New to Cambium: Initial impressions

Products ePMP
1

Hello all,

Brand spanking new to the Cambium forums and Cambium equipment.  We are a wisp of just over 2,000 customers.  We started off using Alvarion gear.  For years it was the same old, same old played out hardware.  VERY reliable, but lacking some of the features that pretty much comes standard with some of today's CPE/AP offerings.  We still have roughly 200 or so Alvarion units in the field.

After wanting more out of our equipment we looked over the fence at Ubiquiti.  It really was a breath of fresh air from what we were used to with Alvarion.  Fast forward a couple of years and a couple of thousand CPE's later and we really feel like UBNT's focus has changed.  It used to be 100% driven by the WISP industry and it's WISP customers.  Now it seems the focus has changed to Enterprise and residential and Solar and Cameras and...... Well, I think you get the picture.  It really feels like what got them where they are today, the WISP, has taken a back seat.  Which is really sad.  The AirFiber side seems to remain focused, which IMHO is a good thing.

That said, that brings us to where we are today.  Our first un-boxing of what I hope to be the first of many Cambium radios!  I first opened the ePMP 1000 AP.  To my excitement it reminded me of the rugged, bullet proof feel from that of Alvarion.  I was surprised in the quality of the radio itself.  It felt rugged.  It felt like it was meant to withstand the tests of mother nature. 

Logging into the radio was as expected.  I loved seeing the notifications at the top of the page.  I immediately upgraded the firmware to 3.0, along with upgrading the GPS firmware.  I like the fact there is a GPS firmware as well as radio firmware.  I kind of wish they would update all as one, but not a deal breaker.  I LOVED seeing the two firmware banks, the main and the backup.  Again, reminding me of the Alvarion days.  The Gui itself I think is very well laid out.  I was able to navigate around without any issues.  No setting was hidden or anything like that.

All in all I am really looking forward to testing and using this product.  One of the biggest issues I have with UBNT's M Series gear is the buggy firmware.  One day a radio will be working just fine and then the next it will do something wacky and need a reboot or need a firmware update.  Or better yet, for no reason at all, a radio will just reboot.

So that's the AP side of things.  Onto the CPE side of things.  Sorry, I know you guys like to call them SM's.  I'm sticking with CPE.  ;)  The CPE was actually larger than I was expecting. (Force 180).  Again, navigating the GUI, piece of cake.  I love the fact that I can set up an installer login and password.  I haven't messed with that portion of things yet, but that is an excellent feature to have.  I really like the fact that you can put in Multiple SSID's.  So if you have a customer that might be on the verge of a couple of SSID's I am assuming the system will pick which ever SSID's SNR is the best.  I have not tested this but I am assuming that's how it works?  I did notice something funky when running the CPE in NAT mode.  My desktop (linux Mint) would get an IP from the DHCP server I set up on the Radio, but when I looked at the DHCP leases on the radio, my computer's IP wouldn't show up in the leases like I would expect it to?  It shows in the ARP Table.  So not sure what's going on there.  Not a huge issue, but I definitely would like to figure out why that is happening. 

All in all so far I am impressed at the hardware and software levels.  Like I said, I haven't tested anything yet.  We are doing a tower buildout tomorrow and this gear will be going up.  Once I have more on the performance side of things, I will let everyone know.

Thanks all!

P.S. This is 5GHz gear we are talking about.  Figured I'd mention that.  Not sure why.  LOL

3 Likes
2

Great to hear Wifi-guy.

Just a heads up on the Multiple SSID feature. It does work well if a AP dies as it will try and connect to the next one in the list, the list is in priority order.  But there is no feature currently built in to make it move back to that AP on its own.

However the pain in the butt side of this is if you reboot the AP that is priotity 1 your CPE will move to the next one and not come back to the  No. 1 AP without you rebooting the CPE. 

I have had 8 Radios all move to other AP's and then had to log into all the other CPE's to get them back. Now if I need a reboot I just reboot all the AP's at the same time, which is not always the best thing as there maybe corpoate clients in the mix.

The three things I believe that UBNT over Cambium is:

1. Aircontrol 2, I find it way more usefull and feature filled than the On Premise cnMaestro.

2. Airfibres.

3. UBNT have a test mode.

Cheers,

Chris

3
@Chris 1 wrote:

Great to hear Wifi-guy.

Just a heads up on the Multiple SSID feature. It does work well if a AP dies as it will try and connect to the next one in the list, the list is in priority order.  But there is no feature currently built in to make it move back to that AP on its own.

However the pain in the butt side of this is if you reboot the AP that is priotity 1 your CPE will move to the next one and not come back to the  No. 1 AP without you rebooting the CPE. 

I have had 8 Radios all move to other AP's and then had to log into all the other CPE's to get them back. Now if I need a reboot I just reboot all the AP's at the same time, which is not always the best thing as there maybe corpoate clients in the mix.

The three things I believe that UBNT over Cambium is:

1. Aircontrol 2, I find it way more usefull and feature filled than the On Premise cnMaestro.

2. Airfibres.

3. UBNT have a test mode.

Cheers,

Chris

Thanks for the reply Chris.  Good to know about the multiple SSID's.  I appreciate that input.  Regarding your Three Things UBNT Over Cambium. I would say UBNT has 1 out of those 3 on Cambium.

1)  AirControl 2, pfff.  Really?  The Cambium cloud based management option looks to do what AC2 does and MORE!  Plus it looks like it works.  LOL

2)  Airfiber, yes!  HUGE pro for UBNT.  I agree. 

3)  Test mode.  A nice feature.  I agree, but UBNT needs a test mode.  Their software is pretty much perpetually in beta, so without a test mode, good luck.  LOL  ;)

Nice to meet you by the way.  I look forward to seeing you in the forums. 

Question for you.  I am not sure how long you have been a Cambium operator.  But it seems like you have used both Cambium and UBNT.  

So what does Cambium do good that UBNT doesn't?  (in your experience?)

1 Like
4
Chris 1 wrote: The three things I believe that UBNT over Cambium is:

1. Aircontrol 2, I find it way more usefull and feature filled than the On Premise cnMaestro.

2. Airfibres.

3. UBNT have a test mode.

1) I'd agree that there are some features we'd like to see in cnMaestro. I'd certainly like to see cnMaestro have more development - even if it meant having a small licensing fee so that there was a dedicated programming team working on features more quickly.

2) Airfibers have been awesome, really the only awesome product from them I think. To be fair to Cambium, they have to reconcile the ePMP line with their larger and more expensive PTP products. The question is, if they came out with a Cambium eFiber line, would that steal sales from the AirFibers or just from their own Cambium PTP's?

3) Yes - absolutely they need a test mode. If we're trying different settings on a 20 KM link, we need to be able to try different frequencies and widths in order to test performance differences, and sooner or later, something won't link up.  So, absolutely absolutely this is one of the major things missing. They need either a 'test mode' or a 'ping rebooter' that will revert to previously saved settings, or some sort of testing mode.

5
@ninedd wrote:
Chris 1 wrote: The three things I believe that UBNT over Cambium is:

1. Aircontrol 2, I find it way more usefull and feature filled than the On Premise cnMaestro.

2. Airfibres.

3. UBNT have a test mode.

1) I'd agree that there are some features we'd like to see in cnMaestro. I'd certainly like to see cnMaestro have more development - even if it meant having a small licensing fee so that there was a dedicated programming team working on features more quickly.

2) Airfibers have been awesome, really the only awesome product from them I think. To be fair to Cambium, they have to reconcile the ePMP line with their larger and more expensive PTP products. The question is, if they came out with a Cambium eFiber line, would that steal sales from the AirFibers or just from their own Cambium PTP's?s

3) Yes - absolutely they need a test mode. If we're trying different settings on a 20 KM link, we need to be able to try different frequencies and widths in order to test performance differences, and sooner or later, something won't link up.  So, absolutely absolutely this is one of the major things missing. They need either a 'test mode' or a 'ping rebooter' that will revert to previously saved settings, or some sort of testing mode.

Cambium Pros?  So far you haven't mentioned anything about performance between the two.  Just features which really can be work-arounds.

6

wifi_guy wrote: Cambium Pros?  So far you haven't mentioned anything about performance between the two.  Just features which really can be work-arounds. 

Hi Wifi_guy.  Yes, I was just commenting on your three points, more as input & suggestions for Cambium. One of top things is that 'test mode' thing...  we really need that for sure.

As for Cambium Pros - many, many.  Let me sum them up to this though, SELF INTERFERENCE MITIGATION.  In the unlicensed band, there will be interference.  So, real world performance largely comes down to how well a radio can deal with interference, AND how well you can mitigate your own interference from your own towers.

So...

1) GPS Sync is HUGE.  That, all by itself will syncronize your ePMP AP's so that they will all broadcast at the same instant, and all go into receive mode at the same instant.  That alone is huge, becuase the #1 cause of interference is your network - your other AP's.  If AP#1 is listening for one of it's clients 5 miles away, and at that same instant AP#2 started broadcasting...   welll, AP#1 has no chance.  It's listening for a -73 client and the nearby AP is -38.  So, GPS Syncing is huge and all by itself, it'll syncronize all your AP's to TX at the same instant, and RX at the same instant and virtually eliminate self AP to AP interference.

Of course, I say ''virtually'', because there are ways that you can design things incorrectly and still manage to screw up Cambium's hard work, but more on that later.  Sufice it to say for now, that the #1 PRO is GPS.

2) Cambium's scheduler. When the CPE's (SM's) register to the AP, the AP does all the scheduling for every SM and when they should listen and talk. Unlike other systems, where the other SM's on the same AP will interfere with each other. It's always chaos to some degree or other, and SM#6 might ask for permission to talk while SM#13 is currently talking, and neither of their messages get through.  With Cambium, the AP transmits a highly organized and efficient scheule to all the SM's letting them know when they need to be quiet and when they should talk. Likelise, rather than each packet having an ''ack'' packet coming back, which means that further away CPE's will affect performance of the nearly CPEs - with Cambium all the SM's will send in their 'acks' at the end of the frame, in an oranized way, so that performance over distance stays more consistent.

The organized scheduler also results in MANY many WISPs being able to put twice as many SM's on a sector with Cambium vs UBNT. There are ton's of WISP's with 40 or 50 or 60 or 80 SM's on a sector, and with good performance. It's not unusual for other companies gear to fall apart at 20 or 30 CPE's per sector, and (other's can comment) it's fairly common to have 50 or 60 SM's working great.

NOW - the GPS Syncing and scheduler does come at a bit of a cost...  if all the AP and SM's are told to ''wait for their turn'', that translates into a bit more latency.  Obviously, any system that is 'first come, first serve' can have lower latency (at the cost of chaos) and any system with a ''you wait your turn scheduler" can have more performance (at the cost of more latency).  ePMP can be configured with your choice of 'Fixed' or 'Flexible' frames, and so you can choose to have higher or lower levels of latency, but some of these features are mutually exclusive. So, if you want the best level of self-interference mitigation and performance, then you'll want to select a Fixed Frame Ratio, and that'll allow all Cambium's magic, but at the expense of a few extra ms of latency.

3) ATPC - the AP not only schedules each SM, but it can also tell each SM to turn itself up or down in transmit power, in order to have a well balanced signals on the AP.  One of the many many problems with other brands of gear can be that a close customer might be a -42 signal, while a distant one may be -75.  Sure you can turn the -42 down to get him to a -60, but then on a humid day, or when there are leaves on the trees, or whatever.. that CPE that you've manually turned down will drop off the map.  With ePMP, you can tell the AP that you'd like all your CPE's to be a -60 or a -55 or a -63 or whatever you choose, and they will turn themselves up or down to try to achieve that.  That means that you can safely overpower your antennas on the SM side, and you've got built in fade margin, without blasting all the time.  The power can only come up when it's needed.  Also, that -42 CPE will be (of course) not only defening the AP, but it'll also be interfering with your other tower 8 miles further on where it still might be heard at -75 maybe.  If that -42 can automatically be turned down to a -60 on the fly, then it'ss only be interfering at a -93 to your other tower.

4) Air Fairness, not Bandwidth fairness.  Cambium's scheduler is ''Air Time Fairness'', where as other psudo-TDMA will do a QOS type fairness.  So, if you have a client who's turned in the wind or whatever, and is a -80 signal... that guy starts to use his internet and he can totally dominate the AP at the expense of everyone else. With Cambium, that -80 guy will still have funky performance, BUT he'll only get his fair share of the airtime scheduled to him.  To a MUCH greater degree, the Cambium scheduler will help prevent one SM in distress from impacting other SM's.

The list goes on and on and on...  And I haven't even started on the 2000 AP, with it's digital filter and it's Beamforming antenna.  

Here's a good thread to read.
http://community.cambiumnetworks.com/t5/ePMP-2000-and-1000/Convince-me-to-switch-from-Ubiquiti/m-p/55747#U55747

Here's a thread from a while ago talking about the performance results we've had. This is with 2.4ghz gear, but much of it still applies. This focused on 2.4ghz gear because we just replace a non-Cambium 2.4ghz gear was struggling to even function.  We replaced 17 clietns from non-Cambium to ePMP, and 'vive la différence'!

http://community.cambiumnetworks.com/t5/ePMP-2000-and-1000/ePMP-2-4Ghz-Performance/m-p/56574#U56574

And then in the 'STORIES' forum, there are likely lots that you could read there too.
http://community.cambiumnetworks.com/t5/ePMP-Stories/Transition-from-UBNT-to-Cambium/m-p/55801

http://community.cambiumnetworks.com/t5/ePMP-Stories/bd-p/ePMP_Stories

5 Likes
7
@ninedd wrote:

wifi_guy wrote: Cambium Pros?  So far you haven't mentioned anything about performance between the two.  Just features which really can be work-arounds. 

Hi Wifi_guy.  Yes, I was just commenting on your three points, more as input & suggestions for Cambium. One of top things is that 'test mode' thing...  we really need that for sure.

As for Cambium Pros - many, many.  Let me sum them up to this though, SELF INTERFERENCE MITIGATION.  In the unlicensed band, there will be interference.  So, real world performance largely comes down to how well a radio can deal with interference, AND how well you can mitigate your own interference from your own towers.

So...

1) GPS Sync is HUGE.  That, all by itself will syncronize your ePMP AP's so that they will all broadcast at the same instant, and all go into receive mode at the same instant.  That alone is huge, becuase the #1 cause of interference is your network - your other AP's.  If AP#1 is listening for one of it's clients 5 miles away, and at that same instant AP#2 started broadcasting...   welll, AP#1 has no chance.  It's listening for a -73 client and the nearby AP is -38.  So, GPS Syncing is huge and all by itself, it'll syncronize all your AP's to TX at the same instant, and RX at the same instant and virtually eliminate self AP to AP interference.

Of course, I say ''virtually'', because there are ways that you can design things incorrectly and still manage to screw up Cambium's hard work, but more on that later.  Sufice it to say for now, that the #1 PRO is GPS.

2) Cambium's scheduler. When the CPE's (SM's) register to the AP, the AP does all the scheduling for every SM and when they should listen and talk. Unlike other systems, where the other SM's on the same AP will interfere with each other. It's always chaos to some degree or other, and SM#6 might ask for permission to talk while SM#13 is currently talking, and neither of their messages get through.  With Cambium, the AP transmits a highly organized and efficient scheule to all the SM's letting them know when they need to be quiet and when they should talk. Likelise, rather than each packet having an ''ack'' packet coming back, which means that further away CPE's will affect performance of the nearly CPEs - with Cambium all the SM's will send in their 'acks' at the end of the frame, in an oranized way, so that performance over distance stays more consistent.

The organized scheduler also results in MANY many WISPs being able to put twice as many SM's on a sector with Cambium vs UBNT. There are ton's of WISP's with 40 or 50 or 60 or 80 SM's on a sector, and with good performance. It's not unusual for other companies gear to fall apart at 20 or 30 CPE's per sector, and (other's can comment) it's fairly common to have 50 or 60 SM's working great.

NOW - the GPS Syncing and scheduler does come at a bit of a cost...  if all the AP and SM's are told to ''wait for their turn'', that translates into a bit more latency.  Obviously, any system that is 'first come, first serve' can have lower latency (at the cost of chaos) and any system with a ''you wait your turn scheduler" can have more performance (at the cost of more latency).  ePMP can be configured with your choice of 'Fixed' or 'Flexible' frames, and so you can choose to have higher or lower levels of latency, but some of these features are mutually exclusive. So, if you want the best level of self-interference mitigation and performance, then you'll want to select a Fixed Frame Ratio, and that'll allow all Cambium's magic, but at the expense of a few extra ms of latency.

3) ATPC - the AP not only schedules each SM, but it can also tell each SM to turn itself up or down in transmit power, in order to have a well balanced signals on the AP.  One of the many many problems with other brands of gear can be that a close customer might be a -42 signal, while a distant one may be -75.  Sure you can turn the -42 down to get him to a -60, but then on a humid day, or when there are leaves on the trees, or whatever.. that CPE that you've manually turned down will drop off the map.  With ePMP, you can tell the AP that you'd like all your CPE's to be a -60 or a -55 or a -63 or whatever you choose, and they will turn themselves up or down to try to achieve that.  That means that you can safely overpower your antennas on the SM side, and you've got built in fade margin, without blasting all the time.  The power can only come up when it's needed.  Also, that -42 CPE will be (of course) not only defening the AP, but it'll also be interfering with your other tower 8 miles further on where it still might be heard at -75 maybe.  If that -42 can automatically be turned down to a -60 on the fly, then it'ss only be interfering at a -93 to your other tower.

4) Air Fairness, not Bandwidth fairness.  Cambium's scheduler is ''Air Time Fairness'', where as other psudo-TDMA will do a QOS type fairness.  So, if you have a client who's turned in the wind or whatever, and is a -80 signal... that guy starts to use his internet and he can totally dominate the AP at the expense of everyone else. With Cambium, that -80 guy will still have funky performance, BUT he'll only get his fair share of the airtime scheduled to him.  To a MUCH greater degree, the Cambium scheduler will help prevent one SM in distress from impacting other SM's.

The list goes on and on and on...  And I haven't even started on the 2000 AP, with it's digital filter and it's Beamforming antenna.  

Here's a good thread to read.
http://community.cambiumnetworks.com/t5/ePMP-2000-and-1000/Convince-me-to-switch-from-Ubiquiti/m-p/55747#U55747

Here's a thread from a while ago talking about the performance results we've had. This is with 2.4ghz gear, but much of it still applies. This focused on 2.4ghz gear because we just replace a non-Cambium 2.4ghz gear was struggling to even function.  We replaced 17 clietns from non-Cambium to ePMP, and 'vive la différence'!

http://community.cambiumnetworks.com/t5/ePMP-2000-and-1000/ePMP-2-4Ghz-Performance/m-p/56574#U56574

And then in the 'STORIES' forum, there are likely lots that you could read there too.
http://community.cambiumnetworks.com/t5/ePMP-Stories/Transition-from-UBNT-to-Cambium/m-p/55801

http://community.cambiumnetworks.com/t5/ePMP-Stories/bd-p/ePMP_Stories

Very good post.  Thank you.  So I posted this yesterday.  http://community.cambiumnetworks.com/t5/ePMP-2000-and-1000/Can-t-Enable-Co-Location-Mode/td-p/57806  I understand the Co-Location settings now.  We don't need them unless we are running other gear that is capable of syncing.  Like older Cambium gear.  What I still don't quit understand is the front and back reuse settings.

I understand one AP on the tower needs to be set to Front and the AP behind it on the tower needs to be set to Back (or vice versa).  I just don't understand what that setting is actually doing? 

**Edit, I have read this thread.  Good stuff in it.

http://community.cambiumnetworks.com/t5/ePMP-2000-and-1000/Convince-me-to-switch-from-Ubiquiti/m-p/55747#U55747****

2 Likes
8
@wifi_guy wrote:
I understand one AP on the tower needs to be set to Front and the AP behind it on the tower needs to be set to Back (or vice versa).  I just don't understand what that setting is actually doing? 

Yes... and Cambium will officially basically only say ''that's part of the secret sauce''.  :)  So, from their perspective, other companies have attempted for years to take a standard WiFi N type of chipset and strip out all the WiFi stuff and to get GPS working and so on...  So far, only Cambium has been able to accomplish it, and with remarkable results.


So - they do describe in general terms what some of their features do, and they do describe in exacting details what some other of their features do - BUT on some of the features that they consider their real secret proprietary features, they (understandingly) only say ''that's part of the secret sauce that makes things work''.

So yes - there are a bunch of correct and incorrect settings that can make Frequency Reuse work or not work as expected.  Basically, you want a situation...

A) where the AP's are 'SYNCED' so that their TX and RX frames are in sync with each other, and
B) where the SM's really only hear their own AP, and
C) where each AP really only hears it's own SM's.

Some of this is electronic in the Cambium software, and some of it is physical - issolation and shielding and so on.

1 Like
9

We just started switching from UBNT over to Cambium. It's a night and day difference. UBNT was great when starting out but as soon as we got over 30 or so customers on a tower everything started going downhill from there. We decided to test out Cambium in a struggling community and now it turned out to be our best. 

We are in the process of switching our entire network over to Cambium gear. I couldn't be happier!


Welcome to the forums wifi_guy!

2 Likes
10

Our second Cambium site is going up tomorrow.  Litterally.  We are putting up a 65 ft tower in the country.  I am using the Cambium 120 degree sector antennas for this build-out.  The first build-out with Cambium gear we used UBNT 120 degree sectors.

Love how the GPS puck can be integrated into the antenna, very cool!  I'll post some pictures tomorrow after the build-out.


Thanks all!

2 Likes
11
@ninedd wrote:
@wifi_guy wrote:
I understand one AP on the tower needs to be set to Front and the AP behind it on the tower needs to be set to Back (or vice versa).  I just don't understand what that setting is actually doing? 

Yes... and Cambium will officially basically only say ''that's part of the secret sauce''.  :)  So, from their perspective, other companies have attempted for years to take a standard WiFi N type of chipset and strip out all the WiFi stuff and to get GPS working and so on...  So far, only Cambium has been able to accomplish it, and with remarkable results.


So - they do describe in general terms what some of their features do, and they do describe in exacting details what some other of their features do - BUT on some of the features that they consider their real secret proprietary features, they (understandingly) only say ''that's part of the secret sauce that makes things work''.

So yes - there are a bunch of correct and incorrect settings that can make Frequency Reuse work or not work as expected.  Basically, you want a situation...

A) where the AP's are 'SYNCED' so that their TX and RX frames are in sync with each other, and
B) where the SM's really only hear their own AP, and
C) where each AP really only hears it's own SM's.

Some of this is electronic in the Cambium software, and some of it is physical - issolation and shielding and so on.

So on a tower when an AP is facing south running 5180 and an AP facting north running 5180, wouldn't you want both Radios set to "Back" since the potential interference source is coming from the back of both AP's? 

12
@wifi_guy wrote:

So on a tower when an AP is facing south running 5180 and an AP facting north running 5180, wouldn't you want both Radios set to "Back" since the potential interference source is coming from the back of both AP's? 

When using frequency reuse, one radio needs to be set to back, and the other needs to be set to front, it doesn't matter which one is which.

1 Like
13
@wifi_guy wrote:
So on a tower when an AP is facing south running 5180 and an AP facting north running 5180, wouldn't you want both Radios set to "Back" since the potential interference source is coming from the back of both AP's? 

No, the ''front'' and ''back'' are just arbitrariy labels, and in a frequency reuse situation, you just pick whatever side you want to be 'front' and whatever side to be 'back'.  For us, we use the 'North - South - East - West' to decide that 'North is FRONT and South is BACK' and 'East is FRONT and West is BACK'.  As far as I know, there is no technical right or wrong to it, ex cept that back-to-back sectors needs to have one set to 'front' and the other set to 'back' - but 100% up to you which is which.

1 Like
14
@ninedd wrote:
@wifi_guy wrote:
So on a tower when an AP is facing south running 5180 and an AP facting north running 5180, wouldn't you want both Radios set to "Back" since the potential interference source is coming from the back of both AP's? 

No, the ''front'' and ''back'' are just arbitrariy labels, and in a frequency reuse situation, you just pick whatever side you want to be 'front' and whatever side to be 'back'.  For us, we use the 'North - South - East - West' to decide that 'North is FRONT and South is BACK' and 'East is FRONT and West is BACK'.  As far as I know, there is no technical right or wrong to it, ex cept that back-to-back sectors needs to have one set to 'front' and the other set to 'back' - but 100% up to you which is which.

So I know Cambium doesn't support RF reuse in a 3 sector array situation but does in the 4 sector array set up.  So in a 3 sector array situation would you not want the front/back enabled at all?

15
@wifi_guy wrote:
@ninedd wrote:
@wifi_guy wrote:
So on a tower when an AP is facing south running 5180 and an AP facting north running 5180, wouldn't you want both Radios set to "Back" since the potential interference source is coming from the back of both AP's? 

No, the ''front'' and ''back'' are just arbitrariy labels, and in a frequency reuse situation, you just pick whatever side you want to be 'front' and whatever side to be 'back'.  For us, we use the 'North - South - East - West' to decide that 'North is FRONT and South is BACK' and 'East is FRONT and West is BACK'.  As far as I know, there is no technical right or wrong to it, ex cept that back-to-back sectors needs to have one set to 'front' and the other set to 'back' - but 100% up to you which is which.

So I know Cambium doesn't support RF reuse in a 3 sector array situation but does in the 4 sector array set up.  So in a 3 sector array situation would you not want the front/back enabled at all?

In a 120 degree 3 sector deployment, since you cannot frequency reuse, this setting can be ignored.

16

Yes i agree 100 percent chris 1, We still use our airfibers they re rock solid. Someone actually told me it was 3 cambium engineers who designed the Airfiber backhaul for UBNT during the canopy to Cambium purchase.