Is there any notable performance benefit to using a Force 300-16 SM radio vs a Force 180 radio when connecting to an AP that is an ePMP 1000 or ePMP 2000 unit?
Thank you, Chris
The short answer is no. The only benefit you’d have would be being in a better position in the future when you swapped out your e1k/e2k AP for an e3k AP.
The new spectrum analyzer is really nice... it's almost worth it just for that.
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@Mathew Howard wrote:The new spectrum analyzer is really nice... it's almost worth it just for that.
From what I've heard there are some changes coming to the e1k/e2k spectrum analyzer to make it much easier to use, and similar in appearence to e3k. You won't be able to provide service and do background SA at the same time however like e3k.
In the mean time, just use ACS on e1k/e2k... it's almost as good as an SA and easier and quicker to use.
I'm not sure I will have any need to swap these APs for e3k. Which is why I asked the question if there was any benefit. At a $45 price increase for the integrated SM, I have very little motivation to use Force 300 gear. We're still running 20 MHz channels and are not even at 50% frame time.
If the pricing was closer to the standard ePMP pricing (As I think it should be based on how other manufacturers have been improving hardware and decreasing prices), then I would have no question about only ordering e3k series gear.
Oh, and a $93 price increase for the non-sync connectorized radio... that seems ridiculous.
When I switched from lower priced [but functioning] Ubiquiti hardware, I could accept the more expensive ePMP gear because it was a modest increase. Now, however, I'm literally browsing the Ubiquiti price sheets wondering how they can keep their prices so much lower than Cambium... and whether it would be worth the effort to change over for our new deployments.
@uberdome wrote:Oh, and a $93 price increase for the non-sync connectorized radio... that seems ridiculous.
When I switched from lower priced [but functioning] Ubiquiti harware, I could accept the more expensive ePMP gear because it was a modest increase. Now, however, I'm literally browsing the Ubiquiti price sheets wondering how they can keep their prices so much lower than Cambium... and whether it would be worth the effort to change over for our new deployments.
It depends on what you value... Cambium has spend agreements if you buy a lot of gear and you can negotiate a lower price. Ubiquiti is fixed price. Cambium has RSM and RTM's to help you with technical issues, provide advice, help with projects, take you out to a nice dinner :-) etc. Ubiquiti has... nothing like this. Cambium has a 3 year warranty. Ubiquiti, one year. Cambium has multiple support options both free and paid for. Ubiquiti has... a user driven forum. Cambium has comprehensive free cloud and on-site based management. Ubiquiti has a civil war going on between AC2 and UNMS which while both are free, have their own issues and IMHO aren't nearly as feature rich as cnMaestro (I use all 3 platforms). Cambium has a clear road map with plans for AX in the future and an upgrade path... Ubiquiti has... no road map and is completely silent regarding their future plans or upgrade path.
All these things to me are worth the cost of spending a little more per radio over Ubiquiti. It's the difference between ROI in 1 month (ubnt) vs. 2 months (cambium).... so again, to me, this is a very small price to pay for everything mentioned above.
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@Eric Ozrelic wrote:
@uberdome wrote:Oh, and a $93 price increase for the non-sync connectorized radio... that seems ridiculous.
When I switched from lower priced [but functioning] Ubiquiti hardware, I could accept the more expensive ePMP gear because it was a modest increase. Now, however, I'm literally browsing the Ubiquiti price sheets wondering how they can keep their prices so much lower than Cambium... and whether it would be worth the effort to change over for our new deployments.It depends on what you value... Cambium has spend agreements if you buy a lot of gear and you can negotiate a lower price. Ubiquiti is fixed price. Cambium has RSM and RTM's to help you with technical issues, provide advice, help with projects, take you out to a nice dinner :-) etc. Ubiquiti has... nothing like this. Cambium has a 3 year warranty. Ubiquiti, one year. Cambium has multiple support options both free and paid for. Ubiquiti has... a user driven forum. Cambium has comprehensive free cloud and on-site based management. Ubiquiti has a civil war going on between AC2 and UNMS which while both are free, have their own issues and IMHO aren't nearly as feature rich as cnMaestro (I use all 3 platforms). Cambium has a clear road map with plans for AX in the future and an upgrade path... Ubiquiti has... no road map and is completely silent regarding their future plans or upgrade path.
All these things to me are worth the cost of spending a little more per radio over Ubiquiti. It's the difference between ROI in 1 month (ubnt) vs. 2 months (cambium).... so again, to me, this is a very small price to pay for everything mentioned above.
I do value those things, but it seems Cambium values them more. They are being assigned a value that is too high in my estimation.
A 3 year warranty has virtually no value. It is really nice to say, but with failure rates as low as they are for ePMP or Ubiquiti. A 3 year warranty reduces my expenses approximately 1-1.5% for out of warranty units over 1 year... so I value a 3 year warranty <$2 per SM unit.
A clear road map has little value if it is constantly multiple years behind the other vendors.
How much are you charging where you are achieving ROI in 1 or 2 months with anything? Regardless, for any company to switch from a current product to to a new product that delays ROI by 1 month is actually significant. It sounds small when talking about a single customer, but the big picture number is much larger.
Anyhow, I would like Cambium to do better on price. Cambium ePMP N hardware is already more expensive than the competition's AC hardware. I don't see why the ePMP AC hardware has to be 20-40% more expensive for SMs than N, nor do I see why an ePMP AC connectorized radio has to be 88% more expensive than its N counterpart.
I am a fan of Cambium, but my credit card is not.
@uberdome wrote:How much are you charging where you are achieving ROI in 1 or 2 months with anything?
We charge a $150 install fee + first month up front + $50 deposit. We retain ownership of the radio. We have one man install crews @ about $18hr. Installation is typically done in 2 hours. Sometimes it ends up being a cheap radio like a Force 180... sometimes a more expensive radio like a PMP450. We don't charge our customers different rates for different radios... it all kinda evens out over time due to equipment pickups and re-deployment of paid for radios.
If you don't have a need for AC radios, then don't use them... stick to lower cost e1k gear.
One last note... did you know that it took Ubiquiti around 3-4 years to come out with backwards compatibility mode and working GPS sync with their AC gear? And it wasn't until there was serious pressure from Cambium via Elevate for them to finally provide backward compatibility? And UBNT has shown a resistance to backwards compatibility and equipment longevity on every product line... over and over again. Think about that for a bit...
@Eric Ozrelic wrote:
If you don't have a need for AC radios, then don't use them... stick to lower costs e1k stuff.
I will. I will still feel like they are gouging on prices, knowing their customers are stuck with them. I try hard to keep my prices reasonable for my customers, even when I am the only option.
Instead of e1k all going up 10% as it did recently, the costs of components and manufacturing should be going down. All e1k pricing should be reducing over time, and all e3k SMs should be at a lower price point. This would be nice for me, nice for you, nice for getting more customers to switch to ePMP, etc.
@Eric Ozrelic wrote:One last note... did you know that it took Ubiquiti around 3-4 years to come out with backwards compatibility mode and working GPS sync with their AC gear? And it wasn't until there was serious pressure from Cambium via Elevate for them to finally provide backward compatibility? And UBNT has shown a resistance to backwards compatibility and equipment longevity on every product line... over and over again. Think about that for a bit...
To be fair... it took Cambium the same 3-4 years to come out with any AC gear at all... so maybe we call that a tie :-).
Eric has some awesome points...BUT...here is my experience with mixing 300 SM's with 1000/2000 AP's.
I personally would not switch a 180 out for a 300-16 if you will not be changing AP out to a 3000. We have been leaving up some 2000 AP's and switching 200's, 190's, and 180's with 300-16/25. We have done 3 so far due to lightning strikes. Just happened to be one of each.
Here is an example from some notes;
Force 200 connected to 2000 AP
RSSI - 65
Download MCS Upload MCS 12 (4) 93% (locked down)
MCS 14 (6) 31.3%
MCS 13 (5) 35.9%
MCS 12 (4) 26%
MCS 11 (3) 3 %
Replaced 200 with 300-25
RSSI -64
Download MCS Upload MCS
MCS 6 (14) 4.6% MCS 6 (14) 99.3% (locked down)
MCS 5 (13) 45.9%
MCS 4 (12) 27%
MCS 3 (11) 11.3%
Upload is better, but download is not quite as good.
SM is sticking out top of 80' pine tree. Swaying accounts for spread in MCS values, not interference.
This is a very rural, very clean installation. SM see's nothing but equipment on our tower. Interference is not the issue. We have 2 other 1000 series SM's replaced with 300 series SM's exhibiting the same download drop in MCS values for same RSSI level and no interference. We have not been too concerned as we will be replacing the 2000's with 3000's, and we know the 300 series does awesome with the 3000 AP. I just wanted to give our experiences to help you make an informed decision.
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It does indeed depend on what you value. I personally feel like spend agreements are the worst possible approach to pricing. It feels like extortion waiting to happen. Just price it to sell and move on. Justify your pricing with the performance of the gear. If Cambium figures this out, I bet they would sell much more gear. I can't actually stress this enough, If Cambium could work themselves past this, business could boom.
Nobody should care about a 3 year warranty in a market that has a technology churn rate of less than three years. The 3 year warranty is basically saying: "pay more for this now because we'll replace it for free when it fails and is otherwise value-less"
From a management platform perspective, CnMaestro is on-par with UNMS. Both are far behind AirControl2 in granularity and value. Unfortunately for UBNT, LTU PtMP is only managable in UNMS, not AC2.
Roadmaps are cool, but don't add value. Despite roadmaps, Cambium took a very long time to release what we are testing now.
Here is my reality today - I turned up another epmp 3k sector with mostly legacy clients and performance is better. It will only get better again when I swap out the legacy clients. I also have a number of UBNT LTU APs deployed. Performance is similar enough to ePMP 3k at this point that there are decisions to be made for a number of upcoming deployments.
Decisions involve cost to deploy, the management platform, raw performance, loaded performance, and cost to support.
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@Eric Ozrelic wrote:We charge a $150 install fee + first month up front + $50 deposit. We retain ownership of the radio. We have one man install crews @ about $18hr. Installation is typically done in 2 hours. Sometimes it ends up being a cheap radio like a Force 180... sometimes a more expensive radio like a PMP450. We don't charge our customers different rates for different radios... it all kinda evens out over time due to equipment pickups and re-deployment of paid for radios.
I see my confusion, I think we're talking about break even rather than return on investment.
@Eric Ozrelic wrote:One last note... did you know that it took Ubiquiti around 3-4 years to come out with backwards compatibility mode and working GPS sync with their AC gear? And it wasn't until there was serious pressure from Cambium via Elevate for them to finally provide backward compatibility? And UBNT has shown a resistance to backwards compatibility and equipment longevity on every product line... over and over again. Think about that for a bit...
To be fair, it took Cambium 3-4 years to come out with any AC gear at all... so I'll consider that a tie.
It is a bit off-topic, but it seems to be where the conversation headed. I've been working with ePMP since the GUI was black. It was performance competitive then, and has been a performance-competitive product for a long time. As multiple vendors get closer in performance capabilities, I would like to see pricing become more competitive as well.
For now, it seems like I should stick to ePMP1k/2k where the speed is not needed or the network life expectancy is short... but it doesn't seem right to deploy N gear. If pricing were closer, I wouldn't have even had to ask the original question.
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I don't even care about the spectrum analyzer part (although it is nice) as much as the ability to see what channel wifi networks are on... if eDetect could scan the whole band instead of just the channel the radio is using, I would be happy.
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@Eric Ozrelic wrote:
@uberdome wrote:Oh, and a $93 price increase for the non-sync connectorized radio... that seems ridiculous.
When I switched from lower priced [but functioning] Ubiquiti harware, I could accept the more expensive ePMP gear because it was a modest increase. Now, however, I'm literally browsing the Ubiquiti price sheets wondering how they can keep their prices so much lower than Cambium... and whether it would be worth the effort to change over for our new deployments.It depends on what you value... Cambium has spend agreements if you buy a lot of gear and you can negotiate a lower price. Ubiquiti is fixed price. Cambium has RSM and RTM's to help you with technical issues, provide advice, help with projects, take you out to a nice dinner :-) etc. Ubiquiti has... nothing like this. Cambium has a 3 year warranty. Ubiquiti, one year. Cambium has multiple support options both free and paid for. Ubiquiti has... a user driven forum. Cambium has comprehensive free cloud and on-site based management. Ubiquiti has a civil war going on between AC2 and UNMS which while both are free, have their own issues and IMHO aren't nearly as feature rich as cnMaestro (I use all 3 platforms). Cambium has a clear road map with plans for AX in the future and an upgrade path... Ubiquiti has... no road map and is completely silent regarding their future plans or upgrade path.
All these things to me are worth the cost of spending a little more per radio over Ubiquiti. It's the difference between ROI in 1 month (ubnt) vs. 2 months (cambium).... so again, to me, this is a very small price to pay for everything mentioned above.
Last I checked, Cambium didn't have spend agreements on ePMP... has that changed?
@uberdome wrote:
@Eric Ozrelic wrote:
@uberdome wrote:Oh, and a $93 price increase for the non-sync connectorized radio... that seems ridiculous.
When I switched from lower priced [but functioning] Ubiquiti hardware, I could accept the more expensive ePMP gear because it was a modest increase. Now, however, I'm literally browsing the Ubiquiti price sheets wondering how they can keep their prices so much lower than Cambium... and whether it would be worth the effort to change over for our new deployments.It depends on what you value... Cambium has spend agreements if you buy a lot of gear and you can negotiate a lower price. Ubiquiti is fixed price. Cambium has RSM and RTM's to help you with technical issues, provide advice, help with projects, take you out to a nice dinner :-) etc. Ubiquiti has... nothing like this. Cambium has a 3 year warranty. Ubiquiti, one year. Cambium has multiple support options both free and paid for. Ubiquiti has... a user driven forum. Cambium has comprehensive free cloud and on-site based management. Ubiquiti has a civil war going on between AC2 and UNMS which while both are free, have their own issues and IMHO aren't nearly as feature rich as cnMaestro (I use all 3 platforms). Cambium has a clear road map with plans for AX in the future and an upgrade path... Ubiquiti has... no road map and is completely silent regarding their future plans or upgrade path.
All these things to me are worth the cost of spending a little more per radio over Ubiquiti. It's the difference between ROI in 1 month (ubnt) vs. 2 months (cambium).... so again, to me, this is a very small price to pay for everything mentioned above.
I do value those things, but it seems Cambium values them more. They are being assigned a value that is too high in my estimation.
A 3 year warranty has virtually no value. It is really nice to say, but with failure rates as low as they are for ePMP or Ubiquiti. A 3 year warranty reduces my expenses approximately 1-1.5% for out of warranty units over 1 year... so I value a 3 year warranty <$2 per SM unit.
A clear road map has little value if it is constantly multiple years behind the other vendors.How much are you charging where you are achieving ROI in 1 or 2 months with anything? Regardless, for any company to switch from a current product to to a new product that delays ROI by 1 month is actually significant. It sounds small when talking about a single customer, but the big picture number is much larger.
Anyhow, I would like Cambium to do better on price. Cambium ePMP N hardware is already more expensive than the competition's AC hardware. I don't see why the ePMP AC hardware has to be 20-40% more expensive for SMs than N, nor do I see why an ePMP AC connectorized radio has to be 88% more expensive than its N counterpart.
I am a fan of Cambium, but my credit card is not.
I don't think it's fair to say that Cambium's roadmap is multiple years behind other vendors. The ePMP AC line is much more advanced than Ubiquiti's current AC offerings, and even though the original ePMP was N based, in most of the ways that matter to me, UBNT AC is just finally catching up.
On the Canopy side, I would argue that Cambium has consistently been ahead of all the other vendors.
@Mathew Howard wrote:I don't think it's fair to say that Cambium's roadmap is multiple years behind other vendors. The ePMP AC line is much more advanced than Ubiquiti's current AC offerings, and even though the original ePMP was N based, in most of the ways that matter to me, UBNT AC is just finally catching up.
On the Canopy side, I would argue that Cambium has consistently been ahead of all the other vendors.
Yes, Cambium definitely does a better job, but comes to the table later than others. Referencing just the common gear, for N series gear, Ubiquiti and MikroTik both had workable sloutions before ePMP came out. For AC series gear, Ubiquiti, MikroTik, Mimosa, IgniteNet, all had some sort of AC solution before ePMP AC came out. Now, with IgniteNet, MikroTik, and Ubiquiti having 60 GHz solutions, I don't need a road map or press release to know Cambium should have a 60 GHz solution in the next 6-18 months.
On the Canopy side, it doesn't seem there are any meaningful competetors.
@Mathew Howard wrote:if eDetect could scan the whole band instead of just the channel the radio is using, I would be happy.
^^^ THIS ^^^
This is my #1 suggestion for ePMP. It has been impossible to see what is interferring. And eDetect is a good idea in theory, but obviously never asked an actual installer or telephone support tech what was needed. If your radio is in 10Mhz at 2447 - eDetect needs to see an interferrer who is also on 10 Mhz wide channels at 2447 only... otherwise it'll say there are no interferrers. So a 10Mhz client at 2442 is NOT interferring, and a 20 Mhz wide cleint at 2452 is NOT interferring... according to eDetect.
So - even if it was necessary for eDetect to unlink from the AP, do a scan for 3 minutes, and then reconnect to display it's rereults... that'd be awesome. Right now - if a client calls in with a performance issue, and if we want to know if it's their router at their house, there is no way to tell that.
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@ninedd wrote:
@Mathew Howard wrote:if eDetect could scan the whole band instead of just the channel the radio is using, I would be happy.
^^^ THIS ^^^
This is my #1 suggestion for ePMP. It has been impossible to see what is interferring. And eDetect is a good idea in theory, but obviously never asked an actual installer or telephone support tech what was needed. If your radio is in 10Mhz at 2447 - eDetect needs to see an interferrer who is also on 10 Mhz wide channels at 2447 only... otherwise it'll say there are no interferrers. So a 10Mhz client at 2442 is NOT interferring, and a 20 Mhz wide cleint at 2452 is NOT interferring... according to eDetect.
So - even if it was necessary for eDetect to unlink from the AP, do a scan for 3 minutes, and then reconnect to display it's rereults... that'd be awesome. Right now - if a client calls in with a performance issue, and if we want to know if it's their router at their house, there is no way to tell that.
This is possibly the biggest issue I have with ePMP 1000/2000 gear. Without a truck roll to the subscriber's house there is no way to know what might be interfering. The ability to do a basic 802.11 site survey with this gear remotely would add huge value.
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@Jacob Turner wrote:
@ninedd wrote:
@Mathew Howard wrote:if eDetect could scan the whole band instead of just the channel the radio is using, I would be happy.
^^^ THIS ^^^
This is my #1 suggestion for ePMP. It has been impossible to see what is interferring. And eDetect is a good idea in theory, but obviously never asked an actual installer or telephone support tech what was needed. If your radio is in 10Mhz at 2447 - eDetect needs to see an interferrer who is also on 10 Mhz wide channels at 2447 only... otherwise it'll say there are no interferrers. So a 10Mhz client at 2442 is NOT interferring, and a 20 Mhz wide cleint at 2452 is NOT interferring... according to eDetect.
So - even if it was necessary for eDetect to unlink from the AP, do a scan for 3 minutes, and then reconnect to display it's rereults... that'd be awesome. Right now - if a client calls in with a performance issue, and if we want to know if it's their router at their house, there is no way to tell that.This is possibly the biggest issue I have with ePMP 1000/2000 gear. Without a truck roll to the subscriber's house there is no way to know what might be interfering. The ability to do a basic 802.11 site survey with this gear remotely would add huge value.
And this includes the Force300's really. I mean - I know the Force300's have the beautiful spectrum Analyzer built in (which is fantastic) but even them... all the ePMP SM's need to be able to do normal standard WiFi Site Survey and just report what Routers/Channels/Widths are seen by the SM.