It appears Cambium has been getting some grief on the new(ish) 4500 and 4600 line so thought we would chime in with our experience. We are primarily a very rural small Cambium shop and we are VERY conservative on deployments, especially after our initial foray with the ePMP 3000 line. We basically shelved the 3000 for two years before getting back in. Being rural/small town our customer density is low and MU-MIMO offers us no real benefit. We found the 3000L was more stable and reliable than the 3000 4x4 and as of today we only have one 3000 4x4 still in service, choosing the 3000L for deployment over all.
Since our customer density is low and widely dispersed, our maximum count on an AP is rarely more than 25 customers. We still have a smattering of ePMP 1000 5Ghz deployed, the old stuff is solid and just will not die unless you strike it with lightening, LOL. We also have several PMP450i APs in service that have been solid. About 50 percent of our customer base is currently 5 Ghz, mostly in small towns.
The remainder of our customer base is NLOS where we have to rely on older gear, ePMP 1000 2.4, which has become unobtanium, PMP450 2.4, and 450i 900, both EOL and can’t provide the throughput we want/need but its the only way to reach customers Our customers are happy to get it as they have either junk DSL or satellites but the older gear limits us to 20-30 meg packages depending on the platform. We tried the Ubiquiti 2.4AC but it was basically junk. Our customer density make something like Tarana unrealistic for deployment and the ROI is ridiculous.
We will begin utilizing Cambium QOE as soon as our server arrives next week to help with our NLOS customers. Still hoping Cambium releases a 2.4 AX version later this year.
We have begun deploying some Tachyon 60 Ghz which is working well, but the tree coverage makes its utilization limited. We have hopes the 4500/4600 will compliment the 60 Ghz to fill in the near LOS customers. Now that there appears to be a level of stability with the platform, we decided it is time to begin testing.
Again, the MU-MIMO is no benefit to us though we understand it is very important to others in high density environments. We have two 4500L AP’s installed with a 3rd going up next week. We are testing with select high demand customers with a combination of 400CSM and 4525. Our load on the APs will be low, so the load issue others have reported is not a factor at this time. Hopefully the hardware reliability is better than what we experienced with the initial 3000 deployment or even the initial 400 CSM deployment,
So far the 4500 has been performing well. We have not experience the “collapses in high noise environment” issue that other noted, but we are only operating 20 Mhz channels during testing and we heavily utilize horns. We have found the 4500 foliage penetration to be quite a bit better than the 3000. We are testing with high demand customers that were served with 3000 and PMP450i . Our first customer was served with a F300 CSM through moderately heavy foliage at point 3 miles/500 meters and we could get them 40 to 50 meg at best with 64 QAM. We used the same antenna/mount switching to a F400 CSM radio and they now consistently get 120+ meg at 256 QAM.
The tower is not visible at all, so we were impressed. The link has remained quite solid and latency improved significantly. We have found if you are anywhere close to LOS, we get the full 1024 QAM fairly easily with 4525. Our 2nd test customer is getting 185x50+ with a 4525 at basically the same distance with light foliage. Links have been solid with no issues under 5.7, including the F400CSM PTP links.
Seems there has been quite a bit of comments on performance, but we are seeing a significant improvement in through put and latency/jitter over the 3000, but again, not under load. We are reservedly optimistic and see the potential of the platform Our test customer are very pleased and we plan to step up deployment once MIR is available with the 5.8 release. We are expecting things to only get better as the software matures. We plan on a primarily green field deployment of the 4500 with little or no backwards compatibility use of the 3000 equipment, though I know that is a critical path for many WISPs. We will test the functionality
We have just begun testing with a pair of 4600CSM for use as PTP to possibly replace some Ubiquiti AirFiber 5Ghz and 24 Ghz backhaul links and free us some needed 5 Ghz space. So far there is zero 6 Ghz around us and we have full EIRP across the board, though that may change in the future. We were somewhat on the fence on the AFC as we avoided CBRS completely, but the 6 Ghz AFC seems fairly straight forward and nobody has their hand in out pocket. We had to set up outside test poles due to needing internet access to get the setup working, which was a pain but workable. For some reason we were not able to get the test link to come up in ePTP mode and need to figure out why. TDD and TDD PTP work fine. In a 75/25 TDD PTP we are getting consistently 850+ down and 250+ up with consistent aggregates of over 1 Mbps in an 80 Mhz channel. We will attempt a 4.5 mile link next week and see if the performance holds at that distance. We have several 2 to 3 mile PTP links that will follow. We also plan to test some PTP links to feed 60 Ghz mini pops. We have a couple of areas we plan to deploy APs as well.
The 4525/4625 design seems strange but no grounds for complaints as yet. Not sure why the engineers keep trying to reinvent the wheel as the original F200 design was pretty solid GPS receiver improvement on the 4500/4600 line is a noteworthy accomplishment. Hopefully equipment reliability will prove to be solid. The new equipment will be a game changer for many of our customers and if the 2.4 AX comes to fruition, it will be that same for many more, those who need it the most. We have high hopes and though is appears Cambium probably doesn’t hear it much lately, you have our small appreciation!
