Wireless Service Providers → Running out of radio..

So I am seeing us peak around 90-95 megs on our main UBNT Rocket feed to our main tower. We need to turn up the fiber pipe to 200 megs but we will also need to swap out the UBNT rocket for something else.

The pipe I can turn up anytime. The backhaul I can wait for 2-4 months or I can order a set of titanium units and see if it will push a little more then what we are getting now at our head end until we get a 24 gig FD unit link or a licensed link.

I am maxing out the Ethernet capabilities of the Rocket I am almost positive, will swapping out the units to Titaniums with gigabit ports help or will it not even be worth it? if I can get 30-50 more megs throughput I will be good for a little while longer and can breath a little bit.

Its s short link about .7 miles and we have the power turned way down using 30 meg channels. The AP says the client is connecting at 195 both ways all day long.

Thoughts and suggestions appreciated. I hate having to put things on the old charge card. I like having the cash on hand to pay for expenditures such as radios etc.

We have replaced one half of our link with Mimosa B5c's, and it has almost doubled the throughput available. We are going to be replacing the other half with AF5x's this week, and are awaiting to see what they will do? Both are replacing regular Rocket radios with Rocket dishes!
The Mimosa's took a bit more to swap into the Rocket Dishes (48 volts, and additional RF jumper cables), but they work well.

The Af5x's should just swap in and replace the Rockets, unless you are using RF armor on the dish, in which case you will need to modify the radio housing on the back a bit.

I would not buy a TI if my life depended on it. Watching the forum, people are having nothing but problems with both the old TI and newer XW versions of the unit!

I will post here on how well the AF5x's work !

wtm... who has AF5X in stock? I haven't seen anyone with inventory yet, or is this a 'test' unit from ubnt?

if you replace your reg rockets to TI your not going to gain whole alot more maybe upto other 25-35 megs before they cap out. Go with Af5x and be done with it.

I've replaced a number of RB411GL/NV2/Rocket Dish links with B5C and more than doubled capacity on those links at about 1/2 the latency.

The other option would be the AF24 since it's a fairly short shot - you'll get more BW than the B5/C and less latency and free up some 5Ghz spectrum. The graph is latency with RB411/NV2 on the link on the left hand side, vs. the AF24 on the right.

What does a complete link in the Mimosa B5c's run, how wide a spectrum does it chew up to gain those speeds it claims.
I assume it goes from an N male to some type of SMA jumper? what's the part number on that sucker I always have a hard having people understand what I need and tell me I need this when I need that etc

Do they come with the POE adaptors?
Do they make a unit with built in antennas for this close of a link. Would be nice to just stick this up side by side and get a link before taking down the old UBNT stuff.

For our main link it does not matter on voltage we have AC power at both ends.

Where are people getting AFx units????!!

TAKE MY MONEY!!!!

The AF-5X is a direct replacement with the dishes and feed horn I currently have or do I need to order a special feed horn? I see on the UBNT site it mentions a feed horn replacement for the Rocket Dish's.
If you don't go with the 45* slant feed horn what affect will it have on performance?

It is not so much about performance but rather that the antenna leads are cramped. Slant polarity could give you a bit of an edge on signal rejection.

It is only the back half of the feedhorn that gets swapped out. There are several threads on how to modify the existing feedhorn but probably not something you'd want to do up on the tower.

Seems all these people have them in stock other says say PRE ORDER?

»www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh ··· =details

»www.microcom.us/af5x.html

»www.wlanparts.com/ubiqui ··· o-af-5x/

I just fired off an E-mail to Frank at Wlanp parts confirming if he has them in stock or just pre order.

This is confusing it is 24V or 48 Volt or is it both or a typo?

Product Details
• Operating Frequency: 5150 - 5850 MHz
• Dimensions: 8.9 x 3.2 x 1.9 (224 x 82 x 48 mm)
• Weight: 0.77 lb (0.35 kg)
• Power Supply: 24V 1.2A PoE GigE Adapter (Included)
• Power Method: Passive Power over Ethernet (42-58VDC)
• Rocket Mount Compatible, GPS Pole Mount (Included)
• Operating Temperature: -40 to 131° F (-40 to 55°C)

Yea this would be on a tower on one side and a building roof on the other.

Okay I pulled the trigger just ordered a couple AF-5X radios. Should be here tomorrow and up on the tower by this weekend hopefully if not by mid next week.. I will let everyone know how they work. CROSSING MY FINGERS!

that's the right choice. The AC's would have worked too. But for the extra cost, might as well go with the A5f

I have seen the AC's work and I did not like them at a buddys site then again I don't think he had it all set up right. There was a lot of different things within the radio that was missing as far as what I am used to on the UBNT stuff and I did not get a real chance to look and tweak things for him.

Did you find some in stock? Also, did you find the X conversion or are you going to keep them H&V?

Yes i ordered shoud be here tomorrow. Kits are still on back order just going h/v for now

Wow talk about a string of posts lol.

Mimosa B5C is the connectorized version. They make a 25db All-in-one unit. Output on the B5C is 2xNType. My guys have just been removing th eLMR frmo the RB411G enclosures and installin on the B5C. Works great so far.

I buy my LMR 'jumper' from xagyl or ubnt.ca You probably would go to Titan, streakwave, xagyl or any of the other three dozen options that the US guys have

Spectrum is 2x40Mhz TDMA is set for 25/75 at 4ms. to do 230Mbps real traffic.

POE is 56Vdc .93A - it's Big too 2x the size of the UBNT "AP" POE's.

Cloud management aspect is kinda cool, but I SOOOO miss the functionality of the Tik's

AF5x were mostly preorder, we are just getting our this week from the Early March order! NO slant feedhorns are available yet, that I know of. If you find any let me know! I need 2 !

If will be interesting to see what the difference is on our long haul shot, have 1/2 running Mimosa's and the other 1/2 will be AF5x's !

Then we can see which is the best for us, and replace the other one.

Mimosa's are around $895. each
AF5x's are around $399. each
Feedhorn kits are $39.95 each

Does AF5X have functional GPS ?

The entire AF line has functional GPS, including the AF5X.

New units arrived today. Well now that I look at them how the hell do these mount to an existing rocket dish? nothing was said about a damn adaptor? in the manual it say with a retrofitted rocket dish it will fit? Reading further it looks like they mean the feed horn conversion piece that's unavailable.

Nice of them to leave this out in the description when you buy it. Ugh sets me back now to hunt this part down. Does anyone no the part number off hand?

I'm going to config them and see what it looks like hopefully I don't have to rig some kind of mount for them I would have to mount them to the leg of the tower then get some long ass coax jumpers.

Thanks

EDIT..

So logged in and upgraded to latest firmware as the GPS did not seem to want to lock on? after upgrade GPS fired right up maybe I was impatient?

On the master or Slave radio it appears that you have to tell it what freq to use primary, secondary and tertiary. That's fine for the master but the slave you have to manually specify what channel to use? can someone verify if this is the case I see bad things happening if you happen to switch the slave to a freq that does not work and you submit the change then submit the change to the master and they don't sync up how would you get back to the slave if it cant connect with any of the designated freqs you put in? I see a truck roll happening in a situation like that.

I don't see an option to let the slave just scan all available frequencies like say OHHHH the rest of the radios everyone else makes?

Also power settings If I change antenna gain to say 13 db I can move the slider and it lets me get max 36dB (power setting??) if I switch to say a 29db dish for antenna gain it lets me go to 52dB in the power range? Is this a bug or am I missing something here seems backwards the smaller the dish the less power allowed, the bigger the dish more power allowed??. I have a rocket 29db dish and we have the power set to 4 db on both radios. This unit will only allow me to go down to 19db with a 29db dish in the antenna gain section? if this is the case it will be to hot of a signal for us?

Am I reading this wrong I want to make sure I figure this all out before we put them up this weekend.

I really don't like the fact that the slave appears to not scan the frequencies of the master.

Well that's par for the course units are both configured and GPS on my slave unit is intermittent? unscrew the GPS antenna from the unit and the center pin that should be attached to the board inside the radio comes right on out with the GPS antenna end. Lovely you have to love quality control huh. So far I am not impressed!

Do I send it back to my dist and hope he has another one or put this slave unit on the rooftop side and not use GPS sync and run with them.. UGHHHHHH

Maybe these things will surprise me and work like a raped ape and run like crazy but so far I'm scared REALLY scared to even attempt to put these things up with little stuff like this haunting me.

Sorry Yes I found some at wlanparts.com They had less then 10 when I ordered my two and they did not have the conversion kits.

I just installed a short pair of these.

I modified my dish to do the 45deg slant. It fits fine.
Or, if you want you can mount the radio lower, only using the lower clips on the dish, and the upper tabs on the radio itself, as long as you can get the jumpers to reach.

»pasteboard.co/2A3w8cXH.png

»community.ubnt.com/t5/ai ··· 43#M1218

I only need just under 100M at this link tops, but I decided to test a 40mhz channel for the hell of it. Set to 75% I can get 300M down and almost 90M up.

I read on the UBNT forum about the need to set the frequency on the slave side. I could see how, if you cannot get to the other side of the link that it could result in a truck roll if you work alone.

Too bad about the GPS antenna connector falling apart.

Why such a low thruoughput in one direction your signal looks great you set the duty cycle to 75% i assume this affects the throughput in each direction?

I show no info on some the settings on rhe radio. Under advanced i think there is a mimo setting amd nothing in the manual about what it does? Shocker.. in the literature it says independent tx and rx channels can be set? I dont see anywhere to do that or am i reading something wrong. I have a spot for three freqs nothing about seperate tx rx freqs?

Correct the duty cycle you can change depending on your needed bandwidth.

As most ISPs, we sell speeds around 10m/2m so we can adjust the AF5X to give us more downstream and less upstream to match our plans and usage. Works perfectly.

I opened a can of worms over at the UBNT forum over the issue of the Slave only able to scan three channels you designate. If any of those three get unusable and you lose link your SOL! you have to go to the slave side and put in a new set after doing airview according to UBNT and they say this is the way it is, because that's how a true microwave system works. We are trying to get them to at least put in a range of unii and regular freqs that it can scan such as a scan list but there would take forever to scan so many frequencies at 1 Mhz increments.

There has to be a way if you lose sync during the worst conditions possible I would rather wait 15-20 min for it to scan then drive 2+ hours to a remote site then spend time scanning and testing then having someone back at the master try 3 new freq and hope it all works.

I am sure on my short links I wont have any issues but on longer links I am worried that if you do get knocked offline you cant recover without a truck roll. UBNT is assuring us this could not really happen as the AF line would not be knocked off completely only degraded..

Seems I cant post anymore to this thread Hmm I wonder why?

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Well, at least you got UBNT-Chuck to think about the 5% that need a 'different' solution...

This actually the way the commercial microwave works! You have 1 frequency, and that's it. But, of course that frequency is "licensed" and you don't have to change it because of interference?

This team is old Motorola RF Microwave engineers! Good in what they do, but have to get enlightened a bit in the "Unlicensed" area!

Give it a bit, and they will update the firmware to work correctly!