----- Original Message ----- From: "Jason Hensley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "WISPA General List" <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, July 26, 2006 11:37 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] Tranzeo WDS capacity, Mikrotik - problems
So Marlon, using what I perceive to be your ideas below, it's not too bad of a deal to put a "marginal" customer on (maybe not at -90, but maybe -80 or even -85, or do you think -85 is not even good enough?) so long as we have a clean link and we can make it with next to no packet loss?
As long as the customer is happy and it's not creating a noticable impact on the rest of your network, I'm fine with anything that brings in a buck.... I'm in business to make money.
Someday when I've got more customers than I need I might change my mind :-).PLUS!!!!!!!...... Work your tail off to find out why those signal levels are so low and get them improved. Certainly anything less than a -80 will come back to bite ya. If there's much noise even -75 might not be enough.
One more note on this. When I do an install that's questionable I make it crystal clear that I'm making NO promises. AND I tell the customer (this bluntly) that I'll leave the link in cause I think it'll work really well most of the time. But I don't want them getting mad any time it doesn't work. If they are ok with some risk I am too but no fair bad mouthing my system when we both knew there was some risk. Usually they'll want to try it out for a month and see how it looks, I'll let them do that and will hold off on billing for the hardware for that first month just to be sure it'll be ok.
In my situation, I'm selling mainly 512kbps connections. I have a few that want a full meg, and one that may be looking at 3meg shortly, but I've got mainly resi customers at the moment. I'm finding though, that I can beat up on DSL pricing for businesses here so I'm starting to hit that market a little more. But, I need to be sure my system is stable before I really get into this.
It'll never be stable till you've got 20 subs on it. I don't know why but it takes that many to point out the design flaws. The little things like antenna choices and channels etc. Strangest thing but it happens over and over. Put the customers on, give the first few a lower rate for the first year and make sure they know you'll likely have to make some improvements over time. Just can't do the improvements till you have customers.
Also, we're really hitting the backup link idea these days. Dual wan Linksys routers are a couple of hundred bucks. If internet is mission critical you should have more than one connection just like you have telephone AND cell phone. You probably have more than one car. More than one bathroom etc. etc. etc.
I appreciate everyone's feedback on this topic. I haven't figured out my issues completely from my original post, but they have actually cleared up somewhat. I'm starting to actually wonder if I have either a bad AP, or if I have water issues as it seems like it was acting up in the middle of the afternoon, and then again later at night. Beyond that, we have good solid consistent ping times (5ms or less) to all clients (yes, even the one with a -90). But, again, haven't had any problems in about a week.Waiting for it to cool down a bit before we put in our backhaul (this POP is on top of a water tower).Which brings another question, how high from the top of a water tower would you recommed mounting the antenna? It's a PacWireless 13db Omni-horizontal. It's a "cylinder" tower. Right now the antenna is mounted directly onto the ladder railing on top. We're going to raise it up 5' or so when we put in the backhaul too. I'm thinking that may help keep things clean too, as well as give me just a bit more range with it (one side is partially blocked by the "dome" on the top middle of the tower).
I've attached an xls that I use to calculate antenna coverage. Your 13 dB antenna probably has a vertical beam width of 7ish degrees. Not much more than that. Much of it will usually be ABOVE the horizon too. (I've tested good omni antenna that supposedly have downtilt and the high gain ones still seem to have some uptilt to them.)
I ran the calcs with a 3* vertical pattern (the lower half of the antenna coverage should be used in the case of an omni). I show that at 1000 feet from the tower (assuming the water tower is only 100 feet up) you'd need your cpe antennas to be at nearly 50 feet to get in the main lobe!
High gain omni antennas suck. All of them. The ONLY time I've told people to use them is when they are at or below the customer base or at least within a couple of tens of feet.
Believe it or not, we can USUALLY pull out the high gain omni, drop down to a more appropriate 8 or 9 dB unit and INCREASE signals to most customers. If you are going to be up there anyhow I'd just pull that antenna out and drop in an 8dB maxrad with 4* or so of downtilt. From EC they are only about $100 with the required mounting bracket. (don't forget to order the bracket....) If you want, call me and I'll help run the order through for ya.
If you'd like more info on why antenna choices are so important, read this: http://www.odessaoffice.com/wireless/antenna/how_to_pick_the_right_antenna.htm Hope that helps, marlon
----- Original Message ----- From: "Marlon K. Schafer (509) 982-2181" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: "WISPA General List" <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, July 26, 2006 11:00 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] Tranzeo WDS capacity, Mikrotik - problemsThat's fine if you have enough potential customers to saturate your ap's at the 11 meg speed. Out here we'll take anything we can get. If it slows down to 1 meg for a customer that's still much better than his dialup was.We have VERY few customers that get less than 1 meg of actual speed. Even in high interference zones that have 40ish users per ap. Got some folks in an area that are below the main omni beam that only get 600ish, but that same system will deliver 3+ megs further out or up a bit higher. Go figure.As cheap as ap's are getting we just keep sectorizing out to smaller and smaller customer groups. That's helping a lot of things.Marlon (509) 982-2181 Equipment sales (408) 907-6910 (Vonage) Consulting services 42846865 (icq) And I run my own wisp! 64.146.146.12 (net meeting) www.odessaoffice.com/wireless www.odessaoffice.com/marlon/cam----- Original Message ----- From: "Chad Halsted" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: "WISPA General List" <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, July 25, 2006 8:26 PM Subject: RE: [WISPA] Tranzeo WDS capacity, Mikrotik - problems The idea is to not do the install unless you can maintain a reliable 11mb connection (usually -75 or better) that passes the 0% loss rule. So, having done that, you shouldn't drop customers. Or at least that is what I have been taught, I could be misinformed. :-) -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Marlon K. Schafer (509) 982-2181 Sent: Tuesday, July 25, 2006 12:23 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] Tranzeo WDS capacity, Mikrotik - problems We almost never hard set any radios to any speed. I'd rather have the system slow down than drop customers. Marlon (509) 982-2181 Equipment sales (408) 907-6910 (Vonage) Consulting services 42846865 (icq) And I run my own wisp! 64.146.146.12 (net meeting) www.odessaoffice.com/wireless www.odessaoffice.com/marlon/cam----- Original Message ----- From: "Chad Halsted" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: "WISPA General List" <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2006 9:36 PM Subject: RE: [WISPA] Tranzeo WDS capacity, Mikrotik - problems If you haven't run a test with a spectrum analyzer, there really is no way to know for sure what is out there. Harmful noise, as you probably know, can come from all sorts of devices, not just 802.x APs. Yes, -90 is bad for several reasons. 1. That link is probably suffering from high packet loss. This will not only cause problems for the customer's link, but will keep your AP busy resending dropped packets. One customer isn't going to overload an AP, but several could. 2. -90 doesn't leave much room for fade. Bad weather could, and most likely will, knock this link out in a heart beat. 3. The rate at which the client and AP talk at a -90 would be 1MB. Whenever the AP is "talking" to the client it will have to adjust its rate to match that of the client's. When another client, let's say it's connected at an 11mb rate, wants to talk the AP has to adjust its rate to 11mb, these constant adjustments can cause latency, dropped packets, and overload the CPU on the AP. This is more evident with the more clients you have. Always set your AP rate to "auto", hard set all clients to 11MB. Just make sure you don't do the install unless it will support an 11MB rate. Lastly, I would suggest that you test each and every link for packet loss sending large packets, 0% or less and you'll be good to go. I could be way off; your -90 client may be working perfectly. I just thought I would share some info that I had to learn the hard way. Good Luck!! -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jason Hensley Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2006 4:34 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] Tranzeo WDS capacity, Mikrotik - problems Interference really isn't much of an issue here. There's one other WISP and we work pretty closely together to stay out of each other's way. We've analyzed the area and nothing else is out there but us and the typical home APs. So -90 is that bad huh? Guess I may need to rethink those two installs.----- Original Message ----- From: "Chad Halsted" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: "WISPA General List" <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2006 3:46 PM Subject: RE: [WISPA] Tranzeo WDS capacity, Mikrotik - problems No personal experience on the X10, but from what I here, it will give you nightmares. Seems like I heard Marlon speak such wonderful things about the x10 before, eh Marlon? -90 signal is never a good thing. We won't do an install unless it's -75 or better. Sometimes even a -75 isn't strong enough to combat all the interference we have in town. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jason Hensley Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2006 1:36 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: [WISPA] Tranzeo WDS capacity, Mikrotik - problems I've got a two AP WDS setup with Tranzeo TR-6000's with PacWireless 13db omni's on each. They are less than a mile apart. Any idea how many CPE's can run on each AP before it starts causing issues? We're going to be replacing the WDS setup with an actual backhaul soon, but just haven't gotten it done yet. I'm having trouble with performance. Works fine for awhile and then it seems to bog down, and then back to normal again. I've got about 10 clients (all Tranzeo gear) on each of the AP's. I wouldn't think that this would cause issues but I may be wrong. Signal between the WDS connections is around the -65 mark so that's no problem. I've got a couple of marginal clients (running -90 or so) so I'm wondering if these could possibly be causing it. Everything is horizontal pol. When the service completely drops out I can get to the AP's just fine from the client end, but can't get to the router (RB532). I've switched out cabling, switches, etc with no luck. Have a new 532 on the way so I'm going to switch it out as well and see what happens, but anyone have any other thoughts? Also, anyone have experience with an X10 camera shutting down their network? 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towers.xls
Description: MS-Excel spreadsheet
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