I live on a condo where there are 120 apartments in southern Turkey. We have a mikrotic RB850 which is fed via one rooftop antenna which collects a wireless signal from our WISP provider. On average there are between 30 and 80 devices online at any given time. Bandwidth from wisp is stated as 60 mbs download and 40mbs upload. The RB850 feeds mikrotic routers I believe there are ten in total on a peer to peer basis. Each apartment has its own username and password (120 total)
Unfortunately although the speed is now expected by provider to be between 4 and 7 megabits we sometimes get dips down to as low as 1megabit although at other times we could do tests and get ten results between 5 and 6.8.
My questions are:-
a) how can we try to minimise these dips?
b) Do we need hardware eg load balancers
c) Should we ask our provider for two connections ie two incoming antennas and only feed 5 apartment blocks (60 users) from each. I presume this may cost us double per month.
d) If we go for option c) and bearing in mind that at any one time many apartments can be empty could we sever the peer to peer link so we only feed five but have a load balancer acting as a bridge between the two groups.
If none of this makes sense please forgive my technical naivete but we need a solution so that we will be maintaining a minimum ideally of 5megabits so we can watch sd tv.
Many thanks BTW there is no encryption!!
On average there are between 30 and 80 devices online at any given time. Bandwidth from wisp is stated as 60 mbs download and 40mbs upload.
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Unfortunately although the speed is now expected by provider to be between 4 and 7 megabits we sometimes get dips down to as low as 1megabit although at other times we could do tests and get ten results between 5 and 6.8.
Math is clear here… 60Mbps/80 = 0.75Mbps each.
Solution:
- Add more bandwidth, at least double (doesn’t need to add more antennas, existing link may be able to pass 120Mbps)
- Set up QoS so that bw can be nearly saturated without introducing latency or cuts on realtime services
Thanks for your advice! The WISP advised us that we were getting the maximum bandwidth that they could give us! That is why I was wondering whether two different connections and antennas would be feasible. I like your idea of Qos prioritisation of certain devices especially smart tvs or tv boxes as this is a particular area of problems.
Many thanks
In that case you can add a second antena/internet uplink, and make the main router load balance the connections through the two internet uplinks.
No need for a second routerboard.
QoS plus second internet uplink and load balancing should provide a smoother experience for all users.
Third possible enhancement would be having a local IPTV server/repeater so that it only grabs one channel stream from internet, using local multicast to repeat that channel to all users watching that same channel.
Just curious have you actually done local IPTV server/repeater? and how can a WISP identify such traffic?
Have done some integrations, mostly using hardware DVB-S or DVB-C streamers.
There’s a very interesting software project for this: stalker-portal
Thanks for your replies. Please could you explain in more detail your thoughts about the IPTV servers and repeaters plus multicast as I do not really understand what this entails. We have a variety of modalities in use to enable tv ranging from Redline devices which simply decrypt encrypted satellite channels to other Redline boxes which log on to iptv servers, smart tvs which are used for netflix or luve tv sometimes using vpns, amazon fire boxes or other kodi boxes. Presumably we need for QOS purposes to make a list of the MAC addresses of all these devices so that they can be prioritised on the RB850?
Many thanks for your valued input.
I was referring to setup your own IPTV streaming server. When I refer to multicast, I refer to stream IPTV via multicast, i.e. users will be connected to the server and will “fetch” the same stream from the network, i.e., if 5 users are watching a given channel, and such channel is 3Mbps, total network usage won’t be 15Mbps, but 3Mbps as “broadcast”.
This way, only active channels will consume from your internet bandwidth, and each will draw only such channel bandwidth, indepently from the number of internal users watching it.
No need to record Mac addresses for QoS purposes, an “intelligent” QoS can be deployed by controlling different traffic categories in such scenario without the need of tracking down MAC addresses.
As each of your users watch different external private IPTV services, there’s no point on the IPTV server. Your best bet is adding at least another line, and deploying a good QoS priorizing VoIP and IPTV.
Thanks very much indeed for the clarification about IPTV and the QOS configuration!!
Have you any thoughts about the make, model, and performance of a suitable load balancer which we will need if we go for 2 uplinks?
Do you think that speed limitation is a good aid in producing greater speed consistency and if you do where would you set the limit i.e in what speed range for a) just the existing bandwidth currently set to 4 - 7 megebits and b) for when or if we get 2 uplinks (each 60 megabits download 40 upload)
Is it normal in this kind of WISP wireless network to have no encryption but only individual apartment usernames and passwords?
If not what encryption should we use and how much will that impact on the speed?
Just one further question about adding a second uplink antenna to our system; how far apart from the first antenna should the second one be situated? We have a wide choice of block roofs but from a cabling point of view the two nearest block roofs are situated approx 35 metres and 25 metres away.
The already deployed RB850G can cope with the two.
Do you think that speed limitation is a good aid in producing greater speed consistency and if you do where would you set the limit i.e in what speed range for a) just the existing bandwidth currently set to 4 - 7 megebits and b) for when or if we get 2 uplinks (each 60 megabits download 40 upload)
Usually both individual customer speed capping, and Global QoS per traffic category is used. I’d say RB850G will be able to cope with both.
Is it normal in this kind of WISP wireless network to have no encryption but only individual apartment usernames and passwords?
If not what encryption should we use and how much will that impact on the speed?
For that you’ll need to change your setup to use pppoe instead, much widely used. Most customers routers will be able to handle the additional burden of encryption just fine for the speeds you provide to customers.