two ap in one 433

Hi

Having a little problem here. Running 5.6 on a 433 whit Atheros 5413 and Atheros 11N

I have set up two aps in the same box whit two wireless cards. One of them have a indoor antenna for my own use and the other cards antenna is an outdoor sector antenna for my neighbor.

They are set up whit two different ssid and are running on freq. 2412 and 2462.

The problem is when my neighbor are downloading some heavy files at about 10M. My wireless connections stops working, I having problem to even connect to the router. So i guessing that his wireless disturbing mine. Is that any way to fix that?

2412 is channel 1, and 2462 is channel 11. There is absolutely no way you’re getting interference between the two.

but how comes is that i cant even connect to the router when he is downloading? if i ping my gw adress it gives bad ping or even packetloss?

is it so stupid question that no one will answer it?

it is not a stupid question, and happens often - despite having three card slots, using any more than one at the same time will cause degradation of service on the other. the cards are physically too close together. We have deployed around 600 routerboards running various configurations and done extensive testing on stacking cards one above the other and in EVERY case there is some impact on service when two cards are being used. You might get it to work a little better by using the top and bottom slots and leaving the middle one blank. If you really want to run two cards in the one routerboard, use an RB800. we get best results mounting one card at the end of the RB800 and the other card on the RB604 daughter board.

Some minor changes could be detected, depending on card model, but nothing that can disable the service completely, let alone block access to the router. The problem must lie elsewhere!

the setup of the two wireless cards.

[johan@RB_SVAB_Pilg1] /interface wireless> print
Flags: X - disabled, R - running
0 R name=“wlan_Pil1” mtu=1500 mac-address=00:0C:42:3A:E8:5F arp=enabled
interface-type=Atheros 11N mode=ap-bridge ssid=“Pil1” frequency=2462
band=2ghz-b/g/n channel-width=20/40mhz-ht-above scan-list=default
wireless-protocol=any wds-mode=disabled wds-default-bridge=none
wds-ignore-ssid=no bridge-mode=enabled default-authentication=no
default-forwarding=yes default-ap-tx-limit=0 default-client-tx-limit=0
hide-ssid=no security-profile=default compression=no

1 name=“wlan_P\Pålle” mtu=1500 mac-address=00:0C:42:0C:04:7A arp=enabled
interface-type=Atheros AR5413 mode=ap-bridge ssid=“WirelessAP”
frequency=2412 band=2ghz-b/g channel-width=20mhz scan-list=default
wireless-protocol=any antenna-mode=ant-a wds-mode=disabled
wds-default-bridge=none wds-ignore-ssid=no bridge-mode=enabled
default-authentication=yes default-forwarding=yes default-ap-tx-limit=0
default-client-tx-limit=0 hide-ssid=no security-profile=P\Pålle
compression=no

What is the CPU doing? Is he simply using it all, and there is nothing left to handle any other traffic or process any other requests?

sorry but i cant see cpu status because I cant connect to the router when the problem occurs


and he is limited by simple queue.

change the cards, or one of them. This helped me.

I set up a 433 with 3 cards running 3 2.4GHz sectors before I knew otherwise.

Channel 1 and 11 will interfere with each other when they are on the same board.

If you set both to B mode it should help with the self interference.

We have done extensive testing with two radios in the same board, set to channels 1 and 11. If you try to transmit continuously on radio 1, radio 2 will act like its channel is busy and wait until radio 1 stops transmitting. All data will stop on radio 2 until radio 1 has finished.

We tested with R52Hn, R2n, and ubiquiti XR2. Same results.

There are no CPU resource issues. Our testing never resulted in more than 15% cpu busy.

You will only see this if you contrive a test (or your application requires) radio 1 to transmit continuously. This is unusual, so most users set their
radios to channels 1 and 11 and it appears to work fine. However, what’s really happening is that the two radios are, to some extent, sharing the available bandwidth in the transmit direction.

That close together with near 20dB transmit, a scan will show the other card at -20 to -30, just completely over powers the other card.

Any time I’ve had one card see the other at anywhere near -20 I’ve had interference problems, even when using the 5GHz band with 200+ MHz of difference between the channels.

Has anyone had any success using EMI shielding between the boards and rf cables when using dual rf cards on the rb 433 ?

Was ANI enabled during these tests?

No, ANI was not enabled. Do you think that might help?

Maybe this is a 2.4ghz thing, i have many 433 boards with all slots filled with 5ghz cards and as normis says no serious problems at all. Maybe poor quality pigtails , cards or some other element is causing interference between the cards

I use RB433AH with 3 radio cards in each. Usually 1 2.4 and 1 900 and 1 5ghz with no problems. Some have 2 5ghz and 1 2.4 with no problems. I use to have some with 2 2.4 and did not have problems that I traced to the radios.

Not necessarily. I just wonder if that is ANI behavior..