I’m trying to get some feedback on the 300SS and having those installed at the customer premise. I know that I would have them installed at my tower installations but the 300SS seems that it would be the hardest part of the installation at the customer premise.
I’m getting close to doing some installs and am wanting to hear if pretty much everyone use’s them regularly, sometimes, or not at all. I know it’s better to have and not need than to need and not have. I’m just looking at it from an install perspective and the time and labor used to install one and properly ground it.
I remember reading a post on here about some users having high error rates and high ping times using the 300SS and some not using the 300SS would not have the errors and great ping times.
Just curious for some feedback on some of your experiences and practices.
I know it's better to have and not need than to need and not have.
Very true. I was one of the people who posted about high ping times when using a surge supressor. Ping times from within the LAN could get as high as 500ms, and pings from the WAN got as high as 2000ms.
After some further investigation that I did not post, we also found out that we were experiencing major interference on the access point that the customer using the SS was connected to. Removing the ground wire helped a bit with the high ping times, but ping times did not come down to the 20-25ms until we changed frequencies on the AP.
We never re-attached the ground wire after we changed frequencies to see if it was the interference that was the major problem the whole time, but considering that when we removed the ground wire BEFORE we changed frequencies helped reduce the ping times a bit, I would say that the SS was still a contributing factor to the problems we were having. Also, I have talked to people and read posts on here about others having the same problems. I do not recall what it was that we grounded the SS to, so perhaps it was a bad ground.
Hope this helps.
we use supressors if the module is mounted on a tv antenna or anything above the roofline. I’ve been in the commnications business for 35 years and have never had a repeater yagi or anything else hit while mounted on the side of a building or under an eve.
A guy on this forum made a post not too long ago and mentioned that he had pictures of an AP cluster that was directly hit by lightning if anyone was interested in seeing it. I have a private message into him but have not heard back from him yet.
md - you mention that you don’t use the SS if you are under an eve. Do you use the passive reflector dishes much? We use them on every install we do, even if they are within 2 miles of the AP. We do it just to narrow down the beamwidth so it’s not shooring out RF at 60 degrees.
wav11 wrote: I'm trying to get some feedback on the 300SS and having those installed at the customer premise. I know that I would have them installed at my tower installations but the 300SS seems that it would be the hardest part of the installation at the customer premise.
I'm getting close to doing some installs and am wanting to hear if pretty much everyone use's them regularly, sometimes, or not at all. I know it's better to have and not need than to need and not have. I'm just looking at it from an install perspective and the time and labor used to install one and properly ground it.
I remember reading a post on here about some users having high error rates and high ping times using the 300SS and some not using the 300SS would not have the errors and great ping times.
Just curious for some feedback on some of your experiences and practices.
I have used them on every install and have not seen any latency issues with them. However, all of our units are in an industrial environment so I have to install them. In a residential environment I highly doubt that I'd install any of them even if the unit is on the roof.
The latency and ping issues have been rampant with the use of the 300SS in our experience… they have given us huge latency and very high ping times on nearly every install… to the point where we’ve simply abandoned their use in some cases.
It was mentioned that switching the freq of the AP improved things… we did in fact try that, and it did help somewhat, but not enough to justify leaving the 300SS installed.
we have never had to use a dish. I have about 30 stacked up- would make a deal on them - trade for modules or something
has anyone tried to use the 300ss after the power supply instead of in between it? does that make any difference? if that works all you are putting at risk is the power supply.
We use the surge on all our install’s we havent noticed any high ping times, but we have never tested these much. We do however have quite of few surges act up and have to replace them with new ones. The seem to fail or stop working alot of the time.
PINGS:
The SS300 connects to the Ethernet pairs on the Canopy cable. If ping times are affected then you should see errors on the Canopy’s Ethernet Stats page. Your PC or router should also be detecting errors, but may not have a mechanism provided for checking the stats.
I haven’t experienced a problem with the SS300… that I’m aware of. If someone else is, I’d interested in learning about the Ethernet Stats.
SS300 POSITION:
Be careful about connecting the SS300 after the power supply. This may provide an unclamped voltage spike to hit the power outlet and then travel via the power outlets to other equipment.
The idea behind lightning protection is not to drop the voltage spike to zero. The goal is make everything experience the same spike.
If a 10KV spike travels into a building, via Canopy or a lightning rod or anything else, and if everything in the building gets the same 10KV spike, then nothing is damaged. If one piece of equipment sees 10KV and another get 5KV, then something’s going to get fried.
I have nver had an issue with high pings on a SS, every SS is either grounded to the service panel ground wire or to earth ground via a ground rod. I would suggest that high ping times may be due to electric signal in the ground or the locaion of the SS to interference.
That being said we only install SS where we are above the roof line and where a pre-existing ground is not present. If the TV tower is grounded we ground to it, if we mount a tripod and mast we ground. Under eves or side mount I do not ground because it is not the highest point.
Conditions exist where there is the need, industrial etc but not very often.
In my experience our SS’s have never had a fault. In instances where ping times were off or service interuptions occurred. Replacing the SS had no effect. The solution has been found elsewhere.
I suggest using SS’s on every install. Better safe than sorry!
As for using only on above roofline placement, lighting moves in unpredictable direction. Not always striking the highest object. Lighting strikes don’t have to be direct. Lighting a quater mile away may brach out and be capable of causing damage.
It takes me on average 15 minutes to install a SS. I like placing it over point of entry into homes so that only single wire is visible. I like the idea of interfacing with SM outside of building (in certain instances).
Now, grounding of a relector is a different story. On average, additional 1/2 hour. My install times are no reflector 1-1 1/2 hours w/SS. With reflector 2-3 1/2 hours. Customer orientation of equipment is included.
You asked what type TVSS to use at the CMM.
Here is a Link for the Canopy Cluster Management Module. - http://www.transtector.com/productdetail?item=1101-805
Backhaul:
http://www.transtector.com/productdetail?item=1101-778
These units are availbe through either Motorola Radio Parts, Tessco, Electorcom, WAV, etc.