Industry Forums > Wireless Service Providers > 6.6mile PTP link - hardware?

reply to wirelessdog

Re: 6.6mile PTP link - hardware?

reply to TheHox
@ TheHox how tall is that tower?

5 full sections + 1 topper section
So 60ft, but it is in the ground 4ft deep so 56ft.

The pole on top adds another 5-6feet or so?

reply to TheHox
That's a lot of Rohn 25 there .

2.4 might be better.
--
OptionsDSL Wireless Internet
»www.optionsdsl.ca

reply to TomS_

The alignment is currently half-assed at best. I'll be playing with it more today.

Funny thing is I can pick up other APs in the -80s all the time, that are not even aiming at me, but I can't see the AP that I do have aiming to my station side half the time at all.

You might be in a deep null.

reply to TheHox
Finally had the balls to climb up to the tower just now to try and re aim the station side. While blowing in the wind freezing my fingers off, I tried to aim it while scanning for the AP on my phone.

My AP I only see briefly once in a while on the Scans page, with -90 or so power. But I see 4 other APs that are near my APs, (6+ miles away) that are not even aimed at me.
WPA2 -84 / -89 5.745 149
WPA2 -74 / -88 5.805 161
WPA2 -90 / -96 5.74 148
NONE -84 / -89 5.765 153
As of now I don't even see my AP at all, I've hit refresh/scan like 50 times in the past few minutes and I haven't seen my AP once.

I would think since mine is aimed at me I would see stronger power levels than others that are not even closed to being aimed in my direction.

Which brings me to my next theory....

While installing the AP side, I dropped the antenna piece. It fell about 50ft onto a roof that had about 5" of snow on it, then slid off and fell on the grass below that had 5" of snow as well. I figured it was destroyed, but it appeared to be ok, but did have a tiny bit of snow by the ethernet jack. After cleaning the snow out and trying to dry it, I plugged it in, inside, and it booted and I was able to access the admin page, but I noticed the antenna was very warm, almost hot. Hot enough that if I was to take off the plastic casing, I would probably burn my hand on the pieces inside. So how warm do these get in normal operation conditions? I havn't felt it since it has been outside, but I felt the station side just now and it didn't feel warm at all. (Obviously it is about 25F outside right now)
( this »i.ebayimg.com/00/s/MTA2NFgxNjAw/···0_35.JPG )

I'm wondering if some water got inside and damaged the antenna. It may work but performs very poorly? Or are these normal to get pretty warm.

Thanks again

Looking towards the AP
»sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-s···19_o.jpg

Is this the same 56-60ft tower or is this different tower size height?

The AP side is the 56-60ft.
The station side, which is where I am working at now, is 70ft

reply to TheHox
You might try a Nanostation at the house. It has a wider H/V beamwidth and is far easier to point.

reply to John Galt

reply to TheHox
I'm back at this again. I'll write a little refresher here.

I first tried 2 NanoBridge M5s with 25dbi dishes. These didn't work, I saw the AP side 25% of the time, but was never able to get a connection. I believe I am hitting trees still, and enough of them since all the leaves are off here in the upper mid west.

I had some Nanonstion LocoM2s layin around I figured I would try to see what 2ghz could do. I was never able to see the AP side at all with these.

So today, I tried 2 Nanostation LocoM900s.
There is some other 900mhz stuff in the area, so I tried both 5mhz and 10mhz widths and channel shifting. The best I got was about -80 for power level, it fluctuated around low 80s, sometimes hitting high 70s. Noise floor was around -95 to -100
I was able to make a connection sometimes, but obviously nothing stable.
Ping statistics for 192.168.1.21:
Packets: Sent = 1048, Received = 921, Lost = 127 (12% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 27ms, Maximum = 2987ms, Average = 956ms


Thoughts on what I could try now? Get some UBNT 16dBi Yagis?
Use them on the loco M900s? Or get a rocket m900?

You're just dead set on learning the hard way.

If you go back to page one I gave you a suggestion - had you listened you would be done.

I also told you 900mhz wouldn't work. Imagine that, it doesn't work.

You might get some type of crappy connection to work if you use the yagi's. UBNT yagi's are dual-pol, Nano 900's are only dual pole using the internal+external antennas. You could look at the M2 900mhz yagi's or if you want to use the UBNT which would be the best of a crappy configuration for your application and use rockets.

Or you could do it right and order a couple high gain 5ghz grids, two 5ghz bullets and be done with this.

reply to TheHox

reply to TheHox
It's pretty simple really. If you can't see the other side, your going to be in trouble. Especially if you are trying to push 100Mb/s
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»www.wirelessdatanet.net

reply to TheHox
True. I thought it was clearer looking at the charts, and that I just couldn't see the ridge in the distance since it was 6 miles away. But it turns out its just 1 row of trees in my way.

I don't need the full 100mb, I'd be happy with 5-10.

I'll have to keep sourcing other sites.

reply to TheHox
What does "sourcing other sites" mean?

None of the equipment mentioned is any different than the others... It's physics, and you can't beat physics. Higher power, higher gain, or more elevation. That's it... Lower frequencies helps, but the lower you go the more interference in most cases, so its a catch 22.

Everyone that's here, does this for a living. Respect what has been given to you already, and do it, is my best suggestion.

My only other suggestion is to bench test your links before you put them in place, that will rule out any operator errors in configuration.
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»www.wirelessdatanet.net

reply to TheHox
Just to correct wirelessdog the nano loco 900s are dual polarity with their internal antennas only. But see below they do suck.

The internal 900 loco antennas suck, I get 10db by adding a 13 dbi yagi to a loco, add 4 for a nice 17dbi M2 or try the 16 dbi rocket versions paired with, of course, the rocket 900 radio. Sort of expensive but they do work well. 20mhz wide in 900mhz rarely works well, but neither does 5mhz, 10mhz or 8mhz has worked well for me and in 8mhz should get you 10mb with 2 chains going.

If you want to try wirelessdog's suggestion I have a pair of 29dbi 5ghz mammoth grids here you can have real cheap . But height is your answer here regardless.
--
OptionsDSL Wireless Internet
»www.optionsdsl.ca

reply to TheHox
I don't have time to log into one this morning but I'm almost certain you can set the Nano's to Internal plus External and maintain 2x2. That said, I don't know why anyone would use that configuration but I'm almost sure its available as an option.