2.4 NOT Dead

Hello All!  Hope you are able to keep the majic smoke working on your network!  Just thought I would post a Pic of a screen shot of the EPMP1000 AP I recently put up. (About 3 months ago)  I am the Guy who would love to see Cambium develop the 24 OS to support channel filters like the 2000 5.8 Radios.  We have the 2000 5.8 for our customers that have N (Near) LOS, the 1000 2.4-10MGz for our customers that have LN (Less Near) LOS, and we are fixing to roll out Baicells LTE for our true hard core N (NON) LOS customers.  It would be awesome if the 2.4 1000 product would have the channel filtering I am convienced it would make ALL the difference in the performance.  BTW we have 1 2.4 AP running 5MGz back to back with 1 running 10MGz GPS-TDD of coarse with NO issues.  Much cheaper than the 900, more channel choices, more specturm, this is why I call 2.4 the "Forgotten" Freq.  Thanks for letting me ramble.  Remember:  Keep the Lid closed so the majic smoke stays in!  ~  R

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Yep - we still use quite a bit of 2.4 in those Obstructed situations, with quite a bit of good results.  Certainly the Cambium ePMP are WAY better than previous gear we've used.   As you say - vs 900Mhz, there is more channels available, higher gain antennas and we've been very very pleased.

Like you - I'd love if there was a ePMP2000-2.4 (with the filter) and I also wish there was a LITE AP.  I know both these things have been discussed and rejected by Cambium, but (expecially on the LITE license) I think it'd add to the number of customer's trying 2.4ghz gear, and then being suprised by how well it works.

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Same here fellas. 3/4 of our subs are 2.4 and running at rssi levels just not possible on other vendors. Most wisps probably assume 2.4 is dead because some of the other brands horrible bleeding and was thier own worst enemy in 2.4. My person home connection is -77db, 10mhz channel hitting mcs 12/12 giving me 10 meg through peak on a loaded cluster and upwards of 20 when its quite. I tried to lock a nanobeam here before and couldn’t even get a stable ping let alone iptv and voip to work. 2.4 is definitely not dead, but got a bad rap by bad competitive hardware.

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Yep - same here.  I use 2.4 at home and my previous (non Cambium) gear could barely maintain a 1Mbit throughput - sometimes at 3 or 4 AM I'd be be able to get 2mbit or so, but at 7 or 8 or 9 PM i would get .7 or .5 or .9 Mbit with ping times all over the place.

I replaced AP and SM (plugged into the same secor and dish antenna) - so ZERO changes to any cables, connectors, aiming, antennas or mounts.  Just changed the AP and SM radio and I have my QOS plan at 10 Mbit down and 1 Mbit up and the Cambium ePMP in 2.4 delivers that to me happily and consistently all the time.  8 PM or 3 AM there's virtually no difference in performance. 

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@iamrbf wrote:

I am the Guy who would love to see Cambium develop the 24 OS to support channel filters like the 2000 5.8 Radios.  ~  R



There was a bunch of discussion when the 2000 first came out regarding how the filtering works and the reasons why this wouldn't work well with 2.4. It comes down to how wide the hole for filtering can be made and how effectively it can filter out adjacent channel interference. This filtering system works well when you have large bands to work in (like 5GHz). This is the same reason why filtering wasn't used for the new PMP450i 3GHz products. After extensive testing, there was no benefit, along with increased production costs.

Cambium looks at the 2.4 band and development for it as a losing proposition. That's why there have been very few new products and updates to either the ePMP or PMP450 side. Cambium has stated that they're not working on any filtering for 2.4 at this time... and I don't think they ever will.

That being said, it looks as though UBNT has taken a renewed interest in 2.4... and finally relased an AC product along with AirPRISM filtering. People seem to love it compared to the old AirmaxM series stuff... but then again, anything was better then that.

PS... I just re-read my post and it seems pretty doom and gloom and harsh towards Cambium. That being said, we do use quite a few ePMP and PMP450 2.4 products. We have some pretty huge sites where we use both. Compared to anything else we've used for 2.4 it works great. For years now they've been pretty much the only manufacturer keeping the band alive and kicking.

We'd like to see Cambium continue developing products for 2.4, but there needs to be way way way more interest and purchases to justify more development from what I've been told.

I guess my biggest thing I don't understand is WHAT was the Cambium 'justification' for putting all the money, resorces, and effort in the new 900 gear and nothing in the 2.4??  I know WISP that are pulling ALL of there Cambium 900 (the new $2,800.00 AP's) and putting up other equipment.  I will play NICE since I am on a Cambium Forum and not mention the Mfgr's name.  But the noise is still the biggest issue and you have to clamp down to no more than 10Mgz and a lot of WSIP are running 5 MGz to get it stable.  You can't get any bandwidth to end users with those numbers.  I can get an AP to a 'solid' 35Meg through on a 10Mgz 2.4 setting.  As always.... NOT saying I know anything... just sharring what is working on my network!  Thanks to All!


@iamrbf wrote:

I guess my biggest thing I don't understand is WHAT was the Cambium 'justification' for putting all the money, resorces, and effort in the new 900 gear and nothing in the 2.4??  


Actually, from a product development and portfolio standpoint, they did way more for 2.4 then they did for 900MHz :-)

There's a massive installed base of 900Mhz users, and there was significant pressure from these operators to release a 450 version. I'd wager that there are probably more legacy Canopy 900MHz users world wide then 2.4. I know there's massive 900mhz networks in Canada that were begging for this update.

Maybe you assumed that Cambium built filtering capabilities into their new 900Mhz platform? They didn't. For the same reasons I mentioned before, they did testing and found that there were no gains using the 2000/450i 5GHz filtering into the 900, 2.4, and 3.65 products because the bands were too small. For 900 and 2.4 at least, the biggest problem is co-channel interference... someone interfering directly on top, or bleeding into your channel. The filtering systems being developed do not help for this kind of interference (except for the 2000's BSA which helps mitigate interference on the uplink).

We use the new 900MHz gear on our network and it works quite well. I'm typing this post using a PTP450 900MHz link being used in a completely non-LOS link in a noisy urban environment. I'm getting around 50mbps on the downlink and 6mbps on the uplink. So yeah, there are applications for 900MHz... alongside 3.65 LTE. It's another tool in the 'ol tool belt.

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Points accepted.  What MGz or you using to get 50Meg Through put? 


@iamrbf wrote:

Points accepted.  What MGz or you using to get 50Meg Through put? 


I assume you mean Mhz? I'm using a 20MHz channel width. There's some crazy noisy paging stuff at the top of the band, so I have to use the paging band cut off filter to get it to connect. Using a KP 17dBi yagi on each side.