ePMP1000 Stations Wont Stay Connected - 7 mile link

I'm a NUUB to ePMP gear, hoping to reap the benefits of GPS sync. We've installed several hundred UBNT radios, so familiar with those.  We purchased an old WISP with 325 customers running on old Canopy gear, so as due diligence I decided to look at the ePMP gear to replace and upgrade the network.   We have several hundred other customers running on a mixture of UBNT and Mikrotik.  

We installed the ePMP1000 on a 90 degree sector, and placed it up on the tower near to a Rocket M5 with equivilent sector.   The subscribers are about 7-18 miles out, so we acquired 2 of the ePMPs with the 25db dishes on them, and a ePMP integrated and a few reflectors to test all scenarios. 

We just can not get the ePMPs to stay connected to the AP.  Even with a narrow channel of 5Mhz, and -65 SNR, they connect, then disconnect, then go into this Scanning phase again.  Even when connected, engaging eAlign causes  an instant disconnect and Scanning again.  Checked WPA keys, etc, and all is fine.  Put them close together, and the connect.  Distance, wont stay connected.  When it connects it does so only for a few seconds, then abck to the scanning.

We're stumped.  The NanoBeam m5-400 used as comparison to the exact same tower shows about 3-5dB of additional SNR, and stays rock solid.

We notice that when connected, the uplink MCS rate is never above 0-1, even with downlink running at MCS15.

Is anyone using this gear with 7-10 mile SM links?   Any ideas on why the the stations just won't stay connected?  So far, we're not that impressed, because the 10 year old canopy gear is running better.

Thanks for ideas...

the two reasons for ePMP SM to disconnect from AP is
1. Mismatch Pre shared key.

2. Certificate is not authenticated.

Please check the Certificate as you have said there is no problem with Pre shared Key

Regards
Gokul

Couple things I would check...

On the AP side - configuration / radio

There is a max range, I think the default is 3, so if you are for sure 7 miles make sure its atleast that or I'd go up to 8 miles.

On the CPE side - configuration / radio

There is a network entry RSSI threshold, I think the default is around 80 so you may need to bump that to atleast get connected the first time.

What frequency are you using? 

I'd try in the 5700+ bands to get to get the max power and to at least get a connection then you can tweak it from there.

Thanks.  WPA keys are identical, but what do you mean Certificate?  One thing we noticed is that on the GUI, we could not disable EAP-TTLS as an option on one of the test SMs.  IT just goves a "stop" icon over the field.  On the other identical SM, we were able to disable this.

Strange.

Thanks.  We are running 5835 on the AP, 5 Mhz channel width.  The SMs show -71 at 7 miles, just won't connect.    We also have minimum set to -86 and 15 miles as range.

We are going to drive up closer to to the tower and try again.

What firmware are you running?

Do you have anything set on the SM for "Network Entry SNR Threshold"?  (you already said you have RSSI Threshold set to -86)

Anything useful under Monitor->SystemLog?

Have you confirmed that 5830-5840 is reasonably clear of interference at both ends?

j

Hello,

Do you see a reason cause in the SM Monitor->Wireless page, under Network Entry State?

This article may help you troubleshooting this issue:

http://community.cambiumnetworks.com/t5/ePMP-Troubleshooting/How-to-Troubleshoot-STA-Registration/m-p/38212#U38212

Luis