Three WISPs from North America will answer any questions you have in the next Ask the Experts session.
Participating on the panel are:
- Chris Bay, Bay-ET - Eric Ozrelic, Webformix - Ben Royer, Royell
Ask them anything about their network, their business, marketing to new customers, or the technology they use. These network operators with "The Right Stuff" are ready to share their experiences with you.
Participating is easy. Just login and join this thread at any or all of the following times on Wednesday, May 20th:
1 – 2 PM CDT
6 – 7 PM CDT
Pass this information to your colleagues. If you are not yet a member of the Cambium Community, join at http://community.cambiumnetworks.com/ by using the link in the top right corner.
We look forward to the discussion and meeting with you. Add the sessions to your outlook calendar by clicking on the attachments below:
we’ve been in the WISP business since 2008, We’ve primarly used the PMP 100 series, peaking at 600 sub’s with that gear. We’ve also deployed heavily with pmp320, some 430 and 450. We have used UBNT and are in the process of replacing it all with epmp. Approximately 150 sub’s changed over.
We have been building small wireless networks for corporate customers to provide LAN extensions, hauling security camera feeds and of course simple point to point traffic.
Thank you cambium for the opportunity to be one of the panelists, and I’m looking forward to answering any questions.
Hello there, my name is Eric Ozrelic, and I started a WISP called Webformix in Central Oregon in 2004. We have over 1500 customers, 10 employees, and we use a variety of PtMP equipment from Cambium (PMP100/ePMP/PMP450) and Ubiquiti (Airmax M series/802.11n). We also use a variety of bands, including 2.4, licensed EBS 2.5, 3.65, and 5ghz to deliver service. It amazes me how many different tools and technologies are now available for WISP's to use to get people service compared to when I started back in 2004. That's my favorite aspect of being a WISP, playing with new technology!
I'm honored to be a panelist on this forum, and I look forward to your questions. Thanks for having me!
My name is Ben Royer, and I'm the Operations Manager at Royell Communications, Inc. in central Illinois. Royell has been in business for 16 years. We have around 4,700 customers, and 20 employees. We use many of Cambium's products, including PMP100, PMP450, PMP320, ePMP, PTP800, PTP820, PTP650, and other legacy products also. We operate in many different frequencies. Our ePMP network continues to grow. We currently are operating 6 sites of 4 sector arrays of ePMP, running back to back frequency reuse. I'm happy to help out by answering any questions anyone might have about our WISP, or how we are using ePMP, or any other Cambium products, the best that I can.
How is your network setup? Is your network bridged or fully routed? How much is interference a problem for your network?
Thanks,
Sanay
I know it's not my question, but I thought I'd chime in. Most new WISP's start out with a flat/bridged network due to ease of deployment and low cost, but at around 500 customers OR if you have many hops in your network, you need to start considering a routed network. We use OSPF on Mikrotiks.
I'm coming from a Ubiquiti / Aircontrol and slowly migrating to a Cambium / CNS world and run into some shortfalls in managing the environment.
For example:
I want alarms in place when a backhaul goes down or an AP's utilization goes high. (I've started using PRTG for this)
I want to see an overall view of my environment without having to drill down to every device. (aircontrol works pretty good for this by sorting)
I'm about 10% converted and can see it increasingly more difficult to manage once I have 300 or 400 devices online.
Are there other tools out there or how do you use it effectivly today?
Thanks,
Ryo
For alarms, latency, and bandwidth monitoring, we use propriatary tools we built in house... but they look similar to Zabbix, without all the bloat. You could also use Nagios for alarms and monitoring.
We use Wireless Manager 4, but typically only for mass firmware updates.. You can use WM4 to also issue alarms, and you can also use it to monitor bandwidth, SnR, etc. But it does cost money (you have to buy licenses).
From what I've been told, Cambium will be releasing a new management system sometime later this year that will do exactly what you're asking for... and will eventually replace WM4 and CNS.
How is your network setup? Is your network bridged or fully routed? How much is interference a problem for your network?
Thanks,
Sanay
each tower has a local router, with our UBNT gear the APs are bridged and SMs are using NAT, management is carried in a different Vlan for all devices.
our cambium gear is setup with a router at the tower, and CPEs in bridge mode with port security turned on allowing the customer to have 2 Macs to grab public IPs directly to their routers. we allow 2 incase a customer changes a router or plugs it into another device allowing it to work while the time out lapses, we started with it set to 1 but when a customer changed something, the CPE had to be rebooted or a time out allowed to happen before their new router would work.
as far as noise, generally its manageable. the 900 floor in our area is around 85 db, but the neighboring wisp uses cambium 900 as well and we'ved matched our frame structures so we don't kill each other. the 2.4 gear, with good antenna tilt careful planning we are not having much problem with noise with cambium, we typically only try to reach 2 to 3 miles with the 2.4 gear. our ubnt 2.4 gear on the other hand, we've had a lot of problems with self interference with how tight we've had to stack the gear to overcome terrain obstacles. our sites can be as tight as 2 miles away making any sort of AP concentration without sync a real problem. when we've setup in less dense areas self interference has been much less of a problem.
When transitioning your network to ePMP, how do you justify the cost of the new equipment and associated installations?
Which methods have you found to work to recover the costs (i.e., greater revenues due to selling higher speeds to customers or asking for an "upgrade" fee while keeping the same monthly rates)?
we use whats up gold, its not a low cost peice of software, but it does a great job with event rules, sends emails and tracks devices. it can be a pain to setup, but we've found it to be a great tool. rather than monitoring every AP, we only monitor the switch at the tower and based on ethernet port info we can see the data rate going in and out of the device, and rather its up or down. we do catch the traps coming from the radios. we do not use it to monitor end users unless its a MIS account.
I'm coming from a Ubiquiti / Aircontrol and slowly migrating to a Cambium / CNS world and run into some shortfalls in managing the environment.
For example:
I want alarms in place when a backhaul goes down or an AP's utilization goes high. (I've started using PRTG for this)
I want to see an overall view of my environment without having to drill down to every device. (aircontrol works pretty good for this by sorting)
I'm about 10% converted and can see it increasingly more difficult to manage once I have 300 or 400 devices online.
Are there other tools out there or how do you use it effectivly today?
Thanks,
Ryo
For alarms, latency, and bandwidth monitoring, we use propriatary tools we built in house... but they look similar to Zabbix, without all the bloat. You could also use Nagios for alarms and monitoring.
We use Wireless Manager 4, but typically only for mass firmware updates.. You can use WM4 to also issue alarms, and you can also use it to monitor bandwidth, SnR, etc. But it does cost money (you have to buy licenses).
From what I've been told, Cambium will be releasing a new management system sometime later this year that will do exactly what you're asking for... and will eventually replace WM4 and CNS.
I've been told "the dude" works decent and it works on the same principles.
It sounds like some of you have quite a variety of equipment in your environment.
I'm currently utilizing 2 vendors, UBNT and EPMP, and also looking at Mimosa (they look pretty impressive)
How has your experience been with varying hardware and do they seem pretty comparable?
It's tough for me to go and buy 2-3 different backhauls to test a link and see which one works best.
I settled on the force 110's for my backhauls and some airfibers when I need more bandwidth.
How do you go about testing making sure you get the best out of every link?
A lot of questions I know, but thanks for your feedback,
Ryo
In our area there's 4 other WISP's and the 5GHz spectrum is completely used at most major sites. We're actively swapping out 5GHz BH's, and converting them over to licensed 11 or 18GHz BH's, and using the reclaimed spectrum for PtMP. At this point, if we need more then 100mbps, we just go with licensed right off the bat. We primarily use ePMP 5GHz BH's for remote/rural POP's that we turn up. The moment they start approaching 100mbps... it's licensed BH time.
I think it's kind of annoying that vendors keep releasing new, faster, 5GHz BH's that use more and more of the 5GHz spectrum, which IMHO, should be preserved for PtMP use.
It sounds like some of you have quite a variety of equipment in your environment.
I'm currently utilizing 2 vendors, UBNT and EPMP, and also looking at Mimosa (they look pretty impressive)
How has your experience been with varying hardware and do they seem pretty comparable?
It's tough for me to go and buy 2-3 different backhauls to test a link and see which one works best.
I settled on the force 110's for my backhauls and some airfibers when I need more bandwidth.
How do you go about testing making sure you get the best out of every link?
A lot of questions I know, but thanks for your feedback,
Ryo
we've side by side compared the Force110 to most of the low end ubnt products, and overall cambium always comes out ahead, the only notable advange i have seen is a slight inprovement in ping on the UBNT gear, whoever under load the cambium seems to be a little lower ping on near full links.
for our sub 150 mbps links, we have been using the epmp, anything past that need we pick a radio based on distance, speed need and noise.
the AF 24 seems to work well under 2 miles in most situations, but tends to drop from rain fade easy past that point. the AF5 till about 10 miles and past that for large capacity we would evaluate using the cambium 650 or a licences link
and a big side note, we are generally very rural so noise isn't much of a problem here.
When transitioning your network to ePMP, how do you justify the cost of the new equipment and associated installations?
Which methods have you found to work to recover the costs (i.e., greater revenues due to selling higher speeds to customers or asking for an "upgrade" fee while keeping the same monthly rates)?
Thanks, Chris
When we transition, it's a win-win for both us and the customer. By moving over to PMP450 or ePMP, we've found we can double the number of subs we can put on an AP. We can also use frequency re-use and double our spectrum. This saves us money on tower space, and it allows us to use the little spectrum that's available more effeciently.
From the customer standpoint, we can now deliver faster speeds, and more consistant latency (even under load or if the AP has a lot of sub's on it), this allows us to provide better VoIP support, better gaming, etc.
Typically when we do an upgrade, we're very upfront with the customer and tell them exactly what we're doing and how much the equipment costs, and then we'll ask them for a 'donation' of somewhere between $100-$200. We've found most people are reasonable and can give something. If they give something, then we'll give them a slight bump in bandwidth... like bump their 6/1 plan up to a 9/1. We don't do contracts, and so this 'spiel' we give them works pretty well.
When transitioning your network to ePMP, how do you justify the cost of the new equipment and associated installations?
Which methods have you found to work to recover the costs (i.e., greater revenues due to selling higher speeds to customers or asking for an "upgrade" fee while keeping the same monthly rates)?
Thanks, Chris
the single biggest savings we have seen is cambiums reliablity.
the lack of support calls and services runs are adding up fast.
for us, using GPS means bigger channel space, meaning more customers per AP and site.
we had a problem keeping things together on UBNT when we had more than 10 or so subs per 10mhz of channel. normally from 1 or 2 subs being weak and using up the air time. the cambium gear balancing out air time instead of through put improving customers experiance and allow us to add more subs per AP thus allowing us to add many more subs per site than previously possible.
if your looking at massive density, past say 70+
subs per access point on a tower, look into the PMP 450. it has even better frame control, better coding rates and allows for a few times more subs per AP than the EPMP can handle.
Good to know, I'm pretty remote as well and there is only 1 other WISP in the area. Fortunately, he is strictly Cambium gear and is restricted to 5.7/5.8 so the rest of the spectrum is clear for me.
It would be great if vendors would have a loaner or something to test with so we could get the best link depending on each situation.
Good to know, I'm pretty remote as well and there is only 1 other WISP in the area. Fortunately, he is strictly Cambium gear and is restricted to 5.7/5.8 so the rest of the spectrum is clear for me.
It would be great if vendors would have a loaner or something to test with so we could get the best link depending on each situation.
While Cambium doesn't have a 'loaner' radio setup... they do have the next best thing... LinkPlanner. They've put a lot of time and work into making LinkPlanner as accurate as possible. You could even take a PMP450 SM or ePMP radio and use the SA to find the noise floor of the channel(s) you'd like to run on both sides of the link, and then enter that into LinkPlanner. If you haven't used it, try it out, even ePMP radios are in there as well.
