This thing looks great from the inside. I’m just guessing, but the photos i was able to take in Vienna tell some story. now here’s my theory: It is very likely this box is built around QCA6335 baseband, which has support 8 (!) phased array antennas. if you look closely, you can see the unpopulated power headers for the QCA6310 (most probably, i was never brave enough to pry the small squares out from their beds) RF stages - the red/black wires, 4 on the top, 4 on the bottom left side. the RF connectors are on the backside, and most probably only 3 of them are populated with the appropriate RF connector.
also, the silkscreen says 60Gx8 which is quite a hint that supports my theory.
i’d like to see real life results with this thing, especially with clients spaced so widely apart, they can connect only to separate antenna arrays.
i love the simplicity of this, love the excellent price point. the only thing i might change here would be to add a 2nd ethernet port, or a NBASE-T so we could later enjoy 1Gbps+ speeds if the modulation scheme will surpass MCS8, but that would surely increase the costs.
sub 6GHz is not always necessary. we have a reasonably big - 145 links in one of the networks - 60GHz routed mesh (with a different equipment) without any 5GHz backup links, without any problems.
I’d love to try 60ghz out in some of our busier areas mostly because 5ghz is super noisy.
How wide are the channels, and how much spectrum can be accessed by these devices? i.e. since each chip can only hand 8 stations (so thats 24 clients per wAP 60Gx3) how many of these could I comfortably run on a tower before interfering with each other?
My other concern is rain fade - our primary market at the moment is in a tropical area, and my 24ghz kits (AirFibers) have suffered total rain fade over just 2-3km (these should be good for 10+).
I would plan on doing 60ghz only within 500m of the base station, but at 500m in torrential rain can I expect downtime?
Wap has 3 Antenna Elements but uses only one Channel, the maximum is 8 Clients not 24.
All distances over 150m with WAP to WAP. Or WAP to sXT needs 5 GHz Backup, with LHG with more then 500m, but they need it too. So why in the hell they don’t make it useable? For my business it is impossible to offer connection that drops in rain or snow
For WAPs and mesh targeted hardware, it’s not that important, but LHGs should have had 5GHz backup from the beginning!
It’s a shame LHGs still doesn’t have backup radio. There is even place for all the RF chips on the board, but it’s not populated.
It probably failed to pass FCC tests or there is some similar stupid reason why it was never used (extra cost?!)…
But now that Ubiquity will offer 60+5GHz hardware, there is no reason why Mikrotik should stay behind and do nothing. Wake up!
mesh setups have short link lengths compared to p2p links. in our case the mean link length is 65m. the longest links are just over 270m long. more than 1/3rd are shorter than 50m.
rain and snow is no issue. the only killer thing is wet foliage or when the radome ices over [this last one is theoretic cause it did not happen during winther].
the client number is a limitation on the Qualcomm baseband. you can read about it here: http://www.atlantikelektronik.de/fileadmin/_templates/ATE/bilder/Newsletter/SX-PCEAD-Product-Brief.pdf
if you’d need more stations connecting simultaneously to the phased array antennas, you’ll need more basebands. the combo offered by the regular wap60G is a single baseband paired with a single antenna array. this one supports more antenna arrays, but this fact doesn’t magically squeezes more juice out of it. you’re still limited by the 1Gbps ethernet port and by the airtime. switching beamforming patterns takes up precious airtime, even up to 10%, when switching between 8 clients. the more clients you have connected, the more airtime you waste.
the other thing is, that in mesh situation you are also limited by the homes/buildings you can reach. your device will be close to them, so a FOV of 60 degrees will not give you more than 2-4 homes in rural environment. but if you consider that your next sector will be just 40-60m apart, this ain’t no issue. so you might not be able to squeeze that much customers into a single sector anyway.
I have gone full force the 60ghz units with these for RV campground installations for distribution to hotspot AP’s I will say I am so far disappointed int he x3.
I have only one installed that I ordered because the client only wanted limited devices on their main office. I have 8 clients trying to connect but only 5 are connecting Those that are connecting have a much lower RSSI (-65dB at 122M, -69dB at 200m) than if I had used the 60GAP where I would expect the signal to be in the -50’s. I was getting these type of signals on Wireless Wire kits before upgrading the firmware so I am assuming that the beamforming is not optimized in 6.46.1 for the x3… the TX Sector Info is empty for all stations.
My main problem is that I can not get 60G LGH to connect past 200m. I estimating the distance to be about 250m for one and only 220m for the others.
I will say within the distance, it does seem to be 180 degrees. Hoping a firmware update fixes this soon.
It works quite well for me running ROS 6.44.6 (long-term) - perhaps something broken in later releases?
LHG60-wAP60Gx3 distances like 500m work, but not much more as it becomes unreliable in very bad weather.
Good alignment needs a lot of patience. Also it would be nice to be able to connect many more than 8 stations per sector.
I am running 6.46.1 on both ends. When I go 240M from HG60-wAP60G at this distance I get -63dbi initially and it works itself up to about -57 with beamforming
Please provide arguments for what you strange said.
Mikrotik does not publish power, but both antennas have EIRP power below 40. WAP60Gx3 AP mode will have the same power as WAP60G. P.S. Info from MT support.
