Hi All,
I need a wireless bridge solution that allows to pass jumbo frames over a
distance of 3 miles, using the 5.8 GHz band. The original solution was a
Proxim Tsunami GX 200, but unfortunately it doesn't go beyond an MTU of 1536
bytes: we need at least 1544 bytes, ideally between 4470 and 9212 bytes
MTU. The handoff should be MM fiber, the desired throughput 200 Mbps.
Thanks,
Stefano
The Dragonwave would be my first choice too, but they are not in the 5.8GHz
band.
The Motorola PTP-600 has a 2000 byte MTU, but doesn't do multimode handoff.
What radio to get will come down to what you are willing to give up -- if
you are willing to drop the 5.8Ghz band and go with 11Ghz then the
Dragonwave is for you -- the new Horizon Quantum is amazing (and pretty
inexpensive when I priced it out)
Bridgewave isn't bad either - you can get to 1.25Gbps with some fiber
handoff.
Scott
To: Stefano Gridelli <sgridelli@gmail.com>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Date: 03/10/2010 02:23 PM
Subject: Re: Wireless Ethernet bridgeCheck out DragonWave:
-Mike
> Hi All,
>
> I need a wireless bridge solution that allows to pass jumbo frames over
a
> distance of 3 miles, using the 5.8 GHz band. The original solution was
a
Instead of the PTP600, you might try looking at the PTP800. Again, not 5.8 GHz but does up to 368 Mbps full duplex over the air interface, jumbo frames up to 9600 bytes, AES 128 or 256 bit encryption, 11, 18, 23, or 26 GHz depending on what regulatory agency you fall under. Will do fiber or copper handoff at gigabit speeds.
I also have two BridgeWave links installed. The older stuff (AR80-AES) won't do jumbo frames. The newer stuff (FlexPort-AES) will do jumbo frames to something like 9200 bytes. These links operate at 80 GHz. Both models have had issues but the support has been very good. Handoff is fiber on the older line and SFP (presumably fiber) on the newer line.
Neither are inexpensive. You're looking at about USD $32k or so for the BridgeWave radios per link. The PTP600 and 800 are about the same at USD $15k or so per link. Prices vary (wildly) with options.
Lab testing of the PTP600 yielded about 225 Mbps each way even though the advertised speed was closer to 150 Mbps each way. In the end, we ended up returning the PTP600 before it was installed, not because it was a substandard product, but rather because our landlord chose to make liberal use of the 5.8 GHz band for security cameras. I have no doubt that we would have closed the links at 5.8 GHz but it would have likely killed our landlord's camera network. Instead of causing problems, we chose to return the radios and go with the PTP800 which weren't available at the time we were investigating this radio solution.
Good luck on your search.
Ryan Wilkins
The motorola PTP 600 seems thus far the most valid solution. We want to
remain on ISM bands, because we don't want to take the burden of renewing
the license with FCC every x years ... we need something that once installed
requires the least maintenance effort possible.
We already have antennas and cables that work with the 5.8 GHz spectrum.
There's a distance of 3 miles between the two antennas and there's LOS
available.
The copper handoff could be solved with a media converter ...
I am also proposed an Exalt EX-5i at 200 Mbps. Does anybody have this
hardware installed and can share any experience had?
Thanks
We love the PTP600 platform and it works very well for our needs - as
good as any path profile has shown us.
Depending on the height of the tower, you can handoff via copper or via
multimode fiber (someone said it doesn't do multimode, we do it all the
time with their "fiber kits" from Motorola). In all of our installs we
use multimode and if the tower is short enough use cat5 as a backup
connection. I'm not 100% on the MTU size but I'm pretty sure it
supports at least "mini-jumbo". We are going to be pushing MPLS type
traffic carrying VPLS paths across PTP600's this year and when we looked
at any challenges we didn't find any on the surface....
Paul
We have used the 2.4GHz version of the Exalt radio - the EX-2.4i. We were fairly happy with it. The latency and jitter was great for a TDD radio, better than any I have seen. It was very reliable from a data-forwarding perspective. The management interface was nice when it worked, but the HTTP interface would lock up after extended periods of operation. We also got unusable values from some of the SNMP error/discard counters.
In the end we took it out due to the need for more bandwidth and some issues with intermittent interference (to be expected in 2.4GHz). If the specs meet your needs then it would probably be a good solution.
Joel Mulkey
CIO
Freewire Broadband
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