Wireless Service Providers → Wistron DCMA-82 vrs R52H

Hello

Does anyone have experience with both of these cards side by side?

Mostly I care about long service life and also receive sensitivity.

I use Mikrotik RouterOS.

Thanks

My only complaint with the DCMA-82 is it's lack of compatibility with the RB411's. The RB411's simply power themselves off after you enable the wireless interface. I've spoken with Mikrotik about it and they said that the RB411 is designed to follow the minipci specs and when the DCMA-82 is initialized it draws too much power for the 411's power supply to handle which causes the whole board to shut off.

In my limited testing with the DCMA-82's in RB133's I was really pleased with the receive sensitivity. I haven't done any real side by side comparisons but they seemed to be as good or better than the R52H's..

I haven't used them long enough to know failure rates or anything like that yet..

Oh, I've only used them in 2.4ghz so I don't know anything about their 5.8 performance..

-Gerard

if they dont work with the 411 then we are in trouble.

I wonder if xr2's work with the 411's, I would have thought they drew more power.

I have an xr2 on an rb411, A-OK so far. I figure if it works with this card, it should work with anything!

I've sold hundreds of XR2's on 411's and I have dozens in use on my own wisp.

There are a couple threads on the Mikrotik forum about the DCMA-82 and RB411 problem. While I was at the Chicago MUM I grabbed Uldis and Normis and asked them about the problem and that was the answer they gave me.

We brought in some of the DCMA-82's a few months back to try and they worked great in the RB133's.. After the 411's came out the problems started. After a couple customers called with the exact same problem I did a bunch of testing at my office.

I've tested with different power supplies including Pac Wireless POE-18i and POE-24i and Mikrotik 18POW plugged directly into the power jack, and just last week I tested a new batch of RB411's and a WMR-400 (Wiligear's rebranded DCMA-82) with a high power 24 volt power supply with the same results.

-Gerard

You needed to corner John Tully. I suspect more and more 3rd party radio cards will stop working on their hardware as they release their own radio cards.

It actually takes some extra parts (at least a resettable polyfuse) to limit the miniPCI slot to 1A, so most new WISP specific CPU boards just hook up the slots directly to the 3.3V bus. Gateworks, ADI, etc all can share the total available current between the slots. Mikrotik should have done the same.

DCMA-82 is using lots of power than R52H
Another thing is DCMA-82 has 19.5 dBm output power @ 54 mbps
but R52H has 20 dBm output power @ 54 mbps.

Something I've noticed when using 411 board with XR2 is that they can be very picky on power when using a 12volt supply. If you have a long CaT5 run then try and avoid using 12v and go with 24v otherwise the units will spontaneously reboot themselves. That's about the only "complaint" I've got with them. Otherwise solid and simple.

Our battery banks at our POP locations are normally a 24v grid with 12v take-off points as well. So this isn't a big problem for us at most places. When it comes to a small repeater location then it's just a 24v adapter on a UPS.

Quick interesting note. When testing our battery bank on a couple of the 411/XR2 systems we got bored after a week of it not dying and put it back on power

You mean running off the battery bank for a week? and then plugging your charge controller back in? was this under any kind of load I.E cusomters and backhaul feeding the site? or was it just two of the 411's just running not broadcasting etc?

It was a lab test so not field testing sadly. The units were tested by running a constant heavy audio stream through, so not a full power test of speed but enough to just keep it running.

(These batteries are BIGASS batteries though. Not something you'd normally find for 12v)

Wish I had more specs on me, but it's Friday, I've been on two mountain tops, done 2x5.8 PTPs, pulled down 2x2.4APs, put up 3 more 2.4 APs, fished/pulled/yanked about 1000feet of cable and programed a whackload of stuff... And I'm now home winding down from work and looking forward to father's day

The DCMA-82 has much cleaner output power, better RX, and a lower failure rate/quality issues than Compex's card (same as R52H).

As far as power draw goes, we don't have any issues with using this card in any of our Wiligear boards. It all depends on how well the hardware is designed and component selection.

-Hal

Same opinion here. Their CM9/DCMA-81 card was excellent and the CM10/DCMA-82 is also excellent. The Compex cards are quite OK too for their decent pricing.

Since Mikrotik told FCC their R52 and R52H are re-badged Compex cards, so if they have made any secret change without telling FCC, the cards will be quite illegal to even export to the USA.

I am not sure who published this, but found it some time ago when considering the DCMA-82. »www.mowinet.com/info/DCM ··· 1108.pdf

I have one in a RB433 working well.

Also would you guys like to see the card offed with a u.FL and MMCX? I think it would be very versatile when needing to swap with other cards.

Todd
MoWiNet

hello,
I always use dcma82 for may wireless link. And I also sell hundreds of them.

For the dcma82 bug ini RB 411/411A, I always use some trick to overcome it. I only use bios firmware 2.15 if I want to use dcma82 and it works flawlessly .

For RB 433 it should work just fine if you use bios firmware 2.16 ( I already tested it ).

I hope my trick could resolve your problem.

thanks