MikroTik

ghmorris

On 1500 byte packets looks so good (but not on small)
10 km link
60 cm dish on each side
dual polarity emmitor
R52N cards
Nstreme

What is your performance with TCP 20-streams?

George

ghmorris

George, Thanks for the sharing. Could you please let me know which Mikrotik products have you used in such a low temp environment? Regards, CST Probably easier to list those we haven't used, but here goes the list we do use. RB230, RB532, RB112, RB133 and C, RB150, RB333, RB411, RB433, RB450, RB600...

ghmorris

We have recently deployed a 35km link using R5N's. They tested at 110Mbit aggregate in a bench test, and we left the config the same. When deployed we get a maximum of 20mbit, barely as good as a pure 5Ghz A link. Would dearly like to know some tweaks to improve this links performance, i believe ti...

ghmorris

The software has many bugs still. I am actually surprised the software is not labeled as beta as the problems with Nstream etc means we can't use it in production properly yet. I'm looking forward very much to more work from MT and it certainly looks promising with these results so far, but it shou...

ghmorris

We operate in colder than -40*. RBs work fine, even from a cold boot, although the radio cards may take a few minutes to appear. They often need to warm up a bit first. We don't take any special measures, just a normal outdoor case. We stopped messing around with heaters six years ago and are really...

ghmorris

Does seem very odd. I'm trying to understand why 4.0 would be released without the crown jewel (Nstream) working properly in N.

I can only guess there is addtional new hardware coming that needs 4.0 and MT didn't want to release on RC firmware...

George

ghmorris

Good info. Thanks!!

ghmorris

ESXi V4 provides IDE support. Problem solved...

ghmorris

its Monday, request was Thursday.

Need answers to two simple questions, should not be a major undertaking.

ghmorris

Normis, is ANI and Nstreme fixed with R52N in RC1?

Come on Normis, get with the program please. We need answers!!!!!

George

ghmorris

Normis, is ANI and Nstreme fixed with R52N in RC1?

ghmorris

We have poor results on the Windows version of bandwidth test. Better results on the newer Routerboard-based bandwidth tests. For really good results we are now using jperf for Windows-to-Windows bandwidth testing, with at least 10 TCP streams. http://code.google.com/p/xjperf/ Decent little how-to h...

ghmorris

That's what we're finding with 3.27. A huge difference. Makes them usable again.

George

ghmorris

112s and 133cs are both running great on 3.27. Feels just like the old days on 2.9, except we now have the new feature set. Not sure exactly where the improvement happened, but 3.16 and 3.17 were both slow with dynamic routing protocols enabled, and 3.27 is fine. We are standard on 3.27 currently. G...

ghmorris

Thanks for the help. Guess I can only hope for more granularity moving forward.

Have a great weekend.

George

ghmorris

Is there any way to allow certain admins to only access certain maps?

We have a number of resellers that need access to their own maps, and a number of large customers that would like access to their maps.

We can't let everyone see everything of course!

Any help would be appreciated.

George

ghmorris

With nstreme enabled i got disconnects almost all the time under load ... periodic calibration off, csma not disabled, framing best fit, tried a lot of combinations, the nstreme with N mode is not stable Jan Nsteme is fine for us. Try using two separate antennas with some vertical separation instea...

ghmorris

I finally have more time to get back to this issue, will be working on a tool to bring Canopy to it's knees. Motorola is a major thorn in my side and I WILL NOT PLAY NICE.
Sorry it took so long to post back.

Glad to see you back!!

ghmorris

Yes, please. That will be a very useful feature.

George

ghmorris

Yes, we get about 68Mbps using 333s and 433s in real life using turbo. Yes, you need clean spectrum to make it happen. Yes, you need to test through the RBs, not using them as end points because the sending machine requires lots of cycles. This is not a trivial process, it needs to be engineered. A ...

ghmorris

This is getting painful. Dale, have you run "/interface wireless info" to ensure you are using a legit turbo channel and that your cards fully support turbo mode? Run it on both ends of the link and please post the results. This is a big deal, and we have found problems with current releas...

ghmorris

I'm more concerned about the R5H resistance to thunderstorms. We already know that XR5s are pretty good for ESD resistance. Saving a few dollars on purchase, but costing a tower climb after a storm would be a bad bargain. I like the idea that the diversity chip is gone as a really good start!! Anyon...

ghmorris

About $1500 per end. Speed is switchable between 300Kb and 1.1Mb. 30dB output variable in 1dB steps, hopping pattern can be tightly controlled as well. True industrial quality. http://www.microhardcorp.com/IP921.htm Very, very nice gear for tough shots where it just *has* to work. We use a few where...

ghmorris

We use MicroHard FHSS 900 radios. Works stunningly well when nothing else will. Including true NLOS paths. And also doesnt bother any of the 'normal' 900 radios at all, they don't even see the MicroHards.

Bad news is that they are both slow and very expensive.

George

ghmorris

That only works for upgrade, not downgrade. So what are you saying we are not allowed to downgrade anymore????? I hope not Er, No, we're saying to use the "downgrade" button in the packages dialogue, or its command line equivalent. There is all kinds of discussion about how to do this, a ...

ghmorris

Most of our stuff is on 3.16 now, and its very stable, although I have seen one dual link that claims it has four. Works OK, just reads funny. Are you using RouterBoards, or x86 PCs? If RBs, have you upgraded the bios too? Edit: Also Tek has been having nightmares this morning, have you taken that i...

ghmorris

Sure, I'll bite. I get decent 3G coverage all the way from my home in deepest Haliburton county, home of bears and wolves, for the entire three hour drive into Toronto. Typically around 1.5Mb/600K, with around 115ms latency into Chicago. Works fine for most purposes. 3G (EVDO revA) is good enough th...

ghmorris

Agreed. I've stayed out of this fight so far, but our entire back end is now ESXi and we would really like to move our back-office MTs onto this platform too. I have a bunch of customers who are also on ESX/ESXi and would like to be able to route traffic rather than just use the Vmware virtual switc...

ghmorris

And if Jackson really has a lousy connection, (which is the clear implication if he can only connect at 6/6,) then you are liable to get so many retransmits that your entire access point perfomance will be horrible and all your customers will be furious. We don't install a customer that can't comfor...

ghmorris

Guys, I need some European WISP too... If anyone knows please help me! :oops: http://forums.star-os.com/showthread.php?t=8138 Post #4, middle of the second paragraph. I know it isn't a reference to a specific 'professional WISP', but acknowleges a major presence... My understanding is that MT has a...

ghmorris

In Canada, covering 19,000 sq kilometres in Central Ontario.
85%+ MikroTik powered for both wired and wireless connections.

http://www.candlelight.ca

George

ghmorris

This is a three year old? P4 3GHz that handles about 1000 concurrent NAT gateway connections. Its just idling along minding its own business at under 10% at 2:30pm on a busy Friday afternoon... We had a bit of a struggle finding a hardware config that was absolutely rock solid, but once we did its b...

ghmorris

Compare to 'roll your own' solutions: Very good wireless drivers, excellent support for the Atheros chipsets. A decent polling MAC in Nstreme which is getting steadily better for PtMP solutions, VERY good performance on PtP links Huge user community for peer support of router features Good free tech...

ghmorris

A couple more points. First is that MT is very decent in providing a relatively unfiltered environment to air these concerns. Some of their competitors would not. My latest Routerboard shipment literally just came off the UPS truck and is sitting by the door. The current 433 is an excellent workhors...

ghmorris

I would be very happy with a 432 LTS that progressed through multiple revisions like the 532 did. If MT decides that there is enough of a market, maybe we would see a 732 LTS or something later on and it would start off with a four year commit too. I suspect the bigger issue is going to be moving to...

ghmorris

I am not saying you trash your existing product line, exactly the opposite. Keep the new form factor for as long as you can, and provide notice of end of life well before you decide to do away with the mainstream products in the current form factor. I am asking you to make ONE Routerboard that has a...

ghmorris

Don't agree Normis. It IS an ongoing problem and its not too late to fix it. We have at least 250 RB532 plus several hundred more 100 series boards in the air that gradually fail. Its going to take years to need to replace all of them. And every time we do need to replace one, we need to replace the...

ghmorris

We finally figured it out with help from DSLReports.

If you want to connect using MLPPP protocol on a single DSL line, set your MRRU to 1500. That's all it takes...

This is important because Bell is using DPI to throttle DSL connections in Canada, and MLPPPoE defeats the DPI inspection.

George

ghmorris

Because of wasting one license only for dude ? We have dude server and client for M$ Windows, is that hard for MT to implement a linux standalone server version ? :-) With the greatest respect, paying MT $40 or so to run the Dude on *nix is not high on the list of things which trouble my sleep. Its...

ghmorris

Why not run the x86 MT version with Dude as a service in VMware Server?

ghmorris

At this point you are obviously very pleased that MT labelled this release as RC1, and you have undoubtedly reported this 'bug' to support as well as publishing on the forum??? Using the RC format for prospective releases is only going to work if everone plays the game, right? Personally, I really, ...

ghmorris

I have run multiple copies of it on Xen with no performance issues.

It works perfectly on VMware Server as well. As usual, add adequate hardware if you want to load it down.

George

ghmorris

You might be wrong. Funnily enough we were talking to Bell about these adapters only yesterday. I think they are either USB or PCMCIA adapters. Like you, I am looking for the RB21 or equivalent as we want to go from ExpressCard to mini-PCI. Not sure what happened to the RB21, seems to have dropped o...

ghmorris

This is our standard NetNearU managed Hotspot service running on top of a MT router. They do everything for us including billing and support. They fully support MikroTik.

Good people...

George

ghmorris

Two things: 1. Moving to a Release Candidate format for this release is fantastic. Exactly the right way to proceed and I hope it becomes standard practice. 2. The fixes to MLPPoE are stunning, and I can't believe how responsive MT was to this issue. We are running one 3 line bond and one 5 line bon...

ghmorris

What makes you think someone isn't getting fired?

MT is a lot more open and responsive to customer criticism these days, this forum reflects that very clearly.

ghmorris

Couple of points: "doveryai, no proveryai" (Russian: Доверяй, но проверяй) - Trust, but Verify" Anyone who upgrades their production systems to a new release without checking the forum first is asking for trouble. Anyone who upgrades their production systems to a 2-day-old release is ...

ghmorris

Just out of curiosity, you're seeing 60mb/s with an FTP Transfer I'm presuming that it was 1 direction. What throughput do you see if you do a simultaneous upload and download? Does it give you a good 30mb/s each way? Over 30 in both directions at once. Usually a both-directions test yields a littl...

ghmorris

ghmorris

Open source 'n' drivers available now apparently. http://practical-tech.com/network/atheros-becomes-linux-friendlier/ The report points out that new devices (running 11n) now have an Atheros driver (ath9k) available for Linux OS. Seems the company is quite serious about Linux, as it has hired two se...

ghmorris

No argument from me. I like data centre features too. All the work that has been done on VRRP, MPLS/VPLS, plus stability improvements to OSPF are all high on my list, we need all of it as we get bigger. We are also working on a pilot project to bond 5 ADSL channel groups. This will likely roll out t...

ghmorris

Which makes you a wise man. There are quite a number of features I would like to see in RouterOS that would make our lives easier, but I would never try to dilute the basic brand. Note that most of those who want a radical departure from the traditional MT values have not been on the forum for long....

ghmorris

There are all kinds of distros that let users plug in their own applications. The last thing that those of us that are actually trying to run a larger business on MT need are a bunch of unstable user applications. Normis is exactly right here. Been there, done that, got the tee-shirt. Never again!!!...

ghmorris

MT is certainly very affordable, not so sure about the 'very robust'. We are spending at least $20k dollars per month fixing broken stuff on towers, and another $10k fixing broken stuff at customer sites. That does NOT include the cost of the hardware , that is ONLY the labour component. I am more t...

ghmorris

Same problems here. Typically a damaged system will work for a while on 10Mbit, but its a clear warning the board is on the way out. I wish MT would spend the extra money (and charge me for it) to put industrial grade Ethernet ports on all RBs, or at least build some models in the range with a 'hard...

ghmorris

Agreed. It would be nice if MT re-focused on their core competencies rather than working on sideshows like virtualization. There are so many manufacturers building 'N' systems now that holding off for standards finalization seems a bit weak.

George

ghmorris

I do know their algorithms work stunningly well (we have a 70Mbit system), but I have no idea how to achieve the same effect. It would be great if one of the brighter members could figure out how to get close using MT!

George

ghmorris

+1

for VoIP phone system endpoint firmware and several other similar uses!!

ghmorris

I don't think its that simple. We have a lot of towers on granite outcrops, as that is where the high places tends to be. We have had a LOT of trouble with omnis with no DC grounding, but have got past that pretty well as we junked the un-grounded antennas. Antenna problems aside, grounding is an in...

ghmorris

On another note, now that the forum admins have decided to be a little more friendly about non Mikrotik discissions, I will tell you that while we use Mikrotik for the vast majority of the wireless network, either they don't support or we haven't figured out how to use their products to agrigate th...

ghmorris

Cool!! Sounds a lot like the efficiencies you are purported to be able to achieve with WiMAX. Is this available in 900? 900 is my biggest beef. Only 3 channels from the current Canopy gear to the best of my knowledge, coupled with very low throughput per channel. But the low efficiency is very good ...

ghmorris

You are so funny. I don't have to flame you, and don't. I just have to quote you. And do. The reality is that MikroTik reflects the future, with high efficiency per Hertz and almost endless flexibility. Canopy reflects the lowest efficiency per Hertz and wins the race to the bottom while killing any...

ghmorris

I don't believe this to be the correct venue to have this discussion. Perhaps the Motowi4 Community is a more comfortable place for you to run down MikroTik? Author: jwcn Posted: Sat Jun 28, 2008 12:40 pm Post subject: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------...

ghmorris

Back to the subject.
How long can you run a card in alignment mode with max power?

Probably depends on the card, but with quality hardware you can do it for as long as you need to for a successful alignment.

George

ghmorris

I'd like to continue to explore the idea of framer limit. Anyone done this? Could we put in a small framer limit, maybe 600k, and make it work rather than have to change the MTU size? Unfortunately, sometimes establishing a negotiating position with interferers requires something more than tact and ...

ghmorris

We get between 60 and 65 Mbits in Nstreme Turbo. I expect the 'n' MAC improvments are going to improve on that somewhat, so just over 70 Mbits sounds about right.

George

ghmorris

Interesting that jwcn is cruising both sides of the street. Not a surprise really, considering his posting history, but mildly interesting none the less.

http://motorola.motowi4solutions.com/su ... php?t=5389

George

ghmorris

Thanks Eric. Phone calls from pissed off competitors would be music to my ears. I'm going to try some of your ideas...

George

ghmorris

Good ideas. Where would you set the packet size smaller?

George

ghmorris

You're welcome. I'm deeply impressed by the new generation of RouterBOARDs. I have not been shy to criticize MT in the past, but the new generation of gear is simply excellent. We have used the opportunity given to us by the early 411s having level 4 licenses. The results have been excellent. George

ghmorris

No difference in any of the higher end boards driving a single radio card in a Point to Point configuration. Every one of them is capable of more than maxing out the radio... This is a very good thing. We now use 433 with up-the-tower Ethernet links to make our high-end PtP links (daisy-chained in,...

ghmorris

Thanks ghmorris, 60Mb with two RB333 in turbo mode in Pto-Pto. Do you test rb411?. Best regards, Kike Yes, we have a number of PtP RB411 links in the field and get similar results a bit over 60Mbits. 333, 600, 411, 433 are all dramatically faster than a 532 and are capable of fully driving any sing...

ghmorris

We're seeing 60-66Mb/s on a Turbo wireless channel.

Once you get RB333 horsepower or above, you won't see any difference in which board you use providing you are driving only a single wireless card.

George

ghmorris

Doesn't matter. If you want serious protection from rapidly fluctuating power, buy something expensive with a clever filtered and buffered power supply. If you want cheap, fast and extremely effective, buy RouterBOARD. We do, then we give the RBs protected power and everyone is happy because our pow...

ghmorris

Plug into a UPS or run off direct battery power. Anyone who lived through the RB230 series is familiar with losing configs from rapid power fluctuations so this is not a new problem.

George

ghmorris

Sure, Orthogon (now Motorola PtP series) works great and uses MIMO 2x2. You can do stuff that you would have a very hard time achieving with conventional radios. Particularly useful on long shots with lots of multi-path fade...

George

ghmorris

It´s clear that this technique is hardly possible in long distant backhauls. Apart from the fact that in respect of higher radio powers needed and redundancy of the link it might be wiser to use dual n-stream to reach high throughputs. Rudy Not sure I completely agree on this. Both technologies bel...

ghmorris

I'll come to his aid on this one. I don't see any point in routing a 15 hop PtP link. And what if he is using RIP. <snip> Tom Who said RIP Tom? We're 22 hops from edge to edge and it works great. There is absolutely NO REASON for not running 15 hops on a backbone. Route it with OSPF or bridge it, i...

ghmorris

That's interesting. I would have expected n times the slowest link...

George

ghmorris

Very useful info!

Thanks!!

George

ghmorris

Super!! Thanks for the data. I'm just waiting to get my pair of DSL lines installed to give this a try.

George

ghmorris

10-15 routed hops will create problems...

What are you basing this gem of advanced network design information on?

George

ghmorris

Much better. Any idea where the sign-up link is now?

ghmorris

Unfortunately the link is to number 9, not the latest number 10. What happened to the subscription sign-up for the newsletters?

George

ghmorris

Well said! I do so love grumpy Friday nights. MT would do well to understand that their customers are not all idiots. We have beaten up on Wisp-router big-time this week about the product changeover stragegy that MT used this spring. Hopefully they have enough muscle with MT to pass it along. I did ...

ghmorris

I think we are talking an expensive regulator now... :? Rudy Depends on your definition of expensive. The Solar Boost stuff has a good reputation, incorporates MPPT (which is a nice to have feature) has battery temp compensation and some other goodies. Its a couple of hundred bucks, but with the pr...

ghmorris

Read the end of this thread. http://forum.mikrotik.com//viewtopic.php?f=7&t=18225&p=86559#p86559 The OP asked a simple question. The answer is, if you set it up right, you can generally get 50kms out of a modern MikroTik point-to-point installation. Note the words "modern" and &quo...

ghmorris

A very efficient way to operate, we break out VLANs into 24 port managed switches quite often. It would be even nicer if the 433AH had gig ports intead of 10/100, but I suppose that would eat into sales of the RB1000.

George

ghmorris

A base 411 with the introductory level 4 license is just about the ultimate in current MT backhaul radios IMHO. I'm not sure you are going to go any faster with a more expensive RB so long as you are only using one radio card. One card, one box, super low price. XR5s run great on a 411. It will max ...

ghmorris

I have to agree, 3 times 6 = 18. I've checked a number of calulators and they all agree :) Your nominal 18V (3 x 6v in series) will actually be about 21 volts when fully charged and sitting at float voltage, which is a great place to run one of the newer RBs. What most people call a 12v system is a...

ghmorris

(ducks gunshots from Latvia) This is why my mission critical hardware is still running 2.9.51 ;-) We still have our gateway NAT router on 2.8.26. It peaks at around 45Mbits x 12Mbits. We had a series of nightmares trying to bring it up to anything newer, so there it sits running fine. Just about ev...

ghmorris

Actually, its a totally accurate answer. We've been using MT for six years now in some of the worst RF conditions in the world. We do 50km+ on each backbone link. I didn't say what we used to do it, just that it can be done. If you want details, use search, its been posted before... Get a grip and q...

ghmorris

Even under difficult rf conditions you can achieve 50km with high levels of reliability.

George

ghmorris

George, This is your second reference about your distributor not communicating the information that you need to make informed purchasing decisions. Perhaps it is time to shop for another distributor. Tom Good idea. We are just entering peak build season and I am sitting on three urgent good-sized j...

ghmorris

Sounds great!

When do you expect it to be available at distributors in the US?

George

ghmorris

George, did I understand you correctly and you are going to remove all your RB333 devices? I don't understand what's wrong with them? Just because we introduced a faster model doesn't mean the older one is no longer working or supported. Hi Normis, yes, unfortunately we are going to change them out...

ghmorris

resellers have all this information. mikrotik is a manufacturer, not a store. your reseller should inform you about new and upcoming products. Its probably worth pointing out that a reseller (actually a distributor in this case) sitting on almost 400 RB333s is not particularly motivated to tell the...

ghmorris

Teksavvy supports bonded DSL for both business and residential. I would really like to sell this as a service, not to mention selling more RBs as a side effect!! A good thread on the issue is here, complete with a BSD config to make it work properly. http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r18747875-bonded-...

ghmorris

We have seen the same problem, 112s only.

Keep rebooting until you get your SR9 back.

Reverting to 2.9.x removes the problem.

George

ghmorris

Seems to be some confusion here. Reading your post, it appears that you feel that a 112 is not suitable for V3, and that anything over 2.9.5 is a candidate for an upgrade to 3.x. From where I sit, an RB112 is supported hardware and works just fine with V3.x, and despite the problem with the WLAN dis...

ghmorris

Its a very serious problem. We are effectively dead in the water regarding V3 until the 532 upgrade problem is fixed as we have so many 532s in the field.

We haven't found problems upgrading anything else, just 532s so far...

George

ghmorris

We use a small number of 532As, but haven't found any throughput difference at all from a regular 532. In addition, all the rev5 532s we have are 400MHz. There is no processor speed difference between them and the 532A. I'm please to see a RAM increase with the 333, but more for smooth running under...

ghmorris

Tom, Assuming you have polling enabled as well as nStreme. We see about 23Mbits UDP on a 532 at 32km using 2.9.48. About 35Mbits on a 333 using rc13 with a 20MHz channel. And around 75Mbits on a 333 using a turbo channel on rc 13. In all cases nStreme is on with polling enabled with signal in the hi...

ghmorris

Inox, my comments were regarding the original post, not your hijack.

The original testing posted by Hammy does not refer to Nstreme, and Nstreme makes a big difference to PtP performance particularly on cards with higher processor capacity.

George

ghmorris

Doesn't seem to be much discussion about whether Nstreme is enabled, and if so, which features are enabled.

Makes a huge difference, and our real-world results are a lot different to those reported here.

George

ghmorris

Your question doesn't have enough info. Use a link calculator, look up the variables you need to fill in the blanks, then if you still need help, ask.

A good link calculator can be found here:
http://www.terabeam.com/support/calcula ... m.php#calc

George

ghmorris

Radio acks happen on both channels if I'm not mistaken. Both MT and StarOS are "only" quasi-full-duplex.

George

ghmorris

Looks fair.

If you can do six or seven hops and still stay under 25ms your network should run VoIP great!!

That's about the standard we try and work to.

George

ghmorris

We use the PacWireless outdoor cases with good results. Made of aluminum. We buy the hinged version these days, easy to work on. Please let me know how you get on with the R52H. We are using a ton of R52s with excellent results, but haven't used the high output version yet. I really like the XR5s. M...

ghmorris

Ah Ha! Watch out for packet size on EoIP. You may find very slow rates when moving 1500 byte packets. Experiment by changing packet sizes down to maybe 1420. An example: 1500 bype packets over EoIP, 4Mb/s. 1420 byte packets over EoIP, 14Mb/s. We are seeing issues with this on our network. Lots and l...

ghmorris

I can answer parts of your post. XR5s will tolerate a receive signal in the -30s without obvious performance degredation, but its not good practice. -45 to -65 is a better range to be in. Adjacent channel interference is one of the 800 pound gorillas in license-exempt. You simply can't get really go...

ghmorris

Suggestion was that with current prices for high performance RouterBoard hardware, why beat your head against a brick wall if you are having Alix problems? It feels so good when you stop... :D Is there a special feature set you simply have to have? We know for sure there is nothing inherently unstab...

ghmorris

Bring your firmware up to 2.9.48 at least.

We have many hundreds of routers on 2.9.x, and virtually none of them reboot. In fact, we had one today that rebooted and it was a complete surprise. I suspect it was a power issue...

Note that almost everything is running on RouterBoard hardware.

George

ghmorris

We really like R52s and have a big bunch of them in service with great results. Have never tried R52H, but also have never seen anyone on the forum that actually likes them. Interesting. 8) Has anyone here had good results with an R52H??? We really like Ubiquiti XR5s for long range work in a noisy e...

ghmorris

We're running a couple of 20-ish KM links with 333s. Turbo 5.x, with only a single Ubiquiti XR5 in each 333 in the inner-most slot. Been working great so far. Nstreme+polling+compression+ANI+framer bestfit 4000. About 75Mbits UDP in each direction, a little more than that total in both directions at...

ghmorris

What you're seeing is completely normal. A 532 does something in the order of 23Mbits UDP on a long link with Nstreme+polling on, and about half that with regular old 802.11a (no Nstreme+polling). The speed limitation is mostly processor capability on a 532. A 133 does about 11-13Mbits UDP in the sa...

ghmorris

did you enable "polling" when you tried Nstreme? Your jitter numbers suggest polling wasn't turned one...

George

ghmorris

Couple of points. First is that SR9/XR9s will not see non-802.11 noise at all. So you are right, its probably VERY noisy but you aren't seeing it on the noise floor indicated by the cards. A Canopy or Trango 900 SU makes a good, inexpensive spectrum analyzer as they both display all noise in the ban...

ghmorris

There has been considerable discussion that the negotiation phase when setting up the Torrent connection is not encrypted, and as a result the "connection" can be dropped at that point. Our experience with current-release encrypted clients like uTorrent is that the setup phase is NOT detec...

ghmorris

yes, sure you can. To drop only specific protocol, specify it. to drop ares (specify ares), to drop bit-torrent (specify bit-torrent). As far as I know encrypted will be dropped too. Suggest you test how uTorrent (encrypted mode) vs MikroTik filtering REALLY works and then post it here. Please deta...

ghmorris

PowerPC architecture so will never be supported under 2.9.

I'm very pleased to see full 802.3af support, now we should be able to pull power from an 802.3af switch. Well done MT!!

George

ghmorris

For clarity, you're mounting your 900MHz AP at 30 feet? What is the tree top height in relation? I'm in heavy trees and I can't see being much below the tree tops, even with 900MHz. We're mostly in lake country with very rugged terrain. I can get an entire bay/lake with a 900 AP on a boathouse. Get...

ghmorris

Not surprised 5.4 is not unlocked yet for Atheros radios in FCC land. There are issues surrounding certification, DFS, TPC and potential interference with DOD radars. Right now every system design has to go through FCC labs for certification, even TCBs are not allowed to do 5.4 certifications yet. Y...

ghmorris

What you are trying to do with 900 MHz is a very bad idea. As you are finding out, the band is noisy, and even worse its unpredicatably noisy. The only thing we can be sure of is its going to get much noisier over the next few years. Plan ahead! Don't put 900 high in the air. Don't use if for backha...

ghmorris

Skaught, are you running multiple radio cards in your 333?

Because of the stacked card arrangement I'm starting to think they might work better as single-card APs or backhauls.

George

ghmorris

wavemich - With ROS 3.10rc we have been running Nstreme and bonding the wlan interfaces with about 20 - 25Mbps - it can go faster but that's all the clients has tried to get out of it.... Earlier versions did not 'failover' correctly on the bonded interface, meaning that if one WLAN dropped everyth...

ghmorris

I would really like to see the station follow the Access Point in selecting the correct width of channel as well as the correct frequency. This would be a huge help!

It is known as "managed mode" in some other releases.

George

ghmorris

Hi, well i had a trouble with my link point to point of 64km, I using 2 Router 532 with Wlan card higher again 2 heavy duty 28dbi 2 Tower of 60mts high. When i do the link TX/RX : 72/77 and TX/RX: 24/36mb for 5 or 10 minute work very well, but the next day my link is very intermittent and the TX/RX...

ghmorris

r52 cards (and most others) support this freq (4.920-6.100 5Mhz Steps) Superchannel license allows you to use non-standard freqs. 5.4 is in that boat for now... Scott There are big issues around 5.4 certification in FCC land. For starters, apparently the queue for certification is humungous as the ...

ghmorris

Hi Normis, We've seen a pretty dramatic difference in how rc6 - rc9 responds to commands in Winbox vs 2.9.x. rc9 is better than rc6, but still pretty "clunky". Takes a long time to log in, a longer time to polulate information, and a very long time to actually reboot after issuing the rebo...

ghmorris

If you like, call me at (647) 723-6284 x102. We have a similar issue we have been dealing with. Sun Tzu had some great advice

.

George

ghmorris

Ditto. It would be great to get this fixed. Aside from that, RC9 seems good so far...

ghmorris

I would look for water or electric meter reading systems. Some of them use 900 to poll customers a couple of times per day.

Typically frequency hoppers, 1w conducted power output, using the whole 900 band.

George

ghmorris

Gerard has done a heck of a job as a mirror. I am pathetically grateful having been trying to download from MT since about 6am my time.... I figure my chances of a clean download from MT today are about the same as getting a straight answer about what the wireless-crd package really means in 2.9.48....

ghmorris

If I understand this correctly, all the Linux-based quad-radio systems are "sorta" full duplex. A true full duplex system puts data down the transmit channel, and gets everything including acks, back over the receive channel. The Linux-based systems still get their acks back over the trans...

ghmorris

As I understand it, the hardware diversity switch drops signal strength by about 20-30dB from the active port. You will still receive strong signal from the "wrong" port. This is validated by signal strengths from a blown diversity switch. I really wish MT would support diversity. StarOS d...

ghmorris

One of the biggest gotchas with SR9 is how unreliably it measures real noise floors.

Perhaps the XR9 is simply more accurate, and this accounts for the differences you are seeing at your test sites? If so, that is excellent news.

George

ghmorris

Ok, I have had a chance to do some long range, NLOS testing and I have much better results to share with everyone about the SR9 vs XR9 questions. First, this is my setup: AP: 150 foot tower on a decent size hill. SR9 is at 150 feet, 10' LRM400 into a 9dbi pac wireless yagi. Noise floor is -95 @ 907...

ghmorris

That's a pretty wild difference!

We need to compare how it does in a hostile RF environment compared to Canopy and Trango.

George

ghmorris

George, No need to flame my post. I was directing it at GWISA not you. Quoting an earlier post in the thread removes the opportunity for confusion. If you have 11 Canopy 900 AP's near by good luck. You'd have been better off switching to Canopy yourself and syncing with your competition than workin...

ghmorris

I believe you are having problems with FHSS gear such as Alvarion from what you are describing. That's pretty a pretty funny comment. "I believe" too, but this isn't a faith-based technology. I have the ESN, colour codes etc for all 11 of the Canopy access points that cause us trouble. Th...

ghmorris

Can you give us a look at the config for either endpoint you applied? I have a couple of similar 5ghz links that I'm working on which would benifit from this. Regards, Omega /interface wireless set 0 ack-timeout=dynamic adaptive-noise-immunity=yes allow-sharedkey=no \ antenna-gain=0 antenna-mode=an...

ghmorris

Using Nstreme Scott.

I am not generally an Nstreme fan because of eneven latency, but it seems a lot better now. These are preliminary results though so its too soon to tell for sure.

Looks like we do have a memory leak though.

George

ghmorris

We have 133, 133c and 112 running ROS 3.0rc6. All have SR9s in them. Definitely seeing a memory leak. About 1Mbyte decrease in available RAM in 12 hours so far. Causes more problems to the 112 and 133c obviously. # NAME VERSION 0 system 3.0rc6 1 security 3.0rc6 2 routeros-rb500 3.0rc6 3 routerboard ...

ghmorris

Could you expand a little on what "large network" means please?

We are around 1000 MT and would like to move to OSPF...

George

ghmorris

OK, we did some testing this afternoon in a very hostile RF environment. There is a huge difference between 2.9.46 and 3.0RC6 when it comes to driving a Ubiquiti SR9. 5MHz channels, 270' on the tower, Trango (ours) on the tower, lots of Trango (ours) and Canopy (theirs) close by. Used a pair of grid...

ghmorris

Not yet, but we do have "CSMA disable" selected. There is some Canopy in this RF environment...

George

ghmorris

You may not be getting enough isolation on the dual feed grids. As a result, you may be saturating the receivers on the R52Hs when transmitting on the other polarity. A check would be to temporarily move to separate antennas with a decent amount of vertical separation. We have seen similar problems ...

ghmorris

We appear to be seeing substantially more robust performance using RC6 on RB133/SR9 900MHz test links in a busy RF area. Throughput has nearly doubled...

George

ghmorris

Good point.

Integration of an iPerf package would be great, and would be even better if it had a graphical interface like the current bandwidth tester!!

George

ghmorris

I would really like to see packet loss counters as part of the speedtest utility. This request comes from running more and more voice over the network. For example, we simulate 3 concurrent voip calls by setting up 300kb bi-directional UDP data streams. It would be great to have total packets/packet...

ghmorris

Not quite true. They are definitely in the distribution channel already. Wisp-router got a bulk shipment Friday, they shipped immediately so ours are in customs now. Might have them tomorrow, more likely Thursday.

George

ghmorris

RouterOS detects common P2P protocols, not all. It is not possible to detect traffic that is encrypted (you can only drop encrypted torrent traffic, when bittorent is denied at your router). Could you explain this just a little more please sergejs? Are you saying that RouterOS can detect encrypted ...

ghmorris

I have died and gone to heaven. We have a power monitor and just need to script against it to be able to watch what is going on in a storm.

Thank you John!!

George

ghmorris

With respect, EoIP and MPLS are in different centuries. We use a ton of EoIP now and desperately want to get MPLS to buld a managed/manageable solution.

Once you get over a few hundred routers the lack of MPLS starts to become a bigger issue. Just like OSPF working well on a large scale.

George

ghmorris

Hee Hee! We cheat. The radios are on the ground and we run waveguide to the antennas. About 4 dB loss for 100M. Where we are using smaller antennas, say 1 - 1.2M, I would be happy with a shorter distance between antennas for diversity. Using 5/8" hardline we could run 40' up and down the tower ...

ghmorris

We're up on the Canadian Shield north of Lake Ontario running a number of 50km+ PtP links. In the Spring and Fall we can get more than 45 dB of fade, coupled with a 30 dB rise in noise floor due to ducting on links facing Toronto. The combination of the two effects means that even 3.6M dishes are no...

ghmorris

You need to think very carefully about fade before making blanket statements about whether this will work or not. It may work very well at some times of the year, and depending where you are, may work very badly at other times of the year. If you are planning on putting customers on this link, calcu...

ghmorris

Looks like a great app.

Me too please!

ghmorris (at) candlelight.ca

Thanks
George

ghmorris

I installed a single 13db 120 degree antenna

That is going to be a very narrow vertical beam. Try some downtilt as your client is likely underneath the main beam.

George

ghmorris

I would really like to see HCCA used. This would give us a big leg up on the competition, particularly if you have HCCA compatible APs and clients!! Handling QoS at the Atheros level is going to be absolutely necessary if you want to do double or triple play networks. We have a fair bit of experienc...

ghmorris

We were having a severe problem with encrypted PtP on Port 80 pretending to be HTTP traffic. This is probably the worst scenario you can imagine. The problem BitTorrent clients capable of encrypton are the newer versions of uTorrent, Azureus and BitComet. MT couldn't find this stuff at all. We had f...

ghmorris

You guys are doing well. We had to change out 60+ 8602s.

We are seeing some problems with R52s losing the diversity switch (20dB loss in sensitivity) in thunderstorms as well.

George

ghmorris

Use Korea2 country code, but only if you have legal access to the 2.3 band.

George

ghmorris

Gerard, I thought it was a receive-side issue. Hadn't realized it was on the transmit side.

Thanks for the info!

George

ghmorris

RB133 is simply not suitable for very high wireless bandwidth. 532 is MUCH better. If you want really high thoughput before the RB333 is released, talk to stephenpatrick about custom solutions using an AMD processor with passive cooling. It can be done, but currently it isn't particularly cheap, but...

ghmorris

I have actually had the problem where a client associated to one of the ghost APs. It was a VERY strong signal (perhaps -38 or so) in 2.3, and the client associated to the first ghost signal rather than the main channel. Throughput was garbage of course!! Part of this is the problem with older cards...

ghmorris

I need to set up a link between two buildings located 50 meters apart from each other. There is LOS between the two ends. What hardware would you suggest to achieve the maximum bandwidth and what would that bandwidth be? Thanks, juibar Suggest you talk to stephenpatrick on this forum. He does custo...

ghmorris

For these really high speed links, suggest you speak with stephenpatrick. He's on the forum and does custom high capacity MikroTik systems.

George

ghmorris

Agreed. Never, ever, ever run Ethernet between two buildings on different grounds (earths). You are just asking for blown Ethernet ports.

From the lightning capital of Ontario...
George

ghmorris

Not sure what is available for online use that takes location into account. I still use an Excel-based Orthogon link calculator that is a couple of years old. It allows you to input the lat/long for each end of the link, and calculates for that specific geography. In addition, it gives you reliabili...

ghmorris

Success in long haul links depends to a very large extent where you are located in the world. Some areas see very little fade, others see a lot. We started doing 50km links with MT over four years ago. We only have three of the orignal six still running, the rest of them are now on 6gig licensed wir...

ghmorris

Correct. You just have to pick the correct 2gig - 5Mhz operation, then one of the four frequencies that an SR9 can operate on.

Works great! We have well over 250 in the field.

George

ghmorris

We get 15Mbs or better over 6 hops using RB 532 hardware with no WDS, just straight routing. A single hop will give about 23 Mbs using a 532 with a good signal...

I am not a big WDS fan.

George

ghmorris

and from me! This look is soooooo much easier to use!

George

ghmorris

That is exactly what we see. I'm very disappointed because we want to run Dude.

I guess we have to wait to replace all the rest of the Trangos.

It didn't seem to bother the Trango 900 APs or SUs though...

George

ghmorris

Jay: Are you using any Atlas M5010 Backhauls? We are having serious issues with them at the moment when trying to do anything other than ICMP Echos. I can crater a M5010 pretty quickly. The older 5830APs and Tlinks seem to do fine. We use a few Atlas backhauls, and The Dude can crater them in a hea...

ghmorris

Aside from some older versions we haven't felt the need to upgrade, we run on 2.9.30 and 2.9.42.

Wireless generally seems a little better on .42.

Both are very stable.

George

ghmorris

To: taloot one thing i want to know is it really work gr8 for you guys?? YES! it works great. 24 hours a day 7 days a week. where is mike-ubnt he gone? Don't know! I never have problems so I don't need him. why its good in indoor and extremely baaaad on outdoor? Humm, I use them for hotel hotspots ...

ghmorris

Thanks for the update!!

I think the PoE is slightly different on the new series 5 boards.

The new boards look enough different it may be worth trying on 48v next time we get a chance.

George

ghmorris

WiMax is soooo last year!

George

ghmorris

Gotcha. Thank you.

I found b.a.t.m.a.n easily enough, but am having a problem relating it to MME.

Any thoughts?

Thanks
George

ghmorris

It would be so nice if the responses to legitimate questions were just a bit less cryptic. What the heck does MME have to do with WMM???? Where is the reference between MME and b.a.t.m.a.n?? Could SOMEONE, preferably Mikrotik, please post a link?? I can find MME-DSR, but I have NO idea what the rele...

ghmorris

Please keep us up to date on your results.

I'm particularly interested in the difference between older 532s and the new Series 5.

Thanks
George

ghmorris

Here is some more info on VHF interference issues.

http://forum.mikrotik.com//viewtopic.ph ... terference

Geoge

ghmorris

Some 532s have a problem with generating interference in that frequency range. IIRC its a 48v POE issue.

We have had a couple of instances of the same problem.

Try changing to an 18V power supply and re-jumpering the 532 for the lower voltage range.

George

ghmorris

We have the same WPA2 momentary-disassociation problem with Ezy.Net, OSBridge and HighGain Atheros-based clients.

The only ones that DO work properly are MikroTik 112s...

Something is wrong somewhere.

George

ghmorris

A useful thread Firebat, thank you!

George

ghmorris

Yes, MPLS VPN support. We use a lot of EoIP today. What we need going forward is intelligent best-path routing and QoS to create a modern, managable, scalable equivalent of our EoIP tunnels. We are moving in the direction of several virtual layers on each physical access point, some for different cu...

ghmorris

Polling systems need to be universally useful, otherwise they aren't worth deploying. If you have a lot of access points, the last thing in the world you want to do is decide whether you have enough traffic load to run Nstreme or not. It works or it doesn't. We haven't had much trouble using Nstreme...

ghmorris

Great point!! I'd forgotten all about the thermostat noise issue. We used to have terrible problems with reboots when we used PCs in thermostatically controlled, heated enclosures on the tower. Turns out the solution was rip out the heater. The PC board made enough warmth everything ran just fine. G...

ghmorris

I think you're on the right track. There isn't a generic problem with cold and R532s, at least down to about -40 which we hit last winter. This year has only been -37C so far, with no failures due to cold.

George

ghmorris

You could of course ask sales@ubnt.com instead of beating up on a UBNT engineer who has the courtesy to frequent this forum. UBNT has been incredibly open and responsive about their cold weather SR9 problems. I have NEVER seen a company handle this kind of problem as well. Mike hangs out here listen...

ghmorris

MT does not see non-802.11 noise very well. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

My worst noise problems show as degraded RSSI in 900, and often just show as bad bandwidth tests and dropped associations in other bands.

George

ghmorris

What cards in your 532s?

ghmorris

Interesting. We haven't seen problems with 532s or 112s at all and its been -34*C so far. We have had (known) problems with SR9 that Ubiquiti is working on, and problems with 153s.

George

ghmorris

Yes, the windchill scale is moisture related. In practice, the higher the wind, the more of a chilling effect you will get on an outdoor metal or plastic enclosure. It will never get colder than ambient, but it can lose more heat in a windy environment than it would in a calm setting exaggerating an...

ghmorris

Ditto to Stephen. Particularly: -Intel IXP52x family chipset/board support -Atheros SOC support for CPE etc Need these two just to keep up with the industry direction. -WiMAX support, preferably in 2.3GHz for Canada. WiMAX has some powerful advantages using licensed bands. -MPLS This is fast becomin...

ghmorris

I will do that. Thank you, a fix will be great!!

George

ghmorris

We're having problems with 153s locking up too, but I haven't pinned it down to cold, load or something else yet.

112s and 532s work great in the same circumstances. This is unfortunate as we like the 3 radio / 5 Ethernet form factor.

George

Search found 284 matches