802.11ac spectral scan discussion

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

Why is it exactly that Mikrotik cannot perform the spectral scan on ‘ac’ chipset/radio’s?
I’ve been told other manufacturers with same chipset can…

Not being able to do a spectral scan (direct on antenna or through Dude) is really holding us down to use ‘ac’ on our backhauls.
Without a proper spectral scan (only a radio scan is not good enough, tells half the story) performed by the antenna that really need to find a ‘empty’ channel its more a guess and try game to build a reliable link..

Now we use an ‘n’ SXT or Omnitik to scan an area where a link is going to be deployed. Because for our backhauls we use high gain, narrow beam and shielded dish antennas so we need to know what signals are receiving in what strength at these antennas. An SXT, or even an omnitik will pick up much more energy from directions (and which directions??) then the high directional antenna.

Our spectral situation is very congested so its a big puzzle to find free spectral space. But where an omnitik tells me noise is high around certain frequency it might well be the directional will not have the same noise level and can use that frequency.

Spectral scans needs to be performed on an almost monthly base, since it seems the competition has the habit of shouldering my channels all the time or new (private!) users became visible just on the same or adjacent channels.
Without a proper scan tool it is a daunting task to find some quiet space each time again…

2

You can use a basebox to do an spectral scan/history directly mounted on the antenna, but again this is not applicable with QRTs or Dynadishes.

I’m with you, is very hard and troublesome to setup and maintain AC backhauls w/o the ability of doing spectral scans, each one of them need to be worked out blindfolded, which is time consuming and rather unconvenient.

3

I can’t see what is in the air. A spectral scan is becoming a necessity.

4

Also something else with the ac equipment, you cannot see the current tx power levels.

I don’t want to say this but at the moment it seems like ubnt is miles ahead of MT with the ac equipment and its features.

Hopefully the spectral scan can be implemented with the same hardware with a future ROS software release, going to be a bit sad it you require new hardware for this to work. Have 10+ Netmetals as long range backhaul links

5

Indeed, ‘ac’ lacks some tools;

  • power output reading (important)
  • spectral-scan (VERY important)
  • background scan in NV2 network for CPE (moderate important)

Nowadays with the heavy use of spectrum it is a very important tool to know what the spectrum is and how signal levels are set. Many units are so powerfull that its better to reduce power but without power-out reading you need to ‘try-and-see-result-at-ap’ to adjust. Very inconveniant…