Hi,

Following the EEC(06)04 recommendations, spanish gov opened yesterday the 5725-5795 and 5815-5855 bands.

It has been published in the "Ministerio de Industria" website (local regulator for spectrum).

It is great news, as we have up to 36dBm EIRP to use in PtP configurations. We can now get a bit farther!

Time to roast some chickens!

Please be aware of the law before deploying links on these frequencies.

ECC recomendation states that the equipment must be compliant with EN302502.

This means a more tighten spectral mask, DFS(v2) and TPC.

As far as I know RouterOS is not compliant with this yet.

Please be aware of the law before deploying links on these frequencies.

These 'new' frequencies are already used by some operators here in Spain..., and with higher eirps allowed up to now. (Almost every operator in Europe working with ubnt equipments (sadly enough the bulk these days..) are already surpassing eirp limits manyvolds.... And lets face it. Who tunes the installed equipments down to get a lower performance only to comply the regulatons? Most countries hardly have any controlling body anyway and the competition is harsh.....)

It's about 1,5 year ago I found out that running a scan in MT on un-regulatory freq's several operators used already highly illegal freq's these days. The whole available band that MT ROS can handle is used.... on the high end, but also on the bottom end... and all with higher than allowed power. (And no DFS or TPC. These systems would make any operator's network completely unreliable....)

So, although this is good news, I am certainly going to use the new frequencies, not a lot will change...

Please be aware of the law before deploying links on these frequencies.

ECC recomendation states that the equipment must be compliant with EN302502.

This means a more tighten spectral mask, DFS(v2) and TPC.

As far as I know RouterOS is not compliant with this yet.

I don't know about DFS version 2 but since all radio cards of MT and others than can be used have EC approval and ROS has DFS (see manual) I am not fully agreeing on this.

TPC is a farce, see my previous point. Who is going to notice/denounce/control this if operator is really using it?
i'll bet 75% of present operators in some countries are working with higher eirpps because it is possible and it makes working much more easy and there is hardly any control.
It's like everybody has cars nowadays that can easy and with comfort do more than the national speed limits. Who is the first to claim he never drives faster than allowed? (And in some countries we DO have police checking this....) Wisp's are not any different than car owners...

will next release include these changes, ?

Please be aware of the law before deploying links on these frequencies.

ECC recomendation states that the equipment must be compliant with EN302502.

This means a more tighten spectral mask, DFS(v2) and TPC.

As far as I know RouterOS is not compliant with this yet.

I don't know about DFS version 2 but since all radio cards of MT and others than can be used have EC approval and ROS has DFS (see manual) I am not fully agreeing on this.

TPC is a farce, see my previous point. Who is going to notice/denounce/control this if operator is really using it?
i'll bet 75% of present operators in some countries are working with higher eirpps because it is possible and it makes working much more easy and there is hardly any control.
It's like everybody has cars nowadays that can easy and with comfort do more than the national speed limits. Who is the first to claim he never drives faster than allowed? (And in some countries we DO have police checking this....) Wisp's are not any different than car owners...

Hello Rudy

While I do understand your point, I do not agree with it.

One thing is going with your car to the freeway and drive at 200km/h, another thing is going with a tractor to the freeway. Tractors are not allowed in freeways!!!

All Radio Equipment that operate in 5150~5350 and 5470~5725 must comply with EN301893 inside EU.

When the local authority of communications requests you to prove that your Radio Equipment is compliant, you need to provide them the CE Declaration of Conformity where it states all the Articles that had been tested and is compliant with. And if they request, you need to provide them the lab docs that prove your Radio Equipment has been tested.

For the 5.8Ghz Band the Radio Equipment must comply with EN302502, and you need to have this on the CE doc and the lab tests.

I dont know how it is in Spain, but in my case to be able to set up a link working on the 5.8GHz band, first I need to fill a doc and send it our local radio authority specifying the locations where we want to build a link, which Radio Equipment we will use, send them the CE doc of the Radio Equipment, the antenna specifications and the radiation diagram patterns. Only after receiving an authorization from them we are allowed to turn on the equipment. And this is all free of charge.

You can search in this forum and you will find a couple of topics requesting support for the 5.8GHz band.

As an advice please invest a little bit of your precious time and read what are there EN´s are and how to protect yourself in case you get inspected by your local radio authority

EN301893 http://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_en/301 ... 10601p.pdf

EN302502 http://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_en/302 ... 10201p.pdf

EIRP means "equivalent isotropically radiated power".
And 36 dBm EIRP is nothing spectacular since e.g. a Nanostation M5 offers some 28dBm output power and a 16 dBi antenna gain, thus offering 44dBm EIRP, which is way over that legal limit. Not talking about a Rocket with a dish, which surpasses 55 dBm EIRP...

So don't be to happy, and there will be no chicken roasting. Only a lot of interference from home users with dual band WiFi on their laptops.

Like it or not, the 2.4 and 5 GHz WiFi bands were not designed for backbone distribution, but for general user access.
Distribution should be done using commercial frequencies (UMTS/HSDPA, 3.5GHz, 18 GHz, 24GHz), since ISPs are making money on them using a public limited resource.

@jorgeAmaral

Jorge, If I see wifi antenas as cars, I don't understand where the tracktor became involved?

My point is that where equipments have certain capabilities humans (so also WISP's! We're still human, although my wife dare to wonder at times! ) tend to use the max settings to give best results. Even if the law might state different.
Hence everywhere you'll find systems, instalations or in this respect radio's, used outside limits set by authorities. Some countries are more strickt than others though in maintaining the law.

(Spain, sometimes referred to as `cowboy countr' has little control systems in place to uphold the law.... Spain is beeing covered with a blanket of nano stations and ubnt Rockets in the towers by many providers. I'll bet ample of these are regulatory domain limited... )

In regard to your remark about CE approval, these are type approvals for equipments. The whole idea is that if wifi equipments bare the approval mark, you can use them in the license exempt radio band they are made for. No need for permissions or to tell the authority where to put your wifi stuff ("Sir, left corner beside my TV set, is that ok?")
You should set your stuff to the country where you use it and the better stuff than even gives you the option to set all cable losses and antenna gains so you can legally use the max. that is allowed and be a nice law abiding citizen.
Sadly enough wifi operators as us can't build networks this way profitably. Legal 5Ghz (and 2,4Ghz) is just not good enough to build wider area covering networks. Still they pop up like mushrooms everywhere.... how come? If you turn it around. If all providers in this country would work according the reg. domain settings, 3/4 will probalby loose so many clients they'd go bankrupt overnight.....

I really appreciate you giving us the info on the regulations and the different EN docs, saves me a lot of searching. Knowing what is allowed and what is not is always a great asset if you are trying to stay within the law, or it is nice to know exactly when you are not....

But to be honest, inspection of a local radio authority to see if I use a proper fishrod is of a far lesser worry to me then my competition fishing in my pond with handgranates....
(Oh yeah, the handgranates have been reported. As reward we have been questioned about the size of the hooks we'd use...... Waste of time and energy....)

So, in respect of this all I see to my frustration more and more cheap but powerfull radio's becoming available and taken in use by many parties. Where some years ago I could easily run a 5ghz network without too much problems, one of my main day to day network management tasks is keeping my networks as free of interferences and degrading due this as possible. So, I welcome these new frequencie becoming available. I'm going to use them as soon as I can. Bu it only buys me one or two more years before yet again the spectrum is filled.
(802.11ac is going to be used for backhauls. One of its practical limits, available bandwith, is by this extra spectrum, reduced. So it becomes more attractive to use it, and so it will. Within 2/3 years we are all screaming for more spectrum yet again.....)

EIRP means "equivalent isotropically radiated power".
And 36 dBm EIRP is nothing spectacular since e.g. a Nanostation M5 offers some 28dBm output power and a 16 dBi antenna gain, thus offering 44dBm EIRP, which is way over that legal limit. Not talking about a Rocket with a dish, which surpasses 55 dBm EIRP...

So don't be to happy, and there will be no chicken roasting. Only a lot of interference from home users with dual band WiFi on their laptops.

Like it or not, the 2.4 and 5 GHz WiFi bands were not designed for backbone distribution, but for general user access.
Distribution should be done using commercial frequencies (UMTS/HSDPA, 3.5GHz, 18 GHz, 24GHz), since ISPs are making money on them using a public limited resource.

Licence for ptmp are too expensive wisps would not exist if they had to pay these prices. Public limited resource is being used to give the public services where they might not exist otherwise. this in my book is a good use of public resources.

It's funny to see that were WiMax as licensed (mainly) 'last mile' solucion (and thus costly) it is the free Wifi that is pushing Wimax in corners were it will probably fade away in history as a sistem 'that didn't make it'.
The freq's used and mend for Wimax should be made available at low prices for rural last mile solutions with Wifi so WISP (and not the 'big' telco's) could use these for backhauling without the risk PtmP or domestic use is going to eat that bandwith.

Please be aware of the law before deploying links on these frequencies.

These 'new' frequencies are already used by some operators here in Spain..., and with higher eirps allowed up to now. (Almost every operator in Europe working with ubnt equipments (sadly enough the bulk these days..) are already surpassing eirp limits manyvolds.... And lets face it. Who tunes the installed equipments down to get a lower performance only to comply the regulatons? Most countries hardly have any controlling body anyway and the competition is harsh.....)

It's about 1,5 year ago I found out that running a scan in MT on un-regulatory freq's several operators used already highly illegal freq's these days. The whole available band that MT ROS can handle is used.... on the high end, but also on the bottom end... and all with higher than allowed power. (And no DFS or TPC. These systems would make any operator's network completely unreliable....)

So, although this is good news, I am certainly going to use the new frequencies, not a lot will change...

If user does not abide regulations then the vendor itself will act. For example in case of Ubiquity they are stating that:

Version 4.0.3-Service (28/03/2013)
----------------------------------

- New: Remove AP wireless mode in 5GHz products for EU countries/Switzerland due to EU regulatory requirements

(http://dl.ubnt.com/firmwares/XS-fw/v4.0.3/changelog.txt)
I wonder what it took for them to do that and does the MT follow suite?

If user does not abide regulations then the vendor itself will act. For example in case of Ubiquity they are stating that:

Version 4.0.3-Service (28/03/2013)
----------------------------------

- New: Remove AP wireless mode in 5GHz products for EU countries/Switzerland due to EU regulatory requirements

(http://dl.ubnt.com/firmwares/XS-fw/v4.0.3/changelog.txt)
I wonder what it took for them to do that and does the MT follow suite?

Well, if you interpreted this as they would not sell any AP able units to Europe anymore, that would basically cut them out of this market.
Who wants a network build from a manufacturer that can't deliver an AP? It would straight away make their propietairy tdma (airmax) useless. No, I don't think so. And yes, I'd wonder too why that is stated in their firmware revision history.

And to come back to cars; Ferraries, Lambo's etc. are sold everywhere. I haven't heard of speedlimiters build in by vendors because they CAN do more than the national regs.

The same counts for ubnt, or any other. The vendor is covered by stating in their manuals (what they all do) that users by not setting the proper national regulatory domain settings for the power they might be conflict with such national regs. So they specifically leave it to the user.

If user does not abide regulations then the vendor itself will act. For example in case of Ubiquity they are stating that:

Version 4.0.3-Service (28/03/2013)
----------------------------------

- New: Remove AP wireless mode in 5GHz products for EU countries/Switzerland due to EU regulatory requirements

(http://dl.ubnt.com/firmwares/XS-fw/v4.0.3/changelog.txt)
I wonder what it took for them to do that and does the MT follow suite?

Well, if you interpreted this as they would not sell any AP able units to Europe anymore, that would basically cut them out of this market.
Who wants a network build from a manufacturer that can't deliver an AP? It would straight away make their propietairy tdma (airmax) useless. No, I don't think so. And yes, I'd wonder too why that is stated in their firmware revision history.

And to come back to cars; Ferraries, Lambo's etc. are sold everywhere. I haven't heard of speedlimiters build in by vendors because they CAN do more than the national regs.

The same counts for ubnt, or any other. The vendor is covered by stating in their manuals (what they all do) that users by not setting the proper national regulatory domain settings for the power they might be conflict with such national regs. So they specifically leave it to the user.

I just flashed a NS5 with that given firmware and indeed no AP mode is available anymore. I wonder what regulation they are talking about and how does the MT will handle it?

hmm, don't know. It looks more like they removed AP from their 'non-airmax' platform (fw. v4. series). I can't find similar removal for their airmax platform (fw. v5. series). So its probably more a move to pursuade 'old' stuff users to go to the new platform.

But I think we're drifting off topic now...

@Rudy: About tractor comparison.

In MTCNA you learn that for RouterOS to be compliant with your country regulations you need to go to wireless, select your country, and select or regulatory domain and specify your antenna gain or manual-txpower and select the proper txpower without exceeding the EIRP limits. RouterOS is only compliant while inside "manual-txpower or regulatory domain and the proper country selected". The only way you can operate RouterOS in the 5.8GHz is selecting super-channel mode. While RouterOS does work on the 5.8GHz band this does not mean it is compliant. It´s your responsibility and not MikroTik if you run a RouterOS device on 5.8GHz band. Resuming: All low cost 5GHz equipment on the market (from all major vendors) do not have the certifications to work on the 5.8GHz band.

I see the 5.8GHz band with some benefits:

It´s only available for BFWA, so you will not have interference from indoor 5GHz AP´s and all consumer equipment that work on the 5150~5725MHz.

There are only a couple of vendors that support EN302502 and these are quite expensive. So this means that this band will not be very used.

With 36dBm we can easily deploy 20km links and if needed you can request your radio authority to use higher gain antennas (in rural areas) and push these to 40km!!!

Most of the equipment that is on the field running on 5GHz band only complies with EN301893, so for outdoor usage can operate only between 5500-5700MHz. If you find an equipment working on a frequency that is not allowed and you are from a northern europe country probably you would denounce this, but as latin the more probable is to do the same thing

@Ivoshiee

The only difference that I know between AP and Station mode is that for AP it must have DFS enabled while for station it´s optional.
There have been a couple of revisions on EN 301893, mainly because problems detected in the range 5600-5650Mhz. DFS needs to act differently in this range on these latest revisions.

I agree about RouterOS is not compliant with the new available bands yet. As someone else already wrote, we probably will see an update bringing these withing the related country setting. But I can already go to 5825 in ROS. Just pick the unregulated country setting....

Beeing not able to step beyond legal limits if you set your equipments to your country regulations is inherent to the country setting. But you don't have to be a magician to find that several settings (like DFC) can be left unused and power levels be set to max. just by not choosing the national regulations settings.
(Tipical school example: Set 2,4Ghz stuff to Japan to stay a bit out of all these home devices!)
Offcourse any course will tell you how to do the legal thing. Any driving school teaches you to obey the speed limits.....

I am originally from a northern europe country, so yes I have been raised to do the things like they should. But doing business in a latin country now for 10 years and trying to survive amids a crisis you'll soon find you have to go with the flow to survive. If everybody else steps out of the legal box, you have nothing left to do the same. Make sure you don't step on anyone else's toes and you'll live a long and 'il'-legal life.

Risk of beeing caught? I only found my competitors working in the 5000-5400Ghz band (yes, even below the 'indoor use only' part of the band) because we couldn't find any channels of them while the tower was definately there. I could see he uses MT's ROS like me so I started to 'play' a bit with the settings.....
Conclusion: As long as nobody complains about your 'out of the legal box' behaviour, its all possible. The only onces that might complain, are the onces that would actually use that freq. for the same reason as you do. I can't denounce anyone if I am not 100% legal myself. And so can't the oponent.

Using RouterOS with full legal settings (including DFC/Radar) basically makes your network completely useless.
ROS radar only works when you start the AP up. Once its set it is set. But if you build a network the last thing you want is that the frequency of your AP changes after a reboot. Because the new frequencie it goes to might be quiet at that particular moment in time (when booting and testing) but some hours later be a heavy congested frequency knocking clients of your tower.... Now imagine you and your 'collegues' are all law abeying network operators with watchdog enabled and DFC in place...? Your, and his, network will soon go bananas...

Power levels? If you have to maintain the national regs most present Wifi networks would inmediately be shrinked to below ecomonic sizes (small cells with little customers and need for much more towers thus immense increase in costs and more spectrum noise.)

Basically the theoratical industrial wifi regulators and founders are right. Wifi is basically only for indoor use and small outdoor. But look how much is done with Wifi in several countries. It's becoming a mayor industry and many small business see a change to make some money with it. In northern countries the use of Wifi is not that big because its not in the interest in both the major telcos and the governments so they use the effective regulatory police to control. But here in the south, the goverment is happy at least someone takes the effort to bring internet to the remote locations because the malor telcos don't. It is not in the interest of the Spanish goevernment to bring down the thousands of maybe illegal networks that are at least connecting parts of the population to the internet that were otherwise left in the dark.... So policing the ill use of wifi is not so much of a priority.....

(Spain only introduced speed camera's on the motorways some years ago because studies revealed that the average speed on Spanish motorways was higher than on the unlimited 'autobahn'! Politically this was becoming a bit embarrising toward the rest of Europe....)

@Ivoshiee

The only difference that I know between AP and Station mode is that for AP it must have DFS enabled while for station it´s optional.
There have been a couple of revisions on EN 301893, mainly because problems detected in the range 5600-5650Mhz. DFS needs to act differently in this range on these latest revisions.

Station has to follow the AP. So in station mode it won't work anyway.

I ever tried to use DFS (I always write it wrong, this time not) but its absolutely unworkable. Apart from the fact you don't want to have your AP jump to other frequencies because you don't know what that might bring you, the scanning and testing takes almost a minute during which no client can connect.
Imho DFS is a nice drawing table solution for a mere theoratical problem but in real life it is unworkable.

Its very simple: If my frequency use would interfere with an official weather radar, military or other (semi-)governmental station I am sure the regulatory police will be on my doorstep soon. But as long as that is not the case DFS would only react on my competitors choice of channels. I don't want him to control my frequency use. So much for DFS...