And one last message about the performance I see on my 2.4Ghz ePMP link. As mentioned previously, I normally have my QOS set to 10 Mbit down and 1 Mbit up and that's normally what I get. However, I don't want anyone to think that ''I can ONLY get 10 Mbit through my connection''. If I configure my QOS to '0' and just test the link, these are the results I get.
This is ~57 Mbit download and ~18 Mbit upload - about 75 Mbit agregate throughput on a wireless link, in 2.4ghz through a smattering of trees, about 4 KM, and this is right over the center of town with dozens of routers in the way.
And this is what I got right now testing to speedtest.net - so 17ms and over 50 Mbit down and over 18 Mbit up - so about 68 Mbit aggregate from speedtest.net in the exact same enviromment that our previous 'non-Cambium' gear could barely maintain a 1 or 2 Mbit connection, and would often have 200-400-600ms ping, struggling to to communicate.
That's what Cambium ePMP 2.4Ghz is capable of for me in a noisy tree infested environment. Just think if there was an ePMP2000 with a beamforming antenna in 2.4Ghz.... ;)
OK - I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
Went ahead and bit the bullet for my first arrangement of Cambium gear. I ordered 4 90° Cambium 2.4 sector antennas, 4 ePMP1000 2.4 w/ sync radios, and 10 force200 SM's. We will be getting it all in next week, and I'm looking forward to getting my hands on them.
I wanted to go ahead and wrap one tower, hence the reason for order the 4 AP's, but we might have to break them up and use them on a couple different towers to fight some fires that we haven't be able to put out yet. Our 3.65 Ubiquiti gear has been nothing but problems, so we will transition some of our customers over to the ePMP 2.4 gear and see how that fares. Once I can prove the benefits of Cambium, I think it will be an easier sell for me to really start rolling in new equipment and getting rid of the UBNT 3.65 gear. Right now, its gonna hard pressed to do it since we have so much Ubiquiti equipment in house, and convicing them order something totally different. What do you guys that have switched from UBNT to Cambium do with all of your old equipment that you have pulled out of the field? It would be nice to have some kind of a buy back program so I can get some credit for turning in my Ubiquiti gear to buy more ePMP.
We run both ePMP and UBNT and have been slowly moving some sites over to ePMP in addition to building out a few new sites fresh with it. When I recover UBNT radios during swaps they either get re-used elsewhere in the network if they are 5Ghz and fairly new or sent to the recycle pile.
There is little to no value in UBNT M-series gear at this point though I suppose you could try and sell it on ebay.
I have tried to switch 2.4 Ubnt over to EPMP, not having much luck so far. Really need a 10/15mhz channel size to to work with instead of 20/40
Just use a 5ms frame size and you'll have access to 5/10/20/40MHz channel widths in TDD mode. There's not a huge difference in latency between 2.5 and 5ms.... and you also get about 10% more throughput with 5ms as a little bonus.
Ok, so now that I have that fixed, here is my setup. I have a Ubnt Rocket M2 with the Ubnt sector with RF-Armor on it (channel 11). On a 10mhz channel size. I have 18 users on it, constantly complaining about slowness. I have an EPMP mounted about 5 ft above it, also on a Ubnt 2.4 sector with RF-Armor (channel 1).Both have same output power, same antenna gain, same distance setting, both aiming the same direction. Users are from 3 to 7 miles out.
Next week I start changing folks over. Cannot wait to decommision this Rocket.
You would see a better noise floor in theory becasue the cambium sector are 45 degree slant and better noise floor sometimes means better throughput. Plus the cambium is a 90 degree sector which would give you a little tighter patter and better front to back ratio
The Cambium slant 45 sector might improve your noise floor by 3db but isn't a panacea. You really need better signal at the CPE to see better performance.
i should say, does the UBNT get anything through? if they are kinda usable on UBNT they will be better with cambium, but a true 80 db floor, you need SNR for anything to be stable. the slants with help the APs and CPEs deal with the noise, but only some.
the more SNR you get, the better off. 3 points can make a huge diffrence. 10 will make a little happen, 13 will keep you up and 16 will make your subs not angry.... 20 and you'll see some good stuff happen.
do you have multiple UBNT 2.4 APs here? you may be your own worst enemy with noise. if you do, at night, shut down all of your other panels and watch your modulations and CCQs. if you observe a nice increase, change everything to cambium and enjoy the GPS. the GPS will remove all of your self inteference when setup correctly.
We'd been to this client several times over the last couple years, trying to tweak things. They were coming up to their yearly renewal anniversary - and were considering not renewing this year. I switched them to Cambium and here is the result.
UBNT- Pros: "Disruptive Pricing", Very Wide Range of products, Air Fiber, Semi 1 stop shop for Install supplies, Cable, Ends and Mounts. Fast RMA Process
UBNT- Cons: Scattered company direction with addition of solar, Only real support is in the Forum and this is ruined by the Alpha users in some cases assuming "You must know better", Virus outbreak twice now, Constant degredation in XM/XW line with newer FW's, No functioning GPS, Long turn around on announced products, Poor explanation of some features, Managment software and its endless beta......Honestly I could go on and on.
We have 3500+ UBNT SM's and 300ish UBNT AP sectors, and are preparing to do a complete overhaul to the EPMP line. And for now the only UBNT devices we plan to keep are the AirFibers due to their low cost and high throughput (AF24 series)
The thing that convinced me was the Feature set is working on deployment, No more announced product features that are not delivered on purchase. We were supposed to have GPS Sync (AirSync) in the Titanium line, this was a complete joke as the radios were complete junk. We should have jumped ship after their lack of product testing with the first run of tough cable. After less than a year we had this cable start completly failing due to the jacket discentigrating in the sun.
We have decived that its time to stop playing with the inexperienced and "Flashy" UBNT and move to a company who knows what they are doing, as well as a company who stands behind their products.
All great points and that is pretty much spot on as to why we are switching. I think we will stick with the AirFibers for the backhauls for now, and possibly even keep the 5ghz on ubnt for the time being. Hardest part for is, is being a small WISP with limited funds. I wish we wouldve started out with Cambium. Now we'll be stuck with a bunch of Ubiquti gear in the warehouse. We will be swapping our ubnt365 gear to Cambium ePMP1000 2.4ghz products soon.
