Any suggestions for a 500mbs 12.13km backhaul ?

We currently have an Airfiber 5 (not an X) running at 50mhz wide and 5.6ghz (only freqs possible on this shot so greatly reduced power allowed).  The link is running at -75 , 4x and delivering 250'ish mbps (according to Ubiquiti's link planner we should be at -75 , 4x and getting around 380Mbps so we have a little bit of noise even on the 5.6ghz but nothing we can about that).  There is also possibly some fresnal interference about 8km out.

Anyway, the 5.6Ghz is the cleanest spectrum we have for this link and it's not that clean and I don't have 80Mhz of even slightly dirty 5.6ghz.o I'm thinking 5Ghz isn't going to work for us.  We also have AF3X on a tower 1 mile away from this tower backhauling to the same location as this tower so even with GPS sync 3.6Ghz is out. 

EDIT: Anyone with actual experience with 24Ghz links think it would work for this ? According to Ubiquiti's link planner an AF24 should move about 1Gbps on this link but I'm skeptical.  /EDIT

Any suggestons ?

The path.The path.

Existing AF5

24Ghz will not work for that distance with any true reliability. 3-4Km is a realistic max distance, you can go further, but it all depends on what your weather is like. We have a link that is 4.3Km that will completely drop out in a heavy rain.
I would suggest looking into the PTP550.

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PTP550 is coming soon with channel bonding (2 Radios) and maximal throughput up to 1.4 Gbps.

Thank you.

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We have 3 AirFiber 24 links and they work wonderfully. But they are far far shorter (4ish KM - I forget exactly off the top of my head) and I haven’t had much luck at 10km with them We ended up installing an AF5 on the 10km link instead.

And even the 4km links fade to nothing for a few minutes at a time, a couple times per year in the worst rain downpours. It’s just in the worst possible rains, but still it’s be worse at 12km too.

I’ll look up our exact numbers and get back to you later. We are planning on putting some Force300 backhauls (when available) as backups on these AF24 links due to the fade at 24ghz.

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Thanks for the info on the 24Ghz, did not realize rain fade was so bad on them. 

Ug PTP 550 is 5Ghz so won't it have the same DFS frequency power restrictions ? Also it will be forced to a 50Mhz channel just like my current solution. What does the 550 bring to the table that my existing radio does not ?  

So what If I can bond two of them ? I don't have enough clean spectrum free to run one of them hardly.

Any licensed solutions that will work ? I'm looking at probably $20 to get fiber to this tower then $1,500+ a month for 500Mbps as the only company in this area with fiber will only sell me Internet they will not not lease dark fiber. I really need a wireless solution here.

12.13km and mm anything is going to be touchy. The af24 actually maxes out at 650 max mode, but at that distance you won’t see 6x, likely only 2x so no improvement. If you message me off line i can check the siklu link planner for you for 80ghz. At that distance you will loose them in rain so you’ll need to keep your af5 for backup. We’ve got a few of those and they are light years ahead of the af24, not much more cost either. That said for 100% up, an 820s would get you what your after. Contact your cambium sales rep and see what they can do for cost. Likely you can get an 11ghz pair for under 7k. And those will perform as expected beautiful. Also the Fresnel zone is smaller on 11ghz so you maybe completely clean there.

Another option would be a better dish if you’ve got the windload. 3’ dish w shrouds is much much narrower than the af5 so you could have a completely different spectrum with those allowing use of ptp550.

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OK, I have my distances on the AF24's (I have 3 links) and on my AF5 (I have one of those)

AF24 (1) = 247 Meters (810 ft)
-53 Signals, 774 Mbit/774 Mbit up and down - works wonderfully, 0 down time.

AF24 (2) = 2.61 KM (1.62 Miles)
-58 Signals, 774Mbit/774 Mbit up and down - works wonderfully - but in SEVERE rain, and severe wet snow, it'll drop even at that distance. But that's rare - we've had it for a few years, and it's maybe 1-2 times per year, and sometimes not drop at all for all year. For us that hasn't been a problem, any rain that is bad enough to knock the link out, will probably also knock the power out somewhere anyway.

AF24 (3) = 3.67KM (2.28 Miles)
-61 Signals, 774/774 but it rate shifts from 6x down to 4x at 3.67 km. This link is affected by dense fog and will drop in enough dense fog (rarely, but it can happen) and a couple/few times per year it'll drop due to rain/snow. At 3.67km it is affected often enough by rain, fog, snow that we've rate locked it at 4x (518 Mbit) and that's helped stabalize it quite a bit.  But a 'significant' rain or sticky wet snow will still drop it.

AF5 = 14.8 KM (9.2 Miles)
At this distance, we were unable to achieve an AF24 link at all, and we went to an AF5 link.  That works OK, but we probably would have been better off for larger antennas and some other product at this distance. If there is a connectorized version of the ePMP 300 / ePMP 3000 we will probably try those with larger antennas and I'm guessing they will perform better than the AF5 we have.

SO - the moral of the story is that the AF24 have worked very very very well, but at 3.67 KM for us, they start to have 3 or 4 times per year when they fade in rain or snow or even really dense fog.  I would imagine that twice as far, it would be four times as bad. :)

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I have 2 sets of Ubnt Airfiber 24GHz both under 2km and both are Gen 1 units.

They are solid links and very reliable however do to the current regulation on power output a link that long would if it managed to make a connection would never achive the max speed of 1.4GHz which is actually only  about 700Mbps in each direction using FDD.

ninedd,

Thanks for all the 24Ghz link info, it is really useful information I can use figuring out what to use on other links!

Can I ask how that 14km AF5 link is performing ? It is very similar in distance to ours so I'm really curious.  I can't really wait for the ePMP AC radios so I guess if I simply can not find any non-5Ghz soltuion I'll have start looking at Mimosa and Ubiquiti's AC stuff. Really really do not like Mimosa's cloud bs...

Thanks !

Hi.  The AF5 is all we need at the moment, but it frankly isn't performing great.  We expected it to be more resistant to noise than it is, but it's not.  It actually doesn't really perform any better than the gear we replaced it with.  However, it does have the ability to do the UL and the DL on difference frequencies, so we were able to do 20 Mhz one way at a frequency that is quiet at the receiving end, and 10 Mhz on the uplink which is quiet at the Master end.  That's works fairly consisetntly and we get 120 Mb down in 20 Mhz wide, so for this link - that works OK.

However, I'm anxious to replace with ePMP 3000 gear and I expect it'll blow that out of the water.


@nineddwrote:

Hi.  The AF5 is all we need at the moment, but it frankly isn't performing great.  We expected it to be more resistant to noise than it is, but it's not.  It actually doesn't really perform any better than the gear we replaced it with.  However, it does have the ability to do the UL and the DL on difference frequencies, so we were able to do 20 Mhz one way at a frequency that is quiet at the receiving end, and 10 Mhz on the uplink which is quiet at the Master end.  That's works fairly consisetntly and we get 120 Mb down in 20 Mhz wide, so for this link - that works OK.

However, I'm anxious to replace with ePMP 3000 gear and I expect it'll blow that out of the water.


What did the AF5 replace?

Looks like I'm going to be learning all the ins and outs of getting an 11Ghz licensed link.

Thanks all.


@CWBwrote:

@nineddwrote:

Hi.  The AF5 is all we need at the moment, but it frankly isn't performing great.  We expected it to be more resistant to noise than it is, but it's not.  It actually doesn't really perform any better than the gear we replaced it with.  However, it does have the ability to do the UL and the DL on difference frequencies, so we were able to do 20 Mhz one way at a frequency that is quiet at the receiving end, and 10 Mhz on the uplink which is quiet at the Master end.  That's works fairly consistently and we get 120 Mb down in 20 Mhz wide, so for this link - that works OK.

However, I'm anxious to replace with ePMP 3000 gear and I expect it'll blow that out of the water.


What did the AF5 replace?


It replaced some older StarOS gear.  So not UBNT and not Cambium. :)  With the StarOS gear we had, the throughput was not much different - but it suffered more either on upload or download, depending on what channels we picked.  With the AF5 link, we figured it would be more immune to the noise, but it doesn't seem to be.  However, it was able to pick different frequencies and different widths for each direction and that helped.  Again - not a ton of difference from the existing StarOS gear we had, but it was a bit better.

To be fair to StarOS, it does have the ability to add a second radio card to each end of the link (in any dual slot motherboard) and then to configure them for a Full-Duplex configuration and to accomplish the same idea, configuring the uplink and downlink separately as far as frequencies and widths. However, it requires two large separate antennas on each side and for that the AF5 had better real estate economics.

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@brubble1wrote:

Looks like I'm going to be learning all the ins and outs of getting an 11Ghz licensed link.

Thanks all.


That is the right answer. 5 GHz is going to be noisy if it is noisy by now. While 12 km is not too far, a high gain antenna will pick up noise if it's in the path. If you are lucky enough to have little noise along the path and behind the radios at either end, a very sharp dish might help, but licensed links are coordinated to be really clean.

If noise is a problem and frequencies are scarce, you simply have to license your links.  An 11Ghz backhaul with 3ft antennas will do the trick at that distance with four 9's assuming LOS. Use linkplanner software and spend your time aiming them very carefully.  Your customers will thank you and you'll spend less time worrying about them going down.  The PTP820 is hit or miss in my opinion but on the whole are better than anything else out there for the money (I'm certain they would be more reliable than a Mimosa or Ubiquiti radio). 

With a 12 km link, here in Italy we use SIAE Microelettronica ALFOPlus 24 Ghz ptp radio... works great using 90 cm or even 120 cm dish!

It can give you 433 Mbps full duplex... and if you want more bandwidth you can use CERAGON IP20c 24 Ghz ptp radio always with a 90 cm or 120 cm dish (that will give you 866 Mbps full duplex!).

It never goes down, even with HEAVY rain or snow... you must get -40 dB signal or better so when there'll be heavy rain, it'll never get down!

Regards,

Paolo

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