Im totally new to the 2.4 ghz line. What kind of things can i expect? Any advice would be appreciated. I currently use 5 ghz and am comfortable with it. This area is polulated with trees and clear line of site for alot of sites is impossible. Im thinking the 2.4ghz line might be a better fit here. I plan on installing a 120 foot tower or 2 with a cluster of 6 epmp 1000 running 2.4ghz. I heard theres less channels available with this spectrum?
Hello. Yes, in 2.4Ghz, you basically have 50 Mhz of spectrum - so a LOT fewer channels. Plus, you have to deal with more interference, a LOT more interfernce too. And, of course, those two things typically mean that the interference is more difficult to avoid by changing channels... there is usually let places to run and hide from.
But, on the upside, 2.4Ghz will penetrate a LOT more trees, and is a good compliment to your 5ghz sectors. Basically, if you are close and clear - conenct a guy a 5Ghz, and if he's not clear - the solutions he can choose from are A) make it clear - cut trees, raise the antenna, or B) use 2.4 ghz.
Of course, 2.4ghz isn't magic... it's not going to shoot through a mile of trees. It's not going to shoot through a bluff. PLUS, you need to be careful - as soon as those trees get wet, or grow or fill with ice or snow, the signal that was fine yesterday can get way, way worse suddenly. So, you need to build in enough fade margin, or a rain/snow can knock people off the air. It's not magic.
But - all that being said, 2.4 Ghz certainly will let you reach people you can't otherwise reach with 5Ghz.
So - what we do is 4 sectors (North, South, East, West) and we do GPS Sync, 75%/25% ratio, with Frequency reuse so that we can use the same channel on N & S and the same channel on E & W. We use 10 Mhz wide channels, and we avoid channel 6 (which is the center of the 2.4 Ghz spectrum) and that's where many, many home routers live.
So, everything has it's pros and cons, so some of the benefits of 2.4ghz are also it's downsides - but for us, it workes pretty awesome. :)
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We can confirm ninedd's assessment... we've been using dual-radio sector antennas from KP (a 5ghz sector and a 2.4 sector built into one antenna). For LOS (and whenever we can) we'll use 5GHz, and then for near/non-LOS or when 5ghz doesn't work, we'll use 2.4 as a last resort. We do N, S, E, W... typically 10MHz channels on the 2.4, and back to back frequency reuse. We typically find that channels 1, 6, and 11 have the most noise, so slipping in a 10Mhz channel width into channel 3 and 8 work decently. Some other tricks are using MCS0 for management frames if there's a ton of noise. Setting max distance to 5 miles or less to keep installers from putting in bad service. I'd also try keeping the antenna coverage/downtilt pretty aggressive and only try to keep it in that 5 mile or less radius. You don't want to be 1) blasting RF energy out to the horizon, and 2) hearing noise from every router out to the horizon. Lastly, I'd primiarly stick with the Force 200 dishes for the vast majority of 2.4 installs... maybe keep a few of the integrated patch radios around for super close/LOS shots as their use case is really limited, and if you're that close or LOS, I'd rather use a Force 180 on 5GHz instead.
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We have been using 2.4, currently maxed out at 22ish CPEs per AP (non gps synced), no CPE over .8 miles away, with packages 8Mb and 4Mb but now we are in the process of switching EU’s to 3.65.
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Thank you for the input everyone. What kind of penetration of trees can i expect? Alot of the potential customers have large trees that are about 4 -8 trees deep. Maybe about 10- 20 feet of trees. What kind of speeds are you guys seeing for the heavily treed customers? Anyone have pictures of installs that might give me an idea?
@geraldthunder wrote:Thank you for the input everyone. What kind of penetration of trees can i expect? Alot of the potential customers have large trees that are about 4 -8 trees deep. Maybe about 10- 20 feet of trees. What kind of speeds are you guys seeing for the heavily treed customers? Anyone have pictures of installs that might give me an idea?
This is a very difficult question to answer due to the number of variables involved. We have scrubby 15-20' juniper trees around where we use 2.4. To give you an example, we have a client that is 7 miles away from from an ePMP 2.4 AP. The client has no LOS to the tower and has a few big juniper trees in the way... not a forest, but 2-3 trees completely blocking view of the tower. Client's signal is -80, SnR is 19dB, modulation fluctuates between MCS9-11. The client's connection is totally usable, and we're able to deliver a 6mbpsDL/1mbpsUL tier with no issues. Jitter is a little higher then other connections, making VoIP difficult. Gaming is OK. Min latency is 30ms, max is around 100ms. We tried PMP450 3.65 for this client and it wouldn't even connect. We would never even try 5GHz for this client.
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As Eric commented, it's difficult to say - there is no 'standard' tree, or leaf, or thickness, or rain/snow in those trees. It's hard to say. BUT, here's an example of one of our clients. This thread might give you some insight into our results.
http://community.cambiumnetworks.com/t5/ePMP-2000-and-1000/ePMP-2-4Ghz-Performance/m-p/56574#U56574
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same as Eric and Todd,
very hard to forcast, but you'll reach further.
we have somewhere around a thousand 2.4 cpes currently deployed, now all epmp and no more ubnt. the epmp work well once you've got the feel of the weather effects on them, anything NLOS will be more weather effected from trees, snow build up, things getting wet etc. we aim to connect with MCS13 down with atleast 50% of the packets moving at that modulation or better in the winter and mcs 12 with 50% or better in the summer in light areas. RSSI is a good start for signal, but the bottom line is the stablity of your code states. crazy states, bad performance.
noise is always something to worry about with 2.4, we have been using the CNpiolots as our hand off to customers so we can cantrol the noise to a degree we have to deal with, most customers take the CNpilots and no grief about it.
we also deliver voip through those cnpilots on 2.4 and it works flawlessly.