Hello, I am taking over the management and monitoring of a public WiFi installation. 35 PL-E500INTA-EU were installed in rural and semi-urban areas in West Africa, to distribute WiFi in areas very poorly served by telephone operators.
The architecture is as follows.
From the BTS towers of a telecom operator, an FH link with RADWIN equipment was set up, up to the first point in the center of the village on a 15-meter pole.
On this pole, 6 meters high, a first E500 was installed to establish a network mesh in the village and distribute WiFi.
In the village are distributed several E500 which recover the mesh and distribute WiFi. They are installed on 6-meter poles powered by All-in-one solar modules. The APs are separated into AP / AM and AP / PM for operations with staggered schedules, morning and afternoon for solar power reasons.
According to the documents I have recovered, the E500 have omnidirectional antennas with performance 213 m (700 Ft.) For WiFi clients and for the mesh, 3000 m (9840 Ft.) In 2.4GHz, 1500 m (4900 Ft.) .) in 5GHz.
Clearly on the image of the attached map, the AP05 and AP10 which are to the north within a radius of 300m do not recover the mesh.
The AP08 and AP02 in the East do not recover it either. For these APs, if the E500s really have an omnidirectional antenna for the mesh, I think the width of the pole on which they are installed stops the signal.
Please tell me what you think and what I’m missing in my reasoning.
would you show me the country code you have used during the configuration of the access point?
Maybe, you do not have enough transmitted tower to allow Access Point to communicate with each other with this mesh setup. I believe you may need to unlock the transmitted power of your E500 access points. Moreover, you should use the 5 GHz with clean frequency on the mesh communication.
Also, confirm if you have clear line of sight (Bonne visibilité) between the access point.
From the map, confirm the main access point that is configured as the master Access Point in the mesh setup.
Would you let me know on the access points that are connected within the mesh network whether they have a good user experience? Show the signal seen on the meshed access points. Refer to the image below:
Range is always measured with maximum Transmit power supported by device.
Since SKU is EU, EU countries have very less transmit power.
Please share more details on country configured.
Since it is an outdoor deployment, please configure devices to “Outdoor” placement. Many times Outdoor supported EIRP values are higher than Indoor for the same or different channel set.
Hello everyone, and thank you for your feedback. As I told you, I have just recovered the management of this network without any configuration information.
As the e500 are powered by solar modules, the e500 were ordered and delivered without a Poe injector. This does not facilitate access to the configuration. And anyway there is no power line in the installation areas.
Is it possible to access the configuration using Ethernet port 2 of the e500. If so, is it possible to set up an SSID dedicated to access to the configuration, for maintenance at the base of the pole?
Concerning the visibility between the base and the mesh clients, it is in most cases cut by vegetation, because we are in the bush. This is why the company that set up this network did not exceed 300m in radius around the base.
connect to the Wi-Fi on one of these access points. Then, using IP Advanced IP Scanner software to check if the access point are in the same range as the DHCP.
Advanced IP Scanner: https://www.advanced-ip-scanner.com/
Also, you can connect to the main router I believe where also you should have the master access point. That way if connected on the router and if access point are in the same range as the DHCP, you will be able to scan the network and view them.
Once, you view the access points, you can log into them and change parameters.
You mentioned that you do not clear line of sight. Can you confirm?
Once, you log into the access points, you can share with us the configurations.
if that is the case, you should have an ePMP solution that does point to multipoint from where you pick the connection with the Radwin link towards the poles that host the E500. The E500 can power up ePMP Subscriber modules with its auxiliary port and this can allow much more gain allow you to easily deliver connectivity to those E500 access points. Then, you can a stable Wi-Fi network.
But, from the map you shared, you appear to be on the ocean shore, Atlantic side of Togo, Aného. You should have better line of sight.
