So we have a link that's around ~1.7 miles running on an airFiber24, which we needs to be upgraded to something faster (looking for more than 1 gig), ideally with less rain fade...
We happen to have another tower, which is almost exactly half way between, so I could split the distance in half. My idea, is to do two 80ghz links... it looks like I can do two Siklu 5500 links, which will give me 2Gbps for less money than doing one 18ghz link with my bandwidth requirements, and it has the ability to upgrade to 5Gbps with just a license key... and it also has the advantage of getting us lots of bandwidth at the third tower. Is this a good idea, or am I missing something that makes this completely nuts? Does anyone have real world experience with rain fade in 80ghz (rain zone K, southern Wisconsin, so pretty much the same weather as the Chicago area)? According to the Siklu link budget calculator, it looks like we should get better availability with the two 80ghz links than what we're getting now with 24ghz (at twice the distance).
