Currently all my PtMP and PtP links are Ubiquiti. PtP are all either AF11, Wave, AirmaxAC or AF5XHDs.
I have a PtP link that is running Rocket5AC Lites right now on a 30mhz channel size and I need more capacity. The link is too far for a stable 60ghz Wave link during most rain and the tower does not have enough clients IMHO for a licensed link.
I was thinking of replacing the rockets with AF5XHD as I am more familiar with them and the monitoring and interface on them is great (seamless frequency changes), but I am concerned about how they might operate with some slight fresnel issues. I have heard the F400C seem to do better in these types of situations.
Can someone with experience using them both give me there thoughts on if this link might be better served with F400C vs AF5XHD, or at least the pros and cons.
Here is the path for the existing Rocket and proposed AF5XHD link. The obstructions are trees.
We initially had really good impression of the F400 vs the AF5xHD, but the more we use them, the more we’ve switched back to the AF5xHDs. And mostly because as you say, of the better interface, with all the info in one place and one time… much much easier to configure and to optimize for us it seems. Also because of split channels, and of more flexibility in channel widths.
That being said, there are some places where we replaced AF5xHD and plopped F400c’s on the same antennas, and same masts, and even put them on the same channel, and the F400 links worked better (faster throughput and lower latency) so that’s a head-to-head win in those locations. But in other locations, when there are problems, the info & options that the AF5xHD interface gives just is that much better to be able to optimize and work around the issues, so we’ve gone back to AF5xHD as the preferred PtP link in most locations at this point. We’ll re-evaluate that this summer as the AX firmware matures and if we can get any 4500 & 4525 gear to evaluate again.
OH - and there is seamless channel switching as of 4.7.1 and forward… we’ve had some hiccups, but mostly that’s been great, and that’s coming along nicely, and that’ll be in all AC and AX gear going forward they say. That’s just so needed, and that’s a big feature for Cambium to catch up on.
Also, I should add that the rest of our PtMP network is still all ePMP at this point - and the seamless channel change on customer facing AP’s is SO nice to have that feature arriving.
AF5XHD radio signal has OFDM with one carrier, Foce 400 has OFDM 256 FFT in 20MHz (802.11ax).
It means, that Force 400 802.11ax works beter in nearlLOS (NLOS) when radio signal has reflections from terrain and espesially water surface.
In LOS with low interference conditions AF5XHD works not bad, but not bettter ( throughput, latency, BER) that Force 400.
How poor LTU chip works ( that AF5XHD also has) in nearLOS with high interfrence ( ability to works at high modulation 1024QAM with high throughput) is clearly visible in Rocket LTU point to multipont .
AF5XHD inspite of UBNT declaration about very high pps ( packet per second) perfomance really has not enough pps for real traffic. It means. that in test by UDP packet AF5XHD may pass in 100 MHz channel almost 1 Gbps, but really it cannot pass more then 600+ Mbps even in 100 MHz channel of live real internet TCP traffic from hundreds users (sessions) with average packet size about 800 ± bytes.
