http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20964437 en Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:53:52 EDT Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:53:52 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,21158704 ophelus : I also have one suggestion.. you say the town has DSL only 5 miles away.. you may be able using existing 802.1b/g technologies to broadcast or share a neighbor's/or person in town connection.. that is if it's usable and or you like it.. you could consult the wireless forum for help..

This would involve of course things like dish's and routers etc.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,21158704 Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:57:59 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20967207 MicroWISP : Hi Ted,

Looks like you are doing your homework and trying to get some reliable bandwidth, don't quit now. I use some of the same gear for our WISP. 1.2 miles is nothing for the Tranzeo 902 series stuff, so distance isn't your main problem. These units are good for about 4 miles comfortably when set up right. Trees and obstacles shouldn't be a problem with your frequency, the 900 Mhz will go through quite a bit. S let's try something new...

Call the WISP (or better yet email if you have a good email address, I know I love email from my customers instead of phone calls since I can answer them at 2:00 am) and ask some questions:

* Is the only frequency available to you at your location 900 Mhz or do they also offer 2.4 and 5 Ghz ranges?

* What is the WISP showing for signal strength and noise floor for your particular CPE both at the CPE and at the AP? This one is real important...

* What polarization is the AP you are connecting to on, horizontal or vertical? Are both polarizations available right now on the 9oo Mhz freq.? (In other words do they have either 2 900 Mhz AP's pointed your way with one on H and one on V or one radio hooked to multiple antennas to accomplish this - or are you stuck with one polarization right now?

Please post the name and website of the WISP - also please post the longitude/latitude of your house and the tower you are shooting two so someone here can do a Radio Mobile map for you, this may help a LOT.

Once you find out if other frequencies are available, the Radio Mobile info will be able to tell us if the link is feasible using anything other than the 900 Mhz equipment, and the proper antenna heights to make it work if so.

I bet you are experiencing a high noise floor (bad signal to noise ratio) situation with the 900 Mhz stuff. Check every wireless device your parents have for 900 Mhz equipment. Cordless phones, wireless intercom systems, wireless security cameras, remote rooftop weather stations, propane monitoring systems, etc. If you find something on that frequency, unplug it or disable it and check the system again.

Double check your current polarization to see if it matches the polarization of the AP. Try changing the polarization bt removing the 4 small nuts on the L bracket from the TR-902 and "spinning" the TR 90 degrees.

If none of this gets you much better then volunteer to work with one of the WISP's techs for a day to try to get this right. There are numerous channels available and the choice of either quarter, half or full channel width (5, 10, or 20 Mhz) available to make it easy to get around any noisy interference that you can't avoid. I strive for at least 20 db of signal to noise ratio separation for a reliable link, but prefer 30 if I can get it. Check the "link distance" on your TR-902 which controls your ACK timing. Iif this is set improperly it can play hell with the link timing and really cause some dropouts. Drop your RTS threshold down to like 64 also so you get less "retransmitted" packets in the event of packet loss and drops, otherwise you can congest your own link to the AP.

Don't give up, once you get a good solid link with that Tranzeo gear it will be very reliable. I can't say anything about the grounding issue as I have done things both ways over the years. We have a lot of stuff out there "floating" instead of grounded and it seems to work fine. In your case I would take the lesser of two evils and if the noise is "quieter" ungrounded, I would leave it that way - if it is quieter grounded, then ground it.

Once you get that link and gear up to snuff, then you might want to see if you can do something about QoS, bandwidth supply, and possible over subscription of either the AP you are on or the whole system, but until you get that link straightened out you won't be able to tell if you are losing your bandwidth to Joe Canadian across the lake, or if your packets are falling off the network because of a bad link and falling into a canoe out there.

Try the "helpful" approach with the WISP, invite the owner to become a member here if he or she isn't already. We all help each other out when we can.

Hope this helps a little!
--
"Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt man doing it."]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20967207 Mon, 18 Aug 2008 06:02:56 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20965141 tedv : I've been nudging my dad to do that. My beef is that if you are promised a service and you pay for that service, you should get that service. The thing that I worry about is that if they complain too much, at what point will the WISP stick their fist in the air and say that my folks aren't worth the trouble and bail on the contract. Seeing that they are the only provider in town, I don't want my folks to complain their way back to DU.
:-)
I do agree that the WISP is lacking in their abilities. I discovered that part of the problem was the wrong RJ45 plug being used with the solid Cat5. I also found that they didn't run a ground to the CPE, which was mounted on the side of a wooden building and the ground wire from the POE Injector was just tucked under a water pipe!]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20965141 Sun, 17 Aug 2008 18:07:07 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20964655 tx_tower : the squeeky wheel gets the grease, i would complain everyday, send letters and show up at the office. obviously poor QoS and bandwidth managment on the side of the WISP.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20964655 Sun, 17 Aug 2008 15:59:32 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20964456 tedv : BTW, there isn't WiMax in the area, the cell company that my parents are on do not have any form of data service, just basic digital cell service and the coverage with the other cell company is poor in this location.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20964456 Sun, 17 Aug 2008 14:52:51 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20964437 tedv : Hello everyone,
I am trying to help my parents out with the WISP service that they are subscribing to. They live just outside a little town of 5000 people. The local Telco has DSL in town, but they won't even talk to my folks as even thou they are close enough to the CO for DSL to work fine and the Telco has replaced the copper on the poles within the last 5 years.

Last year, they desided that the only options for high speed was satilite on the local WISP. Due to the cost, they went with the WISP. The WISP installed a Tranzeo TR-902-11f on the side of their house. They had signed up for the 3Mbps package, but the provider put them on the 512Kbps package. They were not overly impressed with the service, but it was faster than dial up and have been living with it. My complaint has been that the D/L sppeds have ranged from 50Kbps to about 150Kbps and it is not uncommon that the pages will not even load.

I was finally able to get my folks to complain to the WISP and they said that the problem was due to the house being down in a valley and that if my folks installed a tower of about 30 feet high to put the CPE on, it would cure the problems. So, my Dad did. The WISP sent a guy over to move the CPE. Unfortunately, it was the guys first day and he didn't have a tall enough ladder, so he ran a new cable from the POE Injector to the CPE and my Dad went up in the tractor bucket to move the CPE to the new tower, but could only get it up to about 15 feet high. The performance did not improve. My dad was able to get a longer ladder and moved the CPE up to the top and noticed that the signal strengh LEDs on the back dropped from 4/5 down to 2/5. Seeing that the performance did not improve, he moved it back down.

At that point my folks tried the satilite service, as the local installer put in his demo unit for them. The service is from Xplorenet and it is not working well either. The speed is poor and they have many pages that time out when loading. The installer says that due to terrane, they can only get a clear sight line to one bird, so that is the best he can do. My mom is not happy, as they have the most problem when it rains and that is one of the times that she uses it the most.

At this point, my dad gets the idea that if he attaches about 40 feet of TV tower to the backhoe, we can go up the driveway and try it, as the elevation is about 20 feet higher as well. So yesterday we pulled down the CPE and headed up the driveway. Unfortunatly we could not see the signal lights on the CPE due to the sunlight and the WISP has the CPE locked down so I couldn't view the signal strength on the configuration page for the CPE. Due to other factors we gave up.

Then I had an idea. The tower with the AP is 1.2 miles from the house. There is a small lake that the tower is just on the other side of, so I figured that if I drove over there with the CPE and aimed it at the tower, I might get a better idea of the capibilities of the WISP's system. I drove over there and set up. I got 5/5 for signal streight and performed some spped tests. I then drove into town and found a spot that I could pick up the WISP's other tower, set up, got 5/5 LEDs for signal strenght and ran the same speed tests. On the way back, I did the same in the driveway and got 4/5 LEDs and ran the same tests. Finally, I just leaned the pipe that the CPE was mounted on agaist the house, got 4/5 LEDs and ran the same tests. The results were the best yet. I then set up Smoke Ping and went to bed.

This morning, without changing anything, I ran the same tests. The speed had dropped noticably.

After that, I remounted the CPE on the original mount. I noticed that I was only getting 3/5 LEDs and they were jumping up and down.

Here is the problem. The WISP is the only game in town and my parents don't want to pay $600 to get the satilite system that has teh same performance. They are fustrated with getting the "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage" with the WISP. I am planning on replacing the one remaining ethernet cable that runs between the POE injector on their computer to see if that helps, but is their anything that we can do on this end to help? Seeing that when ever we call the WISP, we get stuck in their VM system and they don't reliably return messages, we are at our witts end. I am sure that part of the problem is that teh WISP is not purchasing enough bandwidth, as you can see that the speed drops when other people are surfing and the ping times go up at breakfast time and drop the later it gets in the evening.

I have tried two different laptops connected to the CPE, as well as my parent's PC's and one laptop I had just did a fresh install of XP, so the PC isn't the problem.

Here is the details.
1.2 miles between the CPE and the AP. The base of the tower that the AP is on, is about 500 feet higher than the house that the CPE is on and we figure that the tower is about 300 feet tall and I don't know how high the AP is on the tower. There is a lake and forest between the AP and the CPE. We can not see the tower from here but looking at the topo map, we are shooting up a valley to the AP.

Here are the results from the speed tests.
Agaist House 8:42 AM EST 138 kb/s 26 kb/s 1667 ms Toronto
Agaist House 11:50 PM EST 721 kb/s 215 kb/s 151 ms Toronto
In Driveway 11:22 PM EST 390 kb/s 185 kb/s 223 ms Toronto
In Town 10:37 PM EST 346 kb/s 39 kb/s 568 ms Toronto
Boat Lanch 9:33 PM EST 257 kb/s 76 kb/s 476 ms Toronto

Agaist House 8:53 AM EST 125 kb/s 11 kb/s 613 ms Calgary
Agaist House 11:56 PM EST 633 kb/s 262 kb/s 146 ms Calgary
In Driveway 11:24 PM EST 394 kb/s 211 kb/s 194 ms Calgary
In Town 10:40 PM EST 339 kb/s 51 kb/s 785 ms Calgary
Boat Lanch 9:36 PM EST 427 kb/s 110 kb/s 145 ms Calgary

Agaist House 8:03 AM EST 54 kb/s 8 kb/s 1143 ms Los Angeles, CA
Agaist House 11:57 PM EST 1039 kb/s 104 kb/s 167 ms Los Angeles, CA
In Driveway 11:26 PM EST 276 kb/s 177 kb/s 163 ms Los Angeles, CA
In Town 10:42 PM EST 239 kb/s 30 kb/s 247 ms Los Angeles, CA
Boat Lanch 9:42 PM EST 324 kb/s 122 kb/s 246 ms Los Angeles, CA

Agaist House 9:10 AM EST 264 kb/s 8 kb/s 713 ms New York, NY
Agaist House 11:59 PM EST 859 kb/s 239 kb/s 94 ms New York, NY
In Driveway 11:27 PM EST 342 kb/s 111 kb/s 110 ms New York, NY
In Town 10:44 PM EST 363 kb/s 99 kb/s 136 ms New York, NY
Boat Lanch 9:38 PM EST 287 kb/s 124 kb/s 345 ms New York, NY

Agaist House 9:23 AM EST 221 kb/s 28 kb/s 453 ms Chicago, IL
Agaist House 12:00 AM EST 836 kb/s 180 kb/s 105 ms Chicago, IL
In Driveway 11:29 PM EST 814 kb/s 166 kb/s 123 ms Chicago, IL
In Town 10:45 PM EST 645 kb/s 91 kb/s 128 ms Chicago, IL
Boat Lanch 9:44 PM EST 208 kb/s 150 kb/s 175 ms Chicago, IL

Thanks,
Ted

Smoke Ping Test

Smoke Ping Test

Smoke Ping Test

Smoke Ping Test

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