These radios are amazing !

After testing another 900Mhz solution earlier I was pretty apprehensive about the chances of getting wireless to work very well in our area. After reading for the last year and seeing all the issues involved with NLOS I just haven’t been very excited about the technology.

After getting this Canopy demo kit and using one of the SM’s as a backhaul (only about 700ft and LOS from the AP) I discovered the power supply for the second radio didn’t’ work. Called the supplier , they shipped me another one.

Got to say, I really wasn’t in a big hurry to get the power supply back. I have spent the last month climbing buildings and driving around with a WaveRider radio/antenna and the results were just depressing. Even from the roof of my house, only about a mile from the AP I could not get the WaveRider to associate with the AP. Doing it all over agian with the Canopy SM just wasn’t something I was looking forward to. It may be of interest to note that when I got the Canopy I simply disconnected the WaveRider AP from the Omni we got with it and connected the Canopy AP to the Omni… I just lacked the will to really screw with it beyond that.

I got the new power supply yesterday but it was cold out and I just didn’t feel like messing with it. Today I really didn’t feel like messing with either but after I got home from the office I set down on the couch and decided I would at least get the SM configured so I could go out with it tomorrow and freeze my ass off, and be disappointed. I hate climbing on roofs regardless of weather and doing it so a radio can tell me I climbed the roof for no reason is just icing on the cake. Freezing weather on top of it all is … bleh hope the stupid radio spews out blue smoke and I’ll wait till spring to mess with this wireless crap.

I’m setting on the couch in my living room , laptop on the coffee table in front of me with the radio and antenna (laying face down) on the end of the couch. I bring up the web interface and set the color code, the ip, click on Save and then Reboot.

sigh… now I’ll wait for the thing to come back up and check to make sure I have it all set up then tomorrow I’ll go freeze to death on a roof or two while it tells me it can’t do much better than the WaveRider SM did.

The icon flashed up the little balloon telling me the nic was connected. I changed the subnet on my NIC. I had changed the IP of the radio so I type in the new IP and up comes the Status page of the radio. I’m mildly disappointed it worked because I’m still hoping for pretty blue smoke coming out of the SM at this point. I click around to check my other settings.

Just as I decide it’s all correct and I’m about to close the browser I notice the word

Associated

Eh ? Associated ? Shouldn’t that say “Searching” or something like that ? … yeah it should say “Searching” or something… it doesn’t say “searching” though… why doesn’t’ it say “searching” ?

OH, MY , GOD ! This thing can see the AP laying here face down on my couch ?!?!?!

I get ahold of myself and think " yeah right… great, the power supply was bad and now the radio is crazy"

I quickly up another instance of Firefox just so I can see the “page not found” error because… well I just needed to confirm the radio was crazy and not me.

My company home page comes up !

OH, MY, GOD ! NO WAY ! * refresh * IT CAME UP AGAIN ! ok , calm down " www.google.com " ! ! ! THERES GOOGLE ! All right, I see what it is, I have a WiFi here at the house and laptop is connected to me Wi…err no I shut the WiFi NIC off… OMG OMG OMG this thing can see all the way back to my office and to the Internet !?! no ! No WAY !

Back to the window with the SM UI. AP Info ! Now GIVE ME AP INFO YOU CRAZY RADIO ! There it was. Jitter was like 9 , RSSI was around 1800, strength was in at -81 But the thing was WORKING ! Laying there ! Face down ! on my couch ! in my living room ! it was working were other radios couldn’t even get single from my Freaking roof !

I had to come here and shout about it a little. For the first time in months I am actually excited again about the possibility of providing Wireless Broadband !

Right on…

I am constantly amazed at the performance of the Canopy platform. I have had 900’s link up around the edge of a hill (no LOS) at 3 miles, and customers out as far as 16miles on the same AP. My 900 at my house looks through a big stand of trees at 6.5 miles and provides 2x1mbps.

They can be a tricky beast though. The magic is in the timing. All 900’s in a given area should be configured the same, and have GPS sync using a CMM or a SyncPipe.

Welcome to the “Canopy Rules!” club.

Jerry Richardson wrote:
Right on.....

I am constantly amazed at the performance of the Canopy platform. I have had 900's link up around the edge of a hill (no LOS) at 3 miles, and customers out as far as 16miles on the same AP. My 900 at my house looks through a big stand of trees at 6.5 miles and provides 2x1mbps.

They can be a tricky beast though. The magic is in the timing. All 900's in a given area should be configured the same, and have GPS sync using a CMM or a SyncPipe.

Welcome to the "Canopy Rules!" club.


Heh I was so excited I misquoted the radio and didn't realize it until I took it out today. It said " Registered " not " Associated " .

Ended up snowing today so I couldn't climb up on any roofs today. :(

I have to agree with you about being apprehensive. I was (and am) completely floored by the ease of use with the 900 gear.

Just for the record - I got a “usable” link running right now at 11.75 miles away from AP. I am getting a few re-registers now and then, but RSSI is over 1000 and jitter is acceptable. The catch - the users antenna and radio are INDOOR!

I love it!

JA

wish i could say it has worked that well for us, but with all the trees in our area we have to be pretty careful about who we install.

stuen93 wrote:
wish i could say it has worked that well for us, but with all the trees in our area we have to be pretty careful about who we install.


Are you using the 900Mhz stuen93 ?

yeah, we have one tower at about 160 ft with 360 degree coverage of the 900 mhz. The terrain is pretty hilly with a fair amount of trees.

We do have one problem with the install that needs to be fixed which is that our AP’s were not aligned properly. I think we have to much overlap and then probably a pretty dead area between AP’s.

I can pull 2.5 meg from my living room with a yagi on my coffee table and our ap 1 mile away.

stuen93 wrote:
yeah, we have one tower at about 160 ft with 360 degree coverage of the 900 mhz. The terrain is pretty hilly with a fair amount of trees.

We do have one problem with the install that needs to be fixed which is that our AP's were not aligned properly. I think we have to much overlap and then probably a pretty dead area between AP's.


We have the same issue here. Our solution to questionable installs is to hire a tree climber to mount the antenna in the tops of large pine trees. The #1 risk with this is squirrels eating the cables.

How’s your jitter up in the trees with those amorous squirrels chasing each other around your yagis?

I’m looking to install a lot of houses in “The Pinelands” and considered tree-top installs but have been leaning towards “more trouble than it’s worth”.

Best,

Dylan Oliver

I was just wondering why you guys that are using 900 aren’t getting the range and quality of links that we are. We have 15+ customers over 17 miles and their jitters aren’t above 4 and signal strength no below 1100. Our farthest customer, at almost 25 miles is perfect.

LUID: 015 : MAC: xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx State: IN SESSION (Encrypt Disabled)
Site Name : xxxxxx xxxxxxxx
Software Version : CANOPY 7.3.6 Oct 24 2005 12:06:56
Software Boot Version : CANOPYBOOT 3.0
FPGA Version : 020205 (DES) P9
Session Timeout: 12, AirDelay 894 (approximately 24.89 miles (131418 feet))
Session Count: 1, Reg Count 1, Re-Reg Count 0
RSSI (Avg/Last): 1536/1531 Jitter (Avg/Last): 2/3 Power Level (Avg/Last): -70/-71
DnRate(APCAP): 20000 DnLimit(APCAP): 500000 UpRate(APCAP): 20000 UpLimit(APCAP): 500000 (kbit)


Does being in rural Montana play into this, as we don’t have a lot of competition for the airways. Just wondering.

Also, on a side note; we get out best service on 5.7,5.2 & 2.4, but I don’t see very many posts on these freqs. Does anyone else use these more than 900?

Installs in trees are working great.

Yes 900 will go 25+ miles, however I bet those links are not though a thick wall of pine trees to an omni antenna which is barely 10ft above the tree line. Also the noise floor is around -80dbm. Due to the hilly terrain there isn’t any mountain to put the AP on that can actually see more than about 10 miles before it hits another hilltop just as tall.

900 is amazing at what it can accomplish but with a lower noise floor and an wall of pine is just too much sometimes. Plus 900 will register up and stay registered at 40mph or even higher. So a bit of sway in a pine tree doesnt matter much.

Sound like you all are having fun with the 900Mhz units. Sadly we have a junk load of 900Mhz interference. My floor is around -67 but still I have 2 AP up and going. They are good for about 1-2 miles in any direction but I wish we could push more data through them. :evil:

Our furthest customer is as follows (which is great for the dense trees and hills in Maine):

Session Status REGISTERED
Registered AP 0a-00-3e-90-33-49
RSSI 1830 (-61 dBm)
Jitter 2
Air Delay 810 (approximately 22.55 miles (119070 feet))

But with our new backhauls on 5.7 I see -59 to -60 on all 4 of the 5 and jitter of 0 on one of them!