|
Thread Index WaveRider --- Ok, I'm impressed
Hi All, Steve Stroh came over the hill today and helped me do some testing of the new WaveRider gear. This had the new polling firmware (as shipped, no upgrades added by me). The first thing I noticed was that it has less propagation than I'd hoped. I had it set up in my office. The ap was about 3 blocks away shooting through the building, the fire station across the street, the railroad tracks, the grain elevator and a house or two. For a week the client radio sat on a desk with it's link light just blinking away. (solid light means link) Well, I had the 8db omni (and 30' or lmr400 coax) just taped to a 10' mast right on top of my noc. About half of the antenna was right along side the mast. We could only get a steady light at about a block away. Hmmmmm. Not so good. Sorry guys but I'm not impressed. Steve thought (and I agreed) that the antenna being so close to the mast was likely bleeding off a bunch of signal. Sooooo we pulled the whole thing down and took it up to another site of mine and taped the antenna to a fence post (at about a 30* angle - Hey, I never promised a FAIR test!!!!). We then hopped back in the car and sure enough, solid link light even with the antenna just laying in the back seat of the car! Even when we got behind the pumping station metal building. Much better. Headed down the hill (200 to 300' above town). Had the antenna in the car but didn't even get to the bottom of the hill and the solid light went back to blinking. Hrmph. Bummer. Shoulda got that bigger base station antenna. We got down the hill and a half mile down the road and still had a good link. rssi of 55ish. Steady light. So Steve sent Mitch an email using his yahoo account. Worked just fine. FTP downloads of 90KB/sec (not at all bad for a 2 meg radio that was now the second hop). We were able to get all the way to the end of the road, another 1/4 mile or so down the road. Turned the corner and lost the link, went to blinking again. Dang. Next we headed down to the golf course. It's got a lot of trees and is about a mile away. Non line of sight was a no go. Bummer. Well, we're using indoor antennas, a low gain omni etc. This is probably not unexpected right? OK, time to see how far it will go. We headed down the highway and then down a dirt road past the Cemetery. At 2 or so miles from the ap we lost signal. Hmmmm, what happens if we turn the antenna 90*? Nothing. Oh that's right, these indoor antennas are diversity antennas so polarization is a non issue. Just a darn blinky light instead of a solid one. Just for kicks I flipped the antenna over. Bang, got signal!! Nice steady light! Dang! I'd run ALL the tests with the antenna pointed 180* AWAY from the ap!!! Note to self: WaveRider antennas are dish shaped. The bowl goes to the ap and the hump goes away from the ap!!! That's better. Good ping times (our only test from here on out was a constant ping). We went another half mile or so down the road (as far as terrain would allow) and had a nice steady light IN the car and clear los otherwise back the 2.5 or so miles to the wpop. Much more like it! Time to call Mitch and ask a couple of questions. So we got him on the phone. We told him what we were doing and asked how that related to what we should expect. First off the antenna was, for sure, the wrong direction for the first tests. The radios are 350mw and with the coax and 8db omni we were probably at 31 to 32db (you can go up to 36). On the client side we had the 6db indoor antenna -coax los makes the client antenna basically a 4db antenna. Now I'm impressed. That far with basically no antenna! In the car even. Pretty cool. Then Mitch ruined my WHOLE day!!!! The link light has FOUR modes!!! Solid = great link. Fast blinking = good link. Slow blinking = poor link. NO light means NO signal!!! For a whole frikin week I'd been watching that link light blink away and never did try it!!! Antenna just sitting (upside down) on a desk!!!! "No way!!!" "Yes way" he said. OK, so NOW I'm impressed!!! Steve and I went back to the golf course. With the antenna pointed the right way and knowing how to read the signal meter we NEVER lost connection!!!! Trees, metal storage building etc. No problem. In the car??? No problem. We drove all over town. The only place we were able to constantly cause a total drop on pings (thus total loss of signal) was when we went behind TWO grain elevators AND a train full of intermodal containers. We could get through one of them. Don't forget that this was with what amounted to a 4db antenna!!! We drove all over town and almost nothing could stop this system. Often moving as little as 10 feet would bring the signal back in. Amazing. Tree, no sweat. Lots of trees, no sweat. House, no sweat. Lots of houses, no sweat. Lost of trees and houses, no sweat! Note to Mitch: Everything else we use has either multiple lights or just one that's on or off. Don't forget to make a BIG note so that we know what the light means ;-). Also, please put a sticker on the AP side of the antenna.... Guys, I've not been this excited about any gear since I got started. I'm constantly amazed at where I can get 2.4 to work, but this.... This is totally amazing. What we'd have seen with a real client antenna... Wowsers. Great job guys!!!! Hats off. Now I'm going to have to go find a market full of trees just so I can justify this cool new toy! A couple of notes. There is a hardware limit of about 6 miles. Timing issues according to Mitch (call us not the engineers next time Mitch ;-). The AP is a router and there's no way for it to NOT be a router. It's a half assed router too near as I can tell (I'm not much of a router guy but I know people who are and they are surprised at what had to be done on MY router to make this stuff work). The client radio has to be on the same network as the client computer (how many pcs can sit right behind the client radio????) as you can only have one network behind the ap. Now how we are going to handle 300 associated users with only a class c of addys I'm not sure ;-). The AP lists at $2700 and I *think* the client side is about $700 (Mitch???). I'd guess they'll get those prices down with time. I wonder about putting a single client radio at a house and feeding units two or three on either side of that via ethernet? I'd like to put this in for some of our local businesses, the price is right and I'd think interference issues will normally be much less of an issue. This ended up being longer than I thought it would but I thought you guys would like to here all of the details, good as well as the ones that make me look clueless ;-). I sure wish I had more time to play like this. It was great fun. The gear will now go to another town and will be tested where a 2.4 system failed due to trees (couldn't get one influential Ham running right). laters, marlon
Thread Index |
|
