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greglane
join:2006-08-23
Nixa, MO
edit:
July 7th, @03:12AM
|  Motorola Canopy 900 intermittent issues
I've been using a WISP for almost two years. The first year, things were great. For the past 8-10 months, I've been having a lot of intermittent problems...high pings, packet loss, lower than expected bandwidth, and occasional disconnects. I'll provide as much detail as I can think of below and I really appreciate any advice offered.
The WISP uses a Motorola Canopy 900 Mhz system. The AP is 1.34 miles away on a water tower. I have a 4-5 foot Yagi antenna mounted about 4 feet above the peak of my roof. Not sure of the antenna's specifics...it appears to have 16 elements. My antenna points directly through the tops of a lot of mature oak, hickory, and walnut trees. At least 60% of the land between my house and the AP is wooded. According to Google Earth, my house sits at about 365 m and the base of the water tower would be about 372 m. Most of the path in between rolls up and down from about 340 m to 365 m
I only have access to the guest status page on my SM. I've checked the page periodically over the past week during both normal performance and while I was having problems. I've seen RSSI range from 1572 to 1463, power level from -65 to -71 dBm, and jitter from 2 to 4.
Normally, pings to the first IP I can hit (which is after at least three other wireless hops to the ISP) range from 15 to 40 ms. I'm paying for 768 kbps (up/down) and it bursts to a higher speed for up to 10 seconds. A normal speedtest.net result is around 1300 kbps down / 400 kbps up. When things are working well, I can come pretty close to sustained downloads of 768 kbps and uploads of around 400 kbps. I get the same results with or without my Linksys WRT54GL router (with DD-WRT v23).
When the problems occur, speed tests fall to as low as 100 kbps down and 80 kbps up and pinging my ISP during the speed test (or just while uploading or downloading) will often be 500 - 2500 ms, often with some packet loss. I also sometimes see the connection drop for around 30 seconds at a time...sometimes once every day or two, other times up to around 10 times an hour.
The problems are intermittent. I sometimes go several days without noticing any problems at all (I'm a software developer and always work from home, so I tend to notice when there's a problem). Sometimes I'll have fairly severe problems for a few days at a time...web browsing might be tolerable, but any kind of VOIP or screen sharing is horrible and even just downloading/uploading files is painfully slow. I have not noticed any correlation between the problems and environmental issues like temperature, rain, or wind. I've had both good and bad performance at all times of day and night. The problems have seemed more frequent for the past month or two, but I was definitely experiencing the same kinds of problems before the trees put on leaves this spring and things were fine last summer.
My ISP has tried to be helpful but at this point they think the trees are at least part of the problem and they don't seem to think trying any new equipment will help. They've suggested that if I put up a 70 foot tower they could install 5.2 Ghz equipment which would provide better stability. They've indicated I'm the only one who seems to be having problems. I've really tried hard to be patient and not be demanding, but I just can't tolerate the current quality of service any longer.
Thanks for reading...I appreciate any advice anyone can offer. BTW, I don't seem to have any other options for high speed internet except to go back to a partial T1 at around $400 per month. I'd really just like my wireless connection to be as good as it was the first year I had it. Is there anything else I can do to troubleshoot this myself or anything I might suggest my ISP try? | |
annimossity
join:2008-01-21
Galt, CA
 ·Softcom Wireless
| I don't have any advice for you but this is the exact same problem I have been dealing with. We also are using the same equipment. Sometimes I will go a couple days and the performance is good/usable how it should be. Pings all 40-140ms, decent bandwidth & not much packetloss. Then some days even weeks its nearly unusable, it is like the weather.
When it goes bad we get the following, 30 second timeouts, 90-100% packlet loss ,all pings 1500-5000ms and websites can barely load. Then it will get good for about 5 minutes then go back to being nearly unusable. It is really frustrating and I know how you feel. My ISP tells me I am crazy and says I'm the only one with this problem. I have several weeks worth of ping plotters saved showing there is a big problem. It sucks for me cause my brother and I are avid gamers so we really notice it when the PL and latency start kicking in. This internet connection has probably shortened my life a few years from the frustration it has caused me.
I have tried so many silly things from switching between 4 different routers and using no router, unplugging portable phone and microwave, running ethernet cable from antenna away from everything so no there is no electrical interference. None of these changed anything. | |
tx_tower
join:2007-11-13
Blanco, TX
| is the pigtail between the CPE and the yagi sealed with weatherproof tape of some kind?? if even a little bit of water gets in it can wreak havoc for weeks until it totally dries out.
Also you mentioned for the 1st yr or so it was good, could be a problem with an oversubscribed AP, that or some punk little kid doesnt have the common decency to limit his p2p.
I would ask the WISP to monitor all traffic to the POP and thru your specific AP and to your IP. also keep a notepad by your desk(or ping plotter running 5-10 secs samples) and annotate when you see the issues. Then compare the the amount and type or traffic going to the tower, AP, and your specific connection.
Ive had some customers gripe for months about slow service and i would look at the logs for their CPE, constant traffic. turns out their little punk neighbor was running his p2p thru their wireless router so he could game at the same time. Smart little fella. | |
Tweber
join:2006-02-12
Albion, IN
| reply to greglane
I had simular issues and had trees blocking the way with 900Mhz Canopy. I made a big gain by going up from 5ft above the roof line to 10ft. I also tested at 15ft, but 10 seemed to be the best signal I got. No need for Guy Wires at 10ft either.
Eventually I had to end up running 300ft of Cat5e and cut some trees down, but there was a noticable difference moving the radio up from a 5ft pole to 10ft. Might be worth a shot, and it's fairly cheap to try. | |
Moonman
Shootin' You The Moon
Premium
join:2001-12-30
Melbourne, ON
clubs:
| reply to greglane
of course...the obvious comes to mind. wireless phones...weather stations...baby monitors (even a neighbours might effect it) anything wireless that might be within close proximity, and operating on the 900 spectrum. do you know if there's been a new wisp providing service in your area? hell...i've even heard techs say the gas that's emitted from a soy-bean field could effect it.
i feel your pain, i've had 5 yrs of good service with mine, and the past year or so. it's gone down hill fast. i'm thinking it's over-subscribing of the AP, but try and get a ISP to admit that. after all, that's their bread n butter.
--
Dave
"Agree or disagree...I really don't care. It's only a forum, and entertainment is it's fare". | |
superdog
I Need A Drink
Premium,MVM
join:2001-07-13
Lebanon, PA
·WaveCrazy.Net
| 900Mhz is in a world all it's own. What works today may not work tomorrow?. Canopy 900 units are some of the most stable out there when it comes to the 900Mhz frequency range. Some of the +'s to 900Mhz is that it goes thru trees much better than 2.4Ghz, so a lot of WISP's will try and use it to cover areas that otherwise would not be reachable.
The negative side to 900Mhz is that because of it's ability to travel thru trees and buildings better, it goes a LOT further than 2.4Ghz. This fact alone means that it will pick up signals that could be miles away, causing you all kinds of grief. Almost every township, borough and most utilities use 900Mhz to monitor everything from propane tanks to sewage pumps, water pressure levels and just about any other thing you can think of that needs to checked on 24/7.
In most cases, these people don't do it themselves, they bring in outside vendors or "consultants" to hook these systems up. The installers of these radios have one goal, to make it work. Even though they are only sending a few bits of data, they will use the entire spectrum to do this.
These radios are called SCADA and in most cases, they use frequency hopping units that hop thru the entire band, crushing everything around it. While the radio may not be there today, tomorrow your city may need to install a new pumping station, and when that station goes in, so does a new SCADA unit and on that same day, your connection goes to hell.
Besides the SCADA units,900Mhz is also more interference prone from other outside sources, like paging units, baby monitors and cordless phones because of it's propagation characteristics. If a neighbor in between you and the tower hooks up a baby monitor, your internet surfing could be over until junior wakes up, and then hopefully they turn it off, otherwise you are done for good.
A lot of WISP's will install 900Mhz without thinking about how large the Fresnel zone is, so if you needed 100ft at one end and 30ft at the users location for the link to work at 2.4Ghz without trees and dirt, you will need to put the 900Mhz AP a LOT higher, otherwise the Fresnel zone gets cut off and it messes up the thruput of the radios.
While none of this answers anyone's questions?, in reality, it may very well be the answer as to why your thruput has declined or become unusable. The other reasons could be over subscription of the AP, not enough bandwidth at the head end, a few users running P2P or even one of your neighbors uploading 50 pictures of their grand children for the world to see. 
--
»www.wavecrazy.net
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LLigetfa
join:2006-05-15
Fort Frances, ON | Hey, you forgot to mention RFID. Could be a big box store near you or a farmer counting cows. | |
bird
|  reply to greglane
if have access to the canopy page downgrade de dbs at from 26 to 20 or down, because u are not far from the ap....that mean u are in hot spot.... | |
Fogspawn
@fastbytes.com
|  reply to greglane
As an ISP running Canopy in 2.4, 5.8 and 900, I'd like to offer a few thoughts.
The basics.
Motorola Canopy 900 connectorized Advantage AP. Three different units.
Have tried Flat panel supplied by Moto in both Vert. and Horiz. polarity. Tried $150 Maxrad V. Polarity 12dB Omni, and $1200 12dB Horizontal Polarity omni antenna. No noticable difference in performance.
Have tried with and without bandpass cavity. No significant difference.
As this is a test site at the heart of my network, it is fed from a Cisco switch directly connected to my 7206 Cisco that feeds the whole network.
There has never been more than six connected users on this AP, the 5 that are true line of sight are rock solid for the last 3+ years. Longest link is 6.3 miles.
Conclusions:
Motorola's 900 gear is very poor at NLOS. I have a test site that is .5 miles from an advantage AP, mounted at about 110ft above ground level. There is one near tree, that has been heavily trimmed to make a clear line of sight 20 ft. wide in front of a 14dB yagi, mounted at about 45ft above ground level. At about 1/4 mile, halfway to the AP is a line of maples and oaks approx. 60ft. tall.
This single row of trees is the only obstruction between the AP and the CPE. I can see the antenna from fall to spring through the tree branches with my binoculars. This should work according to Motorola.
Here's what REALLY happens.
Late Sept. most leaves fall off trees, connection gets pretty stable. Kinda sorta mostly UNLESS the ambient temperature is about 40F. Then IF I change the frequency on the AP to 909, I'm back up until the temp EITHER rises above 45F OR drops below freezing, then the AP needs to be at 917 to 924 to hold a "clean" connection.
Works perfectly Oct. to April without touching any settings, until temp gets to 40F. Disconnects and dropouts until I drop freq to 909 then all is good until weather changes again.
Late May the leaves pop out.
Link falls on it's butt and will ONLY work intermittently, like if the wind is from the south at 10+ miles per hour, or from the north at gale force.
Interesting note, it usually works during thunderstorms as long as temp is above 40F.
2nd test site: One tree 150 yds. out. I can see the top 1/3 of the antenna over this tree, so this is a Fresnel zone scraper. 2 mile link.
Exact same behaviour as above. Works when leaves are down, has trouble at 40F, works in high winds and thunderstorms when leaves are saturated. Not worth crap all summer. | |
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