Now that cnWave gear has been officially announced and we have had a chance to see specs and pricing, I’d like to hear what some other members think. Does it meet expectation, is it what you were hoping for?
Personally, I think it misses the mark. The touted deployment ranges fall short of my expectations and the price points are higher than I expected. I do not foresee too many use cases where this product makes sense for us.
I am a bit surprised to hear that… With the V3000 radio, I really think that this is about as far as 60 GHz technology can go.
The range is limited by the physics of the radio, especially oxygen absorption of the atmosphere. Yes, the high gain increases the cost of this radio, but there are many deployments where this extra range will come in handy.
Perhaps a different product (i.e. different spectrum) might be a better fit for your use case. What are you trying to do?
I think this will be a topic to revisit in November / December when more people have equipment in hand. I personally think it’s a great looking product on paper, and am looking forward to seeing how it performs in real world.
I’m really interested in how it will work in the snow, because that’s what I’m most afraid of.
approximately how far can this unit transmit and is it able to automatically adjust for environmental changes like rain, F4-5 winds with rain and lightening?
Thank you
I agree with Matt, cnWave is going to be a game changer on so many levels, I will post later this year and give a true honest opinion, but my guess is it will be amazing!
The small cpe is limited to 1gbps, while that is a lot, it isn’t any more than the existing 60ghz offerings from existing manufacturers. Also the stated max distance is equal to or less than current offerings at a price that is 3-5 times higher than existing offerings.
The long range cpe has a stated max distance that is less than existing offerings. Maybe they are understating it somewhat but the fact it doesn’t support the higher frequencies is definitely going to hinder distance. Also, I have concerns about the form factor. The fact it’s shaped like a snow shovel could be an issue come winter. It does support 802.11ay and higher throughputs however, but is it worth the premium they have listed it for? All things taken into account, I just don’t know.
The AP radio seems very sophisticated from a technical standpoint but the price point caught my attention. That’s going to be a hard pill to swallow. It will have its use cases but the way everything has played out, not as many as I had hoped.
Well before the cnwave was released I asked if we could expect PMP or ePMP type prices and they said ePMP. Which makes sense since these are based on 802.11 and the other vendor’s 60ghz 802.11 gear is priced accordingly, but obviously that is not the case with cnwave.
I’m waiting for the presentation of the equipment but have lot of questions and concerns:
multigigabit speeds : really ? mainstream FTTH speeds are from 100-300 mbps. No need for such multigigabit speeds at all.
narrow channels : no information: better have 8 x 1 gbps channels than 1 x 8 gbps channels !
customer density per carrier: 8? 16? a FTTH GPON can handle 128 customers.
frequency reuse by means of sync?
QoS in the RF layer in case due to weather (for example?)
real DISTANCE !!! ?? I have some mikrotik LHG 60 and beyond 400m are totally unreliable in bad weather.
And the most sensitive: COST . This system is to compete with FTTH, no with other 5 GHz and lower speeds equipment (in my opinion). FTTH deployment costs have fall A LOT in few years.Also it is 100% reliable in all conditions and has almost 0 operating costs (no need for access points, power, batteries, routing/switch, p2p rf links, rf planning, need to access roofs, etc…)
I am very curious about range as well I can’t seem to find anything about it.
We have Mikrotik 60Ghz links running at 800M off of a WAP60GX3 but the big limitation is you can only have 8 clients.
I agree with all the points you made especially the price point, and “snow shovel”. I’d like to add the not having a 5Ghz backup is certainly a limitation in the Northwest with snow and heavy rain. Love to be able to demo the solutions and compare to our existing 60Ghz deployments.
Chris2 and roanwifi are totaly correct !!!
When I compare it to FFTH, can you guarantee us that your device will last longer than 10 years? Because the return on FTTH is calculated for ten or more years. Unfortunately, I do not believe that any active hw is able to last such a time. I really like the whole point of cnWave and I would very much like to deploy it in my network. However, the price is huge. I think that this solution is ideal for cities or island cities where there is a high density of potential connections. For projects in our region where the population density is low, this technology seems almost unusable. Until the price drops to the level of ePMP, I am not able to massively deploy and offer your technology. At this point, it makes sense for me to use your solution more like FTTB, where the price of the client is spread over more users.