Results of PTP 450i deployments

Products PTP
1

It has been about 90 days since we started shipping the PTP 450i.  I'm looking for some feedback on the product covering anything and everything about installation, performance, specific features, etc.

If you've deployed a PTP 450i please drop a comment here or in the your stories section of the forum about your results so we can all learn from the experiences.  

if you'd like to talk about it privately you can also hit me with a private message but would like to hear how things are going.

Regards,

Bruce Collins

PTP Product Manager

Cambium Networks

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2

We will be deploying a link here very soon.  I'll post about our results when I get them up.  

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We have 8 of these links in place now from 2.87 km line of sight, to 20.4 km near line of sight.  Tecnically, they work really well.  We haven't had any real issues other than some management based details.

- ithey needalignment tone available on both Master and Slave.  When would you not have to align a Master?  At one point, the PTP100 radios had this, and it disappeared in later releases, drives us nuts.  The Orthogon based stuff has always had alignment tone on both ends, why don't the "latest and greatest"?

- the OID for the physical interface status seems to be messed up in some firmwares and not others.  13.4 it was broken, 14.0 it was fixed, 14.1.1 is broken.  Again, the "latest and greatest" firmware release broke something that was fixed in the previous realease.  That said, this same issue is in 14.1.1 and the PMP450i access points.

- the hardware is really nice to work with.  Small and light, seems rugged enough for harsh environments and rough handling.

- I don't understand why the mounting brackets are not included.  Come on, there is only one mounting option, so why not include it?  Are there really people that are just hanging these by the handle with zip ties?  Duct tape?  I could undertsand if there were different options like pole mount, wall mount, seagull mount, etc.

- having standard 802.3af PoE is nice as well so these can be powered directly from our switches.  Adding the adapter cable isn't a deal breaker for CMM4 use and is actually nice so we don't need "custom" cable pinouts to the radios (reduces confused techs and incorrect pinouts).

Overall, we're pretty happy with them and their performance.  We look forward to some things fixed and added in future software releases.

EDIT - I forgot to mention, that short link, 2.87 km, was the first one we installed, and it has a session uptime of 102 days 16 hours.

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4

Thanks for sharing and glad to hear things are going so well.

Some feedback on your questions:

1. we are looking at solutions to the alignment tone feature request as others have requested this before so your request is in alignment.

2. the SW team will investigate the OID issue and get that resolved in an upcoming release.

3. on the mounting options we do have customers mounting radios in different ways and there are actually a few different options for mounting a PTP 450i ODU.  The tilt-mount is the most common but there are also a heavy-duty mount for extended diameter masts and a 'hoop design' for street light or telephone pole mounts.  i'll post a knowledge base article on the options.  thanks for point out that we haven't communicated this very well.

There are some great new features coming this Spring and Summer that you will find quite valuable (HINT:  more capacity).

Regards,

Bruce

5

Here is that knowledge base article with pictures of the bracket options.

http://community.cambiumnetworks.com/t5/PTP-Getting-Started/Mounting-Bracket-Options-for-PTP-650-and-PTP-450i/m-p/51047#U51047

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So, to be honest, I feel like I have seen that somewhere.  I must have blocked it from my mind while writing my earlier post.  haha

Thanks Bruce.

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well we only have one link running now but here are some numbers:

15.6 miles link

2´radiowaves antennas

signal : -60dbm

capacity: 99Mbps

thats pretty nice to me.

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Our results can be found here in video format:

http://community.cambiumnetworks.com/t5/Videos/Video-contest-PTP-Demanding-Installations/td-p/48582/page/2

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9

Would the PTP 450i be a competitor to the Air Fiber 5x or would that be the PTP 650 line?

Looks like the PTP450i is limited to 20mhz channel width? Just wondering why that is? And the PTP 650 would cost us too much for smaller towers. 

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