WISP Best Practices and Making Performance Better

Folks ! I am running a wireless ISP in India and I have approx. 300 home / commercial users,I have 2 towers, I have 5 sectors ( 3 vertical and 2 horizontal) installed on my tower with which my customers are connected. The performance so far is ok ( with minor latency issues). I need expert suggestions on how can we increase the number of customers connected per sector. You can also suggest a better routerboard and a wireless card or a technical way which can help me. Right now I have approx. 40-42 customers connected per sector.

Brief

  1. Suggest a method or device with which i can connect more number of customers per sector.

you can suggest a technology, a new sector or better quality, or a new routerboard or wireless card.

Awaiting Expert Suggestions.
Thanks,
Prashant Mishra

Dear Friends.. Please leave your comments on this post. Quit an important concern for almost all WISPs in the world. I am sure this will help us make our industry stronger.

Where are you located, landscape/topology/weather/building/apartment/cluster…and so on.
What is the speed you wish to give to users?
What will the users generally use?
Mails, surfing, torrents etc…

all these contrivute to your decision of hardware/software/tower

Hi, Thanks for the reply mate.

My Location is in India. We dont have any huge buildings or mountains / hills or large rivers in the the area.

I need assistance with the kind of Devices / Routerboard / Radios which can be installed on the tower to connect maximum number of 256kbps /512kbps /1Mbps customers with the sectors. Right now with a combination 433ah board and a Dbii Pro 20 card and a sector we are able to connect approx 40-45 customers and with 40-45 customers I mean there are 40-45 customers in the access list. I am looking for a hardware solution which can support more customers per sector.
Please suggest a viable solution.

Regards,
Prashant

nstream or nv2 should get you more than the standard 802.11 MAC.

More narrower beamwidth sectors.

After that, you need to pay more money for proprietary wireless protocol systems.

How many concurrent users do you have?
Do you have all 3 cards in 1 box? Try to have 3 separate boxes for 3 separate sectors

Keep the sectors at some difference. I mean not all at the same height.
Select different channels like 1, 6, 11 or 2, 7, 12

With more narrower beam width you mean if I am currently using 120’ sector then I should use 90’ sectors ?
I am ready to pay for proprietary wireless protocol.. please explain how to do it ?
Cant use N-Stream because the CPE’s are not Microtik. They are Ubiquitti Loco 2 Nanostations at the customers premises.

Thanks or the reply mahnet.

No I don’t have 3 cards in one box.
There are 3 boxes with 3 separate cards. The boxes have 433ah RB and Dbii Pro F20 Wireless Cards.
I have approx. 25-30 real time users connected to sectors (Concurrent)
3 Sectors are at same height but as the tower is quite broad therefore they are far from each other. not very close.
I am using separate channels.

Please suggest a stronger device that can hold more customers.. ?

You should consider using additional Bands (5GHz).
2,4GHz is very limited and crowded.

Dont mix gear of different vendors. Use nv2.

90 degree or 60 degree or 30 degree, just keep narrowing the beam-width to be able to have enough radios to handle your total number of clients.

By paying for a proprietary wireless protocol, I’m talking about replacing the AP and all CPEs to use something like Motorola’s Canopy system. I don’t have much personal experience with them, but proprietary silicon should be able to make better use of the spectrum.

If the CPEs are all Ubiquiti, you should probably use Ubiquiti APs. That may be an unpopular suggestion here. But, that is the cheapest way to get a TDMA protocol on your existing network. I’m not sure if the non-M series APs can do AirMax or if you would have to use a M series AP. You can still use MikroTik routers at the base of the tower.

CPU power can become important on the APs to handle many clients per AP.

This ubiquiti article has better descriptions of why you want a TDMA network. Most of the info on the benefits would apply just as well to NV2.

http://wiki.ubnt.com/How_Airmax_prevents_Collision_Collapse

I would recommend two things:

  1. Start replacing CPEs on one sector with MikroTik SXTs. Use the old NS2 for new customer on the other sectors.

  2. Put up at least one Ubiquiti AP, probably a RocketM2 or RocketTiM2 to get more CPU on the AP, to handle the old NS2 clients with Airmax enabled.

Once you replace all of the CPEs connected to the first MikroTik sector, you can enable NV2 and compare performance for yourself.