We still have a heap load of old Canopy 900mhz "FSK" gear, well as the 5.2 SM line, around 4,000 converted to UBNT, and the 900mhz gear we've been swapping to Baicells for NLOS.
I'm interested in coming "back" to the now/Cambium products, I heard the 450i is backwards compatible with the old 900 FSK gear, is that true? Does it provide any throughput enhancements or does it just allow them to attach and work as normal so that you can go swap/uprade all the SM's?
I was directed to the PMP 450 - PMP 100 co-location tool but that isn't informative at all, and doesn't really tell me what I need so I'm asking here!
I'd also be interested if the same applies to the 5200 SM's.
I'm interested in coming "back" to the now/Cambium products, I heard the 450i is backwards compatible with the old 900 FSK gear, is that true? Does it provide any throughput enhancements or does it just allow them to attach and work as normal so that you can go swap/uprade all the SM's?
I was directed to the PMP 450 - PMP 100 co-location tool but that isn't informative at all, and doesn't really tell me what I need so I'm asking here!
I'd also be interested if the same applies to the 5200 SM's.
Thanks
First off, sorry to break it to you, but none of the FSK radios (900, 2.4, 5.x, etc) are able to attach to any PMP450 radios. There were some plans very early on to allow 5GHz FSK SM's to attach to a 450 AP, but those plans were scrapped at the last minute due to performance issues and engineering resource limitiations. That being said, you can do GPS sync between FSK and PMP450 radios (and ePMP!). You'll need to use that collocation tool that you mentioned in order to get the correct settings for sync.
As far as the performance differences between FSK 900 and PMP450i 900... there are some major performance gains to be had with the 450i radios assuming that you have quiet enough spectrum. Even using the smallest channel width at 5MHz, will get you around 25mbps aggregate under ideal circumstances, vs. the FSK's few mbps. I guess the biggest difference would be the SnR needed for an SM to attach... with FSK it was like a 3dB minimum... with 450 it needs to be around 8-10dB. That being said, MIMO gives you around 3dB better gain, and then the dual-slant antennas can also help with interference and squeeze a bit more gain out.
We've had best luck using KP performance antennas at the AP and the client. We really like using the panel antenna at the AP, and the yagi's at the SM.