Understanding CCQ and Troubleshooting a New Link

RouterOS General
1

I’ve setup a 5Ghz link 5 miles out to a new tower site and am having some connection issues.

When I view Tower 2’ connection to Tower 3 signal I see the following values:
Signal Strength: -69dBm
Tx Signal Strength: -74dBm
Signal to Noise: 33dB
Tx/Rx CCQ: 25/100%

Virtually ALL hardware on this AP/Link site is brand-new;
LMR-400
Coaxial Surge
ARC 23dB flat panel 5Ghz
MMCX to NF pigtail
RB/333
XR5

Other Readings
“Wireless Tables > Interfaces > wlan1 > Status”
Overall Tx CCQ: 25%
Ack. Timeout: 71 us
Noise Floor: -102dBm

My current wireless configuration is:

 0  R name="wlan1" mtu=1500 mac-address=00:15:6D:63:94:04 arp=enabled disable-running-check=no interface-type=Atheros AR5413 radio-name="Tower 2 <--> 3" 
      mode=ap-bridge ssid="GigaNetP2P" area="" frequency-mode=manual-txpower country=united states antenna-gain=0 frequency=5800 band=5ghz-turbo 
      scan-list=default rate-set=configured supported-rates-a/g=6Mbps basic-rates-a/g=6Mbps max-station-count=2007 ack-timeout=dynamic tx-power-mode=default 
      noise-floor-threshold=default periodic-calibration=default periodic-calibration-interval=60 burst-time=120 dfs-mode=none antenna-mode=ant-a 
      wds-mode=dynamic wds-default-bridge=Network wds-default-cost=100 wds-cost-range=50-150 wds-ignore-ssid=no update-stats-interval=disabled 
      default-authentication=yes default-forwarding=yes default-ap-tx-limit=0 default-client-tx-limit=0 proprietary-extensions=post-2.9.25 hide-ssid=no 
      security-profile=Network_WPA2_Profile disconnect-timeout=3s on-fail-retry-time=100ms hw-retries=4 preamble-mode=both compression=no allow-sharedkey=no

Prior to the above settings I tried 20Mhz & 10Mhz channel width but link reliability and throughput were very poor.
Why 40Mhz channel width is working better I am unsure but my bandwidth tests indicate a substantial increase of throughput capacity, when using 20Mhz channel width the most throughput I could expect would be 950Kbps and 10Mhz was shorter of that mark where-as 40Mhz is providing a stable 6MB throughput capacity.

What does CCQ pertain to and how would I use the readings to better troubleshoot the link to pinpoint which end is actually causing me problems.

Thanks for the help

Regards

2

giganet -

Well it is hard to say which end is really the issue but looking at it (if I have this right) from Tower 2;

When I view Tower 2’ connection to Tower 3 signal I see the following values:
Signal Strength: -69dBm
Tx Signal Strength: -74dBm
Signal to Noise: 33dB
Tx/Rx CCQ: 25/100%

This says that it is receiving from Tower 3 a 100% or virtually no errors. However it also says that the TX from Tower 2 (to Tower 3) this has a 25% quality or in other words a VERY large error rate.
I say it is hard to tell because we don’t know what else you have on Tower 2 or 3. If you have other 5ghz equipment or if there is some other high power RF equipment very close by.
You may want to try other 5ghz channels. You can also do a survey and scans from Tower 2 to see what already maybe in use. There is some wireless equipment (Trango and Motorola come to mind) that don’t necessarily register with a survey scan but a freq usage scan will generaly show parts of the band being used.

I also see that you have that 5db difference in TX vs RX power that I have seen so many times on the RB333 series. I do not have an explanation for that - I have a few like that myself and can’t explain that with the exact same hardware (antennas and cables and RF cards) that there is a difference of 5db sometimes more… It is well docuemented here in the forums but I have never seen an explanation.

The above should at least give you a starting point - let us know what you find…

R/

3

Thanks for the reply GalaxyNet…

Sunday morning I climbed tower 2 and replaced the RB/532 with RB/333.
Now my Tx/Rx CCQ at both ends are 100/100% and the Tx/Rx Signal
are both solid -64 with a 36dBm SNR.

Kinda weird, but I was forced to replace the RB/532 as after a re-boot it went stupid
and lost all routing capacity.

Thank you for your Help

Regards