I am curious to hear some real world opinion from fellow Canopy operators using 5.2 and 5.4 GHz units. What are the general opinions on spectrum availability, crowding, etc.
I ask because we are designing a video system where I would like to use two Canopy backhauls. The two backhauls would be collocated. There is no money in the budget for a CMM and GPS timing, so I am thinking of using two relatively uncrowded (in my experience) spectrums. I have hands-on experience with the 5.2 spectrum (about a year ago) but no working knowledge of the 5.4 GHz spectrum.
How are the spectrums looking out there?
Matt
Spectrum availability varies widlly across the country.
You need to do a spectrum analysis and see whats there. If 5.2 and/or 5.4 is not crowded I’d go for it - first one there has the upper hand.
The rub is that if you will need to observe DFS regulations.
If you do need to get synced, try the SyncPipe at Packetflux.com. It doesn’t populate the GPS screen, but it does just as good a job on the basic sync.
Yeah - for less than $150 a syncpipe deluxe would be able to provide sync to both those links.
We’re using the 5.4 backhauls on our network in a few spots due to 5.8 congestion. They work well because the spectrum is wide open, but as Jerry said you have to worry about FCC and DFS restrictions.
cvs wrote: If you do need to get synced, try the SyncPipe at Packetflux.com. It doesn't populate the GPS screen, but it does just as good a job on the basic sync.
The new version *does* populate the GPS screen, as long as you are using the timing port and using a cable with at least pins 1, 3 and 6. About the only caveat is that there is currently a bug with release 8.x that it doesn't show the status correctly on P9 AP's.
-forrest
That’s right I’d forgotten about that…
What exactly are the DFS regulations and how does the 5.4 product handle this?
msmith wrote: What exactly are the DFS regulations and how does the 5.4 product handle this?
DFS (Dynamic Frequnecy Selection) regulations are mandatory in Europe and other countries.
It has been created to avoid interferences with radar systems still operating at 5.4 Ghz.
You can set secondary frequencies on the AP so that it can automatically switch if it detects a radar on the primary (with possibile false positives in my experience).
Well then what exactly is the DFS option in the Orthogon Ethernet bridges? I thought this was the same concept except that it was not implemented to detect and hop away from radar specific signals. I thought the DFS feature in the Orthogon radios was simply to detect interference on a 5.8 GHz channel and to search the spectrum for a clean channel and make the appropriate switch?