PM, Matt Hoppes wrote: PTP820 - why buy from Cambium instead of direct from Ceragon? On Jan 9, 2020, at 8:42 PM, Erich Kaiser <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: 56mhz throughput data capacities vs 80mhz throughput data capacities is a significant factor. Plus can the AF11 do ACCP (Unless yo use 2 dishes or a custom combiner)? We had a link recently with only 80mhz channels available on vertical. Getting to 4096 QAM is not easy on longer links (Probably anything over 4-5miles) IMO. I am a huge fan of Ceragon IP/20/Cambium PTP820 very reliable radios with a great feature set. The only thing they are missing is a SFP+ port (Which I believe is coming on a new version) On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 7:27 PM Mike Hammett <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: The efficiency is a dumpster fire. 256 QAM radios have about the same spectral efficiency. ----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions <http://www.ics-il.com/> <https://www.facebook.com/ICSIL> <https://plus.google.com/+IntelligentComputingSolutionsDeKalb> <https://www.linkedin.com/company/intelligent-computing-solutions> <https://twitter.com/ICSIL> Midwest Internet Exchange <http://www.midwest-ix.com/> <https://www.facebook.com/mdwestix> <https://www.linkedin.com/company/midwest-internet-exchange> <https://twitter.com/mdwestix> The Brothers WISP <http://www.thebrotherswisp.com/> <https://www.facebook.com/thebrotherswisp> <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXSdfxQv7SpoRQYNyLwntZg> _____ From: "Mathew Howard" <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > To: "AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group" <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 12:23:41 PM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Ubiquiti AF-11x licensed links Well, the efficiency isn't quite that bad. at 1024QAM (they actually do support 2048QAM now too) they can do somewhere around 350-375Mbps per polarity using a 56mhz channel, which is about the same as what our old SAF Lumina can do at 256QAM... of course if you figure that as an 80mhz channel, rather than 56mhz, it's pretty bad. I'm pretty sure that it doesn't meet the FCC efficiency requirements at the lowest modulations, but you'd have to have a pretty poorly engineered link for that to be a problem. On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 11:50 AM Ken Hohhof <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: If I remember right the biggest spectral efficiency problem with the AF-11x is that it uses both polarizations yet only gets the throughput of a single pol link. Could be difficult to license if you can’t get both polarizations. Good news, if you’re successful getting the license, you should be able to modify the license and upgrade to a true 1.3+ Gbps full duplex radio from SIAE, Aviat, Cambium, etc. Bad news, if you’re pushing the distance such that you can’t run 1024QAM or better most of the time, you may not meet the FCC minimum spectral efficiency requirement. From: AF <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > On Behalf Of Mathew Howard Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2020 11:28 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Ubiquiti AF-11x licensed links Yeah, but the AF11 actually has to use an 80mhz emission designator, even though it's really only using 56mhz... so theoretically, if you upgrade the link to radios that can handle 80mhz, you shouldn't have any problems licensing it. On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 11:11 AM Daniel White <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: You license an emission designatior... not a channel per se. When you license 56MHz of spectrum you use the 80MHz channel plan but there isn't 24MHz of unused spectrum sitting there... it gets used up pretty quickly for other paths, etc. So moral of the story... don't do that. Daniel White Co-Founder & Managing Director of Operations phone: +1 (702) 470-2766 direct: +1 (702) 470-2770 3172 N Rainbow Blvd PMB 20394 Las Vegas, Nevada 89108 <https://www.facebook.com/getatheral/> <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpPZv-EsGCj8LXfzylwCrjQ> <https://www.linkedin.com/company/atheral/> Seth Mattinen wrote on 1/8/20 09:54: On 1/8/20 8:36 AM, Kurt Fankhauser wrote: if you have an 80mhz channel and are running radios in 56mhz channel width can u just put a 2nd link up and split them up to the two 40mhz? No, that's not allowed. You need to license two 40MHz channels. -- AF mailing list [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
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