Yesterday I received my first consignment of routerboards with plastic RJ45 connectors.
Today, I’m supposed to mount one of those routerboards near the top of this mast.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to work out how high this mast is, just look at the 60cm UBNT dish that’s fitted with a radome.
This is typical of many of the masts that are used all over the world, 250mm wide, 30 - 40m high and held steady with stay wires.
These masts move. Not much, but they move in the wind. Especially in a place like Cape Town where there is a “Souteaster” blowing at an average of 50km/h for half the year and then a “Northwester” blowing at an average of 50km/h for the other half of the year.
How do we ensure that RJ45 connectors don’t come undone from the constant shaking up there? We solder them to the metal chassis on the connector. One blob of solder is all that it takes to secure a connector to a routerboard and to ensure that you don’t have to climb up that mast at 2:00am in a raging storm to go and seat a connector that’s shaken loose.
Then MikroTik came up with this absolutely stupid beyond belief plan of using plastic connectors.
What do I (and all other with the same problem that I have) do now?
Do we look at competing products?
Do we not use the new, fast routers?
Do we use chemicals to secure the connectors?
I really don’t think it’s a good idea to use chemicals / adhesives. At least with solder, you can unsolder. There’s no way to “unresin” a connector once it’s in.
I’m really fed up and would appreciate any advice.
Just my 2 cents, but I would never put a SOHO MT router in a tower. The plastic ethernet you only find in the cheapest ones.
Why don’t you just go for RB450G ?
Yeap; i feel the words EPIC and FAIL belong in the same sentence as PLASTIC and RJ45 CONNECTOR.
Seriously though, it is a pretty painful change; perhaps MT could comment if there are likely to be higher cost options with the metal connectors? For those of us who have to access equipment up masts; the few extra $ arent likely to cause too many sleepless nights.
We still offer both kinds of products. You have the choice that you are asking for. We have RB433 with metallic connectors, and RB433L with plastic ones. We have RB411AR and we have RB711-2Hn. One is with metal connectors and higher price, other is plastic connectors and lower price.
http://routerboard.com/RB435G (at 189$ it’s only 40$ more expensive than the RB433AH with 100mbit ports and two less miniPCI slots. I think Gigabit justifies 40$ price increase, plus you get bonus miniPCI slots. USB ports and SD slot for free)
Not quite. I have a couple of 435Gs in the field. They work well, but they’re great if you put 3 x R52Hn or 3 x SR71 in them.
The RB493G - as you know Normis, I’ve been trying to register my new ones that arrived a couple of days ago - is a very messy router to use in enclosed spaces. The one ethernet port at the bottom is cool, but the ones on the side have caused us a fair amount of problems when using shielded cable. They are good at ground level, but really not fit for purpose 20m up in the air.
I dread the day when MT drops our current staple - the RB411AH.
CPU use goes very high when there are three radios in the 435G and they are all pumping data.
We have found that putting more than two backbone or customer facing radios into a RB435G makes for unpleasant experiences for everyone.
I don’t know what it’s like in the rest of the world, but our clients have big internet connections. The businesses start at 5Mb. If we have 20 customers each connecting to one sector and downloading data accordingly and there are three sectors connected to a 435G, things don’t work.
What we - and I believe many other WISPs - need is something that can handle two big cards, like the SR71 or the R52Hn when they are connected to UBNT dishes or UBNT sectors with clients on the other end that use their data.
The 433AH works fine, but the 100Mb network card is the bottleneck.
All we want is a 433AH with gigabit shielded ports.
Two cards in a 435G works fine. The GB NIC can handle the traffic, but …
Using a 435G and having three empty miniPCI slots - like what I have had to do of late - is really not the best way to invest your money in a Third World country. If I was in the USA or Europe where I could bill in real money, it would be different, but here we bill in local currency, but have to pay for everything with real money. The price different between a 433AH and a 435G is enough to buy a nice Canon digital camera. Now multiply by 72 - which is the number of towers I have to refresh this year.
I will, but having looked long and hard at the various amounts of information that’s available, I believe it’s the same story as when one inserts a RB604 into an RB600 or an RB800. The “daughterboard” reduces performance. In this case, the “daughterboard” is the two extra miniPCI slots on the back of the RB435G.
The time for misdirection, smoke and mirrors is over.
Getting back to the original question and a recent comment about using a glue gun… Seeing at I have no idea how to get a working electric powered glue gun 34 meters in the sky with the glue still being hot, how do we secure the shielded connectors to these plastic connectors in such a way that they don’t fall out when the tower moves?
RB433AH is my favorite! 