Wireless board wears out - problems with low signal

RouterOS Beginner Basics
1

This is another cent of contribution to newcomers.

In our experience, enGenius or R52 (both normal and H) simply stop working correctly. It’s like they wear out, get tired, or so.

Mostly this effect is independent of the time they are in use. (Of course older miniPCI are more prone to problems).

You can check if this is the case, for example, is the overall registration signal of clients get some dBs weaker. Although it seems everything is OK, clients are simply not running anymore.

Sometimes you get calls from customers complaining but there is no apparent, detectable problem.

Don’t waste time. Change the miniPCI. If this doesn’t help, change the whole board.

Of course this is costly. But the outage time and disatisfaction might be worse.

Then check the hardware clamly in the office.

2

this usually happens during storms, when radio cards can get destroyed by lightning or static. isolate your boxes and install proper grounding

3

hapened to me once, no storm and no card destroyed. It wasn’t R52, it was a Gigabyte and the signal to all clients drop abouat 10dBi. Change the card and worked again. The older card is still working now :smiley:

4

I had a similar issue with R52 card at my house, the board and card were in a 19 DBi Rotenna.. all of the sudden signal dropped about 10 db, and really bad CCQ. Switched the card, all back to normal.

Storm? Nope, Sunny, not a cloud in the sky. I figured it was static charge, BUT the only thing near there was the neighbors tree that grew and was rubbing very slightly on the pole that the equipemt was on. I trimmed the neigbors tree so that it wasn’t rubbing, but the XR5 card I have in there now has never had a problem.

This was a while ago, about 1 year, and at the time when I searched forum posts there seemed to be a quite significant number of similar card problems.

The mast was NOT grounded. Yup, I was lazy. The quick story is that when I crawled through the attic pulling the cat 5 cable and light with me about 30 feet, and it was HOTTTTT in the attic. 32 Deg C outside, in the attic all I know is that I was sweating from places I didn’t know could sweat. So when I relized I forgot a ground cable… I said no way I’m going back in there, and it was never done.

Don’t worry, I’m not a WISP :slight_smile:

Added: That same R52 cannot connect to an AP in the same house, BUT the scan says the AP has a strong signal. Assuming the TX of the card is dead so the AP never “hears” it.