No - no GPS Antennas on these – BUT remember that these are an SM unit at heart, like the Force200 or Force300. So, as an SM, they would be GPS synced in as much as they will inherit their timing from an AP, just like the F200 and F300 series of SM’s does.
What’s the price point for the SM?
The bare radio street price for the FCC/USA market is $396.68. You can find additional pricing and dish options on Winncom’s website.
And why is it called Force 400 if it can 1 Gbps of traffic why isn’t my name called Force 1000?
Or it can miss a maximum of 400 Mbps
As far as I have seen so far, each Force 180,190,200 or 300 model has a maximum failure as much as a numerical designation!
What is different now?
Here’s a screen capture while I was testing. This is a 15KM link, and this was in 40Mhz mode. I replaced at Force300csm link with this link, kept the same settings and used same antennas… basically swapped F300 for F400.
I then did a bidirectional Mtik tests (so NOT using the Force400’s built in throughput test, but tested between two MikroTik units on either side of the F400’s) I was rate-limiting on the MikroTik router test, to try to simulate a loading link, where we often see 80-90% of the data going down to the clients, and only 10-20% being uploaded.
This particular screen capture, I had the settings at 370m download, and 30m upload - and as you can see, the Force400’s carried that 405 Mbit of traffic.
And why wouldnt you want to do a gps sync version? THAT is the main reason I prefer your products. Synced ptp has allowed us to do what we do and is very important. With out sync AP you have just created another client side SM.
Lack of GPS sync is a major mistake unless you are planning on creating an AP/Tower version imminently? e.g. would the PTP work with a 4000L?
Basically, this new product is useless to us without GPS sync as we can’t put it on our towers with the existing ePMP 3000 / 3000L radios.
It doesn’t feel like this product is targeted at WISPs at all. Mom & Pop wanting to do a PTP from their house to the boat shed, sure.
I agree, need a synced version.
Maybe on the L version include the external sync source? The 3000L was nice but it lacked the sync over power which was a major draw back.
More details please
- Which Mikrotik units is used for UDP test ? Please try real TCP tesp with iperf3
- What is the increase in performance compared to Force300 in same settings ?
Thanks
In my opinion - I think we should all look back at what happened when the first AC units came out. Cambium released the Force 300’s (which were SMs) but the first versions of the firmware were PTP versions, since the 3000 AP’s weren’t out at that point in time. The PTP version of the firmware is much simpler and quicker to get to market, compared to a MultiPoint AP version, and compared to something with forward/backwards compatibility, etc, etc,etc.
So (IMHO) I think we will see the products you people are talking about, but I think that first AX model out of the blocks, we are going to see a Force425 (which is at heart an SM) and we will see it with PTP software version out of the blocks, the same as what we saw with the first Force300-25’s when they were first released.
If you think about how complex the ePMP 4000 AP is going to be – what is it? 8x8 MU-MIMO download, 4x4 MU-MIMO upload, and it’ll want to be compatible with Force400 and Force300 and older SM’s… so that’ll probably be a very complex scheduler, and I would guess we wouldn’t see that until the end of the year maybe? I don’t know - just a guess.
AND, I would expect that we will maybe see an AX Version of the ePTP550 too. Again, maybe so, maybe not. BUT, we can’t see all those products, all fully finished, all released on the same day.
So (IMHO) Cambium has two choices. Either hold everything back and wait until the full 4000 series product line is completely finished in a year or whenever - or they can release the first models of the new AX gear with PTP firmware now.
- That was tested with Routerboard 4011’s
- That was almost twice as fast as the Force300’s I removed.
I have a lot of screen capturers. I spent a couple days testing the Force300 and recording things, and then another couple days testing the Force400 after I swapped them. I also have an AirFiber backhaul between the same towers, so I spent a couple days testing those back to back as well.
So, I’ll get around to uploading all the images and test results as soon as I can – but not today.
At least make a GPS model that we can put on our towers so that this product is useful in 2021, not 2022 and beyond when ePMP 4000 / 4000L eventually turns up.
I understand your points, but it is plainly said that there isnt a synced version on the horizon yet. So if enough of us squeal for one then it will happen else they will put R&D time elsewhere.
For a ptp link in this price/performance range, the AP side needs some fundamental features not just an SM that can act as an AP. GPS sync is a major feature that makes the epmp3000L even viable, so to say that one isnt planned IS a major issue as I can not put a $1000+ epmp4000 in an area that can not economically support it. This is the same reason that we didnt go epmp2000 and once the 3000L came out at half the price then we got one and a few force 300 SMs to try and test.
We are waiting to see but it is nice to know that yes one is in the works but not ready yet or to be told that it will not be happening. This is also the time to point out what they should be looking at for hardware features on possible variants. Eg internal gps=ok but not able to have a common sync source is with the onboard as a backup (epmp1000L style) was a poor decision.
The Force 400 is an attempt to fix the infamous result over the ubiquiti Airfiber
According to the test and reviews, Airfiber is a better device that has GPS sync.
It’s been around for a few years.
Of course with the Ubiquiti device the GPS works constantly while with the cambium you are never sure.
That is my opinion and I do not want to impose it on anyone.
Well, I have an AF5xHD and a Force400c link side by side, so I’ve compared them head to head. There are pros and cons to each of them. The Force300 wasn’t much of a threat to the AF5xHD, but the Force400 is MUCH faster.
Since Cambium discovered that the GPS problem wasn’t actually a GPS firmware problem (actually a bus/driver problem or something like that?). Since they found and fixed that, we haven’t had any ePMP GPS issues either. We are running 4.6 firmware and no GPS issues at all.
We have results of working Force 425 at 9 km link from fiber POP to village with 600+ residential users ( PON and Cambium ePMP access ) with real live commercial traffic.
Configuration
Throughput max Download 735Mbps +Upload 100 Mbps= 835 Mbps UL+DL.
Latency at full traffic load
10.202.18.104 ping statistics — 30 packets transmitted, 30 received, 0% packet loss, time 29046ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 2.633/4.950/10.429/1.751 ms
This is the same 9 km link at Force 425 at 40 MHz channel, Througput 450Mbps UL+DL live traffic
At 20 MHz channel
230 Mbps UL+DL live traffic
I am interested in a test on a 40 MHz channel and TCP traffic
The UDP says nothing
A post was split to a new topic: Are ePMP GPS issues resolved?
Awesome Vyacheslav. Those are good, real-world results. That’s similar to what we are seeing. Over 400 Mbit in 40Mhz widths, and over 800 Mbit in 80Mhz widths - with real-world customer data.
Wow
How is 230Mbit possible with 20Mhz QAM1024 if Force 300 at QAM256 is not able to push 150Mbit ???