Suggestions on backhaul

[rebelwireless]

I am pretty sure you can not use equipment that is not certified but I could be wrong?

You can use it. A user's responsibility is to follow the law. Certifications aren't actually part of compliance (just an aid, or notification of compliance), they are effectively indemnity waivers for products so that if a user was using it within described methodologies they wouldn't be liable.

here is an exerpt from the FCC guidelines for registration and approval:

The FCC rules are designed to control the marketing of digital devices and, to a lesser extent, their use. If someone purchases a non-compliant digital device, uses it, causes interference to authorized radio communications, and is the subject of an FCC interference investigation, the user will be told to stop operating the device until the interference problem is corrected. However, the person (or company) that sold this non-compliant digital device to the user has violated the FCC marketing rules in Part 2 as well as federal law and may be subject to an enforcement action by the Commission's Field Operations Bureau that could result in one or more of the following:
<removed table w/ penalties>
It is the act of selling or leasing, offering to sell or lease, or importing a digital device that has not gone through the appropriate FCC equipment authorization procedure that is a violation of the Commission's rules and federal law.

There is no issue running Mikrotik gear as a result *BUT* its the users responsibility to be compliant with the band's specific rules. There may be an issue purchasing it at some point, and if you run it outside the rules or trust their untested (by the FCC at least) DFS detection then you might be told to stop. The rules document only describes a $10,000/day fine for operating after notification to stop.

[iggy05]

Came to an agreement to wait on the 5X and hopefully it will be out around then. I was actually wondering about the AC rockets and if the lower band was available but appears not to be so yet.

[amishgenius]

I have a 6 mile AF24 link and it works very well. Rain can take it out occasionally, but OSPF routes around it. If you are really concerned about rain, you might consider using the AF24HD. The benefit of not using 5ghz for backhaul is huge

[iellison]

Money aside, a 2+0 configuration licensed band link (SAF, Apex9, etc) would get you close to fiber throughput without so much of the rain fade issues. At $6000 for a AF24HD link, you're up there in licensed band territory cost-wise (not a 2+0 config though). Less throughput on a single radio, but in my area, 6 miles is going to deal with some serious rain fade issues on 24Ghz.

[rebelwireless]

There is a lot more going for licenced gear than just the frequency. seriously better cpus, power supplies etc. so, 'Money aside' doesn't fit the thread ;)

[iellison]

For sure! I only brought up cost because for smaller WISP's, just the price tag alone is often enough to squash the licensed band suggestion :) For backing up fiber, I'd highly recommend it over less expensive 5Ghz links, or rain fade suceptible 24Ghz links at that distance (in my area anyway).

[NickOlsen]

Personally, In my environment I wouldn't touch 24Ghz at that distance.

I stress the beancounters to the max. But I personally like to build links that have very little down time. And here in Florida. An AF24 would have downtime on the rainy days even just over a mile. Even if it's just a backup. But that puts us back to the "Money Aside" argument :)

[rebelwireless]

Personally, In my environment I wouldn't touch 24Ghz at that distance.

I stress the beancounters to the max. But I personally like to build links that have very little down time. And here in Florida. An AF24 would have downtime on the rainy days even just over a mile. Even if it's just a backup. But that puts us back to the "Money Aside" argument :)

yes, it fades, but it is VERY predictable. You can look at your precipitation history and do remarkably reliable math on the fade. At 1 mile in Florida (Rain zone 'N') worst case you lose 20dB, that still puts you in ~250Mb FD. That's with a regular AF24, the AF24HD is still 1Gb at 1 mile in the rain (at 5x9's). 2 miles is a different story.

See, I'm in rain zone E, maybe F on wet years, so I can rock the AF24 at 250Mb FD out to ~4 miles. I'll see a modest Florida shower up here once a decade.

[NickOlsen]

yes, it fades, but it is VERY predictable. You can look at your precipitation history and do remarkably reliable math on the fade. At 1 mile in Florida (Rain zone 'N') worst case you lose 20dB, that still puts you in ~250Mb FD. That's with a regular AF24, the AF24HD is still 1Gb at 1 mile in the rain (at 5x9's). 2 miles is a different story.

See, I'm in rain zone E, maybe F on wet years, so I can rock the AF24 at 250Mb FD out to ~4 miles. I'll see a modest Florida shower up here once a decade.

See. We've got a few links that have faded beyond 20dB. We've got one that is just shy of a mile. And last year it dropped twice for about 5 minutes each. Maybe we get worse rain here then normal :)

But yes. Most of the time. The link was up, Even if it fell to minimum modulation. Normally during the bad storms I would watch it fade. And if it looked like it wasn't going to hold. I'd administratively shut the Ethernet interface. Because that makes OSPF fail over MARGINALLY more gracefully.

Maybe I'm picky. But with what we're doing on our network. Even the 2ms failover time is sometimes felt by our customers doing more realtime traffic. And I try to avoid the "Oh we had a storm, I thought you said your connection wouldn't have issues in the rain".

[iellison]

Maybe I'm picky. But with what we're doing on our network. Even the 2ms failover time is sometimes felt by our customers doing more realtime traffic. And I try to avoid the "Oh we had a storm, I thought you said your connection wouldn't have issues in the rain".

Precisely. I've been bugging UBNT-Chuck for a minimum modulation rate on the AF24 that will drop the ethernet connection once the modulation drops to a defined threshold. It's not worth having 250Mb on an airFiber link that is "up", with a backup connection that has 350Mb available. "Soon". :)