Due to the city not wanting us to add any more equipment onto the water tower that we are located on, we are stuck with 1 900mhz AP with 78 people on it. We planned on moving to 3 sectors a long time ago, but due to this happening, we are unable to. We have stopped adding anyone to the AP, and I’m trying to do some damage control. We haven’t been getting any trouble calls about problems on the AP yet, but I have to believe this is having an effect on people’s service at peak times. I was looking for any information that I can look for, stats on the AP, stats through Prizm, anything that would be helpful in seeing how well the AP is performing.
9.4.2 on AP and all SMs
14 max distance
75% downlink
1x/2x rate adaptive, with everyone capable of maintaining a 2x link has it turned on. Only the people farther out are set to 1x.
Control Slots 4. I had this at 3 but after reading a couple of Jerry’s posts I have just now changed it to 4 to see if it improves at all.
512 download
256 upload
we have removed the burst from this AP, the rest of our APs are set to 2000.
Anyone have any other ideas on ways to keep the AP at maximum performance. I have turned down most of the transmitter output powers on the SMs that are very close as much as possible. I’m not sure what else I can do to help keep this thing going until we can figure out another solution. Out of 78 people, the average RF link distance is only 1.28 miles. We have a quite a few that are out 7, 8, or 9 miles even. The farthest being just under 10 miles. Would moving down the max distance help at all? We have all our 900 APs set to 16, and I was under the impression it was good to keep them all the same.
If anyone has any input it would be greatly appreciated. I would be happy to give any further information needed.
Thanks!
No equipment at all or no more antennas?
Is this an aesthetic concern?
I have no idea why. I am not involved in the politics, so I dont get much more info than that. I’m sure we could get away with putting more 5.7aps on the same pole that we have there now, but theres no way we could get away with the huge 900 sectors which would have to all have new mounts.
Looks like your settings are about as good as they will get. Since your QoS speeds are pretty low I think you could safely bump to 6 control slots but if nobody is complaining I’d leave it for now. You could install a MikroTik router with some advanced QoS rules to limit heavy users and squeeze a little more bandwidth out of it but 78 users on a 900AP is damn good.
For more capacity you could put two AP’s on the same antenna. In theory you could squeeze three AP’s onto one antenna but I think you will have too much IM interference.
Parts needed:
1ea 906 filter - $600
1ea 924 filter - $600
1ea 2-way combiner - $50
2ea 3’ LMR 400 jumpers exactly the same length - $30
Filters: http://www.lastmilegear.com/category.ph … t2=Filters
Combiner: http://www.l-com.com/productfamily.aspx?id=6013
You will lose about 4db from each AP so some of your more marginal customers will need antenna upgrades, but this will allow you to double the capacity from that water tank
Tried setting the Downlink % to 67? Looks to me like airtime is getting wasted because your QoS rules limit the upstream to half of the downstream, not one third like your setting suggests.
Also, very cool Jerry!
salad wrote: Tried setting the Downlink % to 67? Looks to me like airtime is getting wasted because your QoS rules limit the upstream to half of the downstream, not one third like your setting suggests.
Also, very cool Jerry!
Thats a good idea. I suppose we probably outta change that on all the APs then eh?
Thanks a lot Jerry. We had talked about that, but I had never heard of anyone doing it. I'm going to get the ball rolling on Monday. That would really help us out a lot.
Also, has anyone else noticed Google Chrome having a problem with 9.4.2 web gui? It's driving me crazy.
I would consider playing around with your QoS a little bit more - you might want to actually re-enable the burst capability - the idea behind that is get your users on and off the network faster. If most of them are grabbing web pages here and there, let them pull the site down quickly and keep the slots open for the more demanding users.
The other thing is make sure you’ve got as many of your subs running 2x as possible. You get twice the bandwidth in the same airtime so that again helps with congestion.
Google chrome has problems with alot of GUIs
Since its the same form factor as the connectorized 900, you could add a bare 2.4 sm to the antenna and change out the LOS customers, point it at the best area you can reach the most customers from, It would be the same difference as adding a new 900 connectorized.
we already have a 5.7 on the same tower, so all the LOS customers are covered.
Ive seen 2.4 canisters that contain 2-6 antennas inside, with a connector for each, do they make a 900 solution like that (say 3 isolated 120 deg sectors in the can) you couls swap out the antenna if such a beast exists
thatoneguysteve wrote: Ive seen 2.4 canisters that contain 2-6 antennas inside, with a connector for each, do they make a 900 solution like that (say 3 isolated 120 deg sectors in the can) you couls swap out the antenna if such a beast exists
any idea who makes them?
i hate to suggest it, but you could actually add another 900 mhz AP or two on that pole and use the small maxrad panel antenna for your antenna. Especially for your closer in customers. You might try an opposite polorization for the maxrads - and leave your omni for the customers you can’t move to the maxrads. If you can continue to use that pole (i don’t know how high it is), you probably only need about 4 feet for 2 APS with maxrad antennas.
don’t get me wrong, i’m not a fan of the maxrad. I’ve got 30 of them sitting in a tub we’ve removed ; but you did state a lot of your links are inside of two miles. I think that could help you.
jay wrote: i hate to suggest it, but you could actually add another 900 mhz AP or two on that pole and use the small maxrad panel antenna for your antenna. Especially for your closer in customers. You might try an opposite polorization for the maxrads - and leave your omni for the customers you can't move to the maxrads. If you can continue to use that pole (i don't know how high it is), you probably only need about 4 feet for 2 APS with maxrad antennas.
don't get me wrong, i'm not a fan of the maxrad. I've got 30 of them sitting in a tub we've removed ; but you did state a lot of your links are inside of two miles. I think that could help you.
I have actually been considering this as well. I think we could get 2 of them to cover almost all the customers inside the town itself, and that would take a huge load off the Omni.
We actually got the go ahead today to build the new tower that is 4 or 5 miles away from this one. It will also take quite a bit of load off the water tower.
Great suggestion. Thanks.