Hello, I have to create two long distance links; one is 22 km and second is 16km, 100% optical visibility.
I am planning to use Routerboard 500 with Atheros 5213 cards.
I need 6 mbit throughput on these links.
Question is:
Will these links work with 22dbi antennas on both ends, or do I need something bigger ?
(there is no space for dishes bigger than 90cm at central location)
Have you tried doing a site survey? If your comm’s is better than 80% you shouldn’t have a problem, but if it drops below 50%, get better antena’s and even AMPs. I find a DISH with a FEED works much better on long distances. Only problem is it is extremely hard to line them up propperly, but the links i’ve done so far works like a bomb, and can’t recall one link dropping due to weather change. Go to http://www.poynting.co.za and http://www.miro.co.za to see different options for antena’s!
Regards, Giepie
In my experience, if you only have a moderate noise level, you should be able to pull off 5Mbps+ on the 16km link, but you would probably need higher gain antennas for the 22km shot. I have gotten 2Mbps at 2.4GHz about 20km away from one of our towers that has a 15dB omni, while pointing a 24dB grid antenna at it and shooting over the top of a fairly RF-noisy town…
Hitek
Hi again! I want to mention something I forgot about in my previous post. Before we started using ADSL for our backbone, we had a signal beamed to us from someone who had Diginet 128k. The link was 46km’s away if I recall correctly. All we had was a huge grid (22dB) and we used 2.4GHz 250mw radios. It was a very stable link with not too bad pings. What happened was my oposition had this link and HS, so we decided to merge, I got rid of the 128k diginet line, got 512k ADSL (currently 4 512k ADSL Lines) and 2 months ago I bought out my oposiiton completely. hehe
It sometimes help to have a look at what other wireless equipment is in your area. See if they are horizontal or vertical etc, and make sure you use the oposit. I know exactly what frequencies (2.4 or 5.8 and what channels) my oposition are using, and they know mine, so we don’t ever clash. Just a thought!