Roadmap for ePMP AP/SM's Live Spectrum Analyzer

I think in the real world, the things are more complicated then what is written on data-sheets of course.

So in a even more crowded spectrums out there, is always more important to have good tools to fight against interference.

The most important for me is to have a live spectrum analisys  or an automatic system to change better frequency when some conditions will be verifyed looking for past spectrum.

Many vendors like Ubiquity, Mimosa and others support those features. More useful feature is store past spectrum in the Cloud so you can look for difference during time.

I want to show an example: 1 PTP 800 meters long 390/390 Mbps full duplex available bandwidth on 80 Mhz. One day I receive a call from my customer told me the network is really slow. The first thing I was done, is looking to Cloud to see difference in Spectrum comparing actual moment to some hours  before. Well, this simple things had show me someone choose a frequency too near to mine. So I simply moved AP radio some Mhz away to restore perfect signal and throughput. More important thing is during that change I don't loose the link !!!!

This it needed only 15 minutes, from my Android Smartphone. No PC. No tablet. Nothing.

This is a too much important too to survive in Wisp life today.

Today with Cambium it is simply a NIGHTMARE to use it:

1) change to spectrum analisys mode

2) reboot

3) download jar package and start

4) select oly 100 Mhz per time to look into (really bad choose)

5) close tool

6) change to SM wireless mode first, reboot

7) hoping the SM don't remain into Spectrum Analisys mode

All  this things, could be done only during night hours hoping no any customers use the network. To do a decent scan you surely need almost 20-30 minutes.

It is simply IMPOSSIBLE due to daily WISP activities.

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Nailed it.

Plus, we can't even do a WiFi ''site survey'' to see what WiFi devices the ePMP can hear.  With everything we've ever used back to 1997 was capable of showing what I knows for available WiFi type devices.  With everything else on the market, we can at least 'show available AP's' or something similar and you could see if the customer has their router on a channel too close to the channel we're using.

Plus, if we suspect new interference at the Client end of a link, you can add into your workload a round trip drive to the client's place to run the SA from their location. That then runs into a 1/2 day. With a SA that we can run remotely, or even just something that can show all WiFi devices (like literally everything else we've ever used since the invention of WiFi) then we could simply be able to say "there is new interference at your house at 5750 Mhz and it's a device named DLINK."

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Exactly.

We use everytime the eDetect feature to detect AP/SM interferer, but it seem to be not so precise.

eDetect found only main vendors like Mikrotik, Ubnt, Cambium (of course), and nothing more. It miss surely many other minor vendors so the detecting is not precise, making frequency choose more difficult in some situation.

A great live spectrum save much time for sure

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telecomunicazio is exactly correct in his observations.

We desperately need a spectrum analyzer to operate like he describes.

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Hi, 

Appreciate all the feedback. On our next generation AC platform, we're making sure the Spectrum Analyzer is as easy as possible to use. Implementing something similar on the existing platform is in our roadmap but not targeted to a release yet. 

Thanks,

Sriram

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Do you have a prevision date about new 802.11ac product line ?

Hope someone put some time develpping a better spectrum analyzer

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And not just a Spectrum Analyzer.  I know I'm belaboring the point, but we also need the ability to simply ''show WiFi networks'' type of Site Survey tool.  Right now, we can't even use any tools in the SM to see info about the client's router.

Most of the interference on a client's side of a link is self-created by the client. So it's typically wireless stuff that they've installed - and when their SM suddenly starts to disassociate every few minutes (despite being a -64 signal) it's more than likely something that they've added at their house.  As well as a functional Spectrum Analyzer, also not being able to ''View Available WiFi Networks'' severely handicaps our ability to troubleshoot this over the phone.

With our old gear (basically everything we've used back a couple decades) we could do a 10 second scan and tell the client 'Your NetGear router is on channel 2462 and it's a -41 signal, and that's what is interfering with our antenna on your roof''.   But with ePMP, we can't see any information at all, so we are totally flying blind when trying to diagnose customer issues.  Instead of a 2 minute phone call, these are now half day on-site visits.  It's killing us.  :(

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Hi. Any idea when this will be addressed?