The only way I can get this configuration to work at our main tower (280’ up near dense residential area) is if I set the antenna mode to rx-a/tx-b.. The antenna is hooked up to port b, and nothing is on port a. When I use just antenna-b no clients associate. It’s almost like theres too much noise or somthing, but the noise floor is reading -85/-86 dB.. The CPE’s are Tranzeo CPQ-19’s and Zcomax CPE-250H(P)
When I switch to rx-a/tx-b the noise floor drops to -100, and clients associate with great signals -50 to -60dB and SNR in the 40’s.. I’m using the MMCX port on the ubiquiti cards instead of the u.fl.
I can only think noise is causing this, I don’t understand why the CPE’s wouldn’t associate otherwise… Do I need to switch to a Prism radio? These sectors I’ve mounted replaced a 300’ LMR run w/ 1 Watt AMPs and prism based miniPCI cards.
I’m using ROS v.2.9.17 RB532’s with SR5 and SR2 cards, RadioWaves 16dBi 90 degree sectors for both the 5.8 and 2.4. The LMR runs are 3’ to 5’.
5.8 has no problems, just the 2.4 :-/
I don’t know what kind of bandwidth issues this may be causing, I can only wait for the phone calls to start pooring in this evening and tomorrow morning.
I just checked with a client off this particular sector and he was gettin 1000kbps down and 64kbps up, which I kind of suspected given that theres nothing hooked up to the rx port. Each sub is limited to 1024kbps, so the downloads look fine. Need to figure out why I can’t get subs to associate when set to Antenna mode B.
I’ve run into something kind of like this today, but slightly different config. We have multiple rb532 boards with cm9 on 2.4 with an omni running 2.9.17. There were 2 that showed exactly what you are describing. Even standing very close to the APs (within 30 feet) the wireless card on my laptop whould show high signal strength(80-90%), but very low quality (5-20%). This is with a ZCom 200mW PCMCIA card. Netstumbler show signal in the -30 to -40dB range. I’ve rarely seen such a difference in signal/quality with this setup and has been a good gauge in the past.
These access points are in an urban environment, with a ton of existing 2.4 RF in the air. We haven’t had a chance to check/swap out anything yet, but are thinking that there is enough noise in the area at these two locations to crush the radios. Our noise floor was in the mid -90’s IIRC which seems low, but others are showing -100 or better so maybe not. -80’s seems way too high based on what we’ve seen so far with 2.9. I’ve played around on channels, turned on DFS, and had similar results. I’m still unsure of DFS as it always seems to pick 3 or 8 for channels even when those channels on other APs are the strongest…If only I could get Mikrotik to explain some of their features.
Anyway, we’ll have a chance to visit these next week and see if we can isolate it to hardware. I’d be curious if you discover anything on your end.
I’m about to switch over to Prism cards. I’ve experienced problems like this in noisy RF environments and the SR2 cards just wont perform. I can’t even get 1 damn user to associate. The prism cards don’t seem to be affected as much by the noise, probably because thier rx-sensitivity is higher.
I don’t think I’ll be swapping any equipment today as our climbers have been up 280’ in the air since 8am this morning..
Regarding operating in noisy environments, one sad thing about the Prism cards is that (at least in 2.9.13/14, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is another thing that has degraded over the past few months) they’re incapable of accepting short fragment sizes from clients, said short fragments being pretty handy for pushing data through a lot of crud. So if you start using Prism, be sure to bump your clients up to 1500+ frag sizes or you’ll start getting complaints about inability to log in to Hotmail, etc.
how old is the SR2 that you have in that RB532? there was a batch that went out that had faulty MMCX connectors, have you tried to swap the pigtail out and use UFL?
i am actually able to pick up signal from you out in antelope, assuming NW24 is the one you are talking about. mine is also a RB532 with an SR2. I am seeing you -92 @ 5.3mi via my omni.
Brand new… I think we purchased either this month or with the last batch in january of this year…
I decided to switch to Prisms due to the fact I couldn’t have subs down any longer… My tower climber is actually up there right now doing the swap… Once I did that users associated right away. I don’t know that it was a faulty MMCX connector but that’s something I will definately test and look into.
And yeah thats our northwest sector.
Can you still see us with the prism? You should be able to see our south facing sectors much better. They wont be active till later this evening.
I responded to this a few days ago as I had a very similiar problem. We swapped out the entire board (including CM9s and pigtails) and our problem went away. The lmr jumper and antenna were not changed. I need to take this AP home and find out if it’s the radio card or the pigtail, but i suspect it’s the piggy as we get bad ones every once in awhile. However, after re-reading this thread, perhaps our CM9 was the problem.
Are you saying you’ve got CPQ-19s running with 2.9.17?
The reason I ask is that we were able to get our Tranzeo CPE-200s running on 2.9.17 by going restoring default RTS/Fragmentation settings, but no such luck on the CPQ-19s.
Any confirmation or additional information would be very helpful.
Make sure you have the latest firmware, 89R fixes a major memory leak issue with the tranzeo when associating to 802.1d AP’s, and the latest 2.0.6 has more detailed connection information, % of dropped packets, noise floor, etc..
