Wireless Access

I have been tasked to attempt to use wireless to extend a network connection to a small guard shack for a VoIP phone and computer I will use bridge mode. I have had good results with a 350 feet point to point mesh bridge using 2 Mimo Yagi antennas I was able to get about 250 Megabit.

    This other location which is a power plant I can't get a direct line of sight shot between the 2 antennae’s and the distance is 2500 feet. What I have to do is point to point mesh 100 feet from a building to a pole where a security camera is then a second point to point mesh which is 2500 feet to the guard shack. My question is how well does the Aruba mesh work with a mesh point between the portal and a 2nd mesh point (child a mesh node). I'm concerned about the power settings of the middle mesh access point I plan on using duel polarity parabolic dishes 34 DBI L-com Item # HG4958DP-34D. This middle AP power settings will have to be adjusted so both 2500 feet and 100 feet distance might cause a problem. I'm wondering if I add a 2nd mesh point access point connect the Ethernet port together will it work in bridge mode that way both radios can power setting can me adjusted independently  (Mesh portal > Mesh point E0 to Mesh portal E0 mounted on a pole > Mesh point E0 > Voip/computer) powered with 2 midspan injectors. My wifi network is controllers with 6.4.4.14 code I want to use AP-274 I included a goodle map of the outdoor location

First, the use of any non-Aruba antennas is not supported by Aruba and is an FCC violation (as the antenna is not certified with the AP, as such is not a system). Also important is that a 34dB antennas will violate FCC regulations and will subject you to some pretty heft fines should it be discovered or reported.

You do not need an antenna with that much gain, You can use a 14dBi antennas just fine (we test out to and byond 4mi using the ANT-4x4-5314). 

Your BEST bet will be to first use a controller, and then do two separate PtP links (from main property to mid-point, and another at the midpoint to the guard shack, for a total of 4 APs). This will give you the best thorughput with the lowest latency. But you cannot do this with Instant currently. For costing purposes, I would actually recommend qty4 AP-367s for this terminated on a controller. You can use 2 midspans as you mention, or you could buy a 2-port industrial POE hub that would power and bridge both APs in the middle. 

If this is in the middle of nowhere are you don't have a ton of interference and don't need the highest throughput, you could likely get away with three AP-275s (AP-365 won't likely have reliable enough connection on the 2500+ ft link. But I think the 4x367 will outperform the 3xAP-275 handily since the 367 solution will not have the multi-hop penalty/cost. 

So you do suggest using 2 Ap's in the middle bridged together, but the AP-367 is that compatable with code 6.4.x.x we will be going to 6.4.4.16 we can't go to 6.5 yet beacuse we have 100 AP-125's in service still. As far as the FCC violation your talking about power but that can be adjusted down legal level that's why I was saying I wanted 2 AP's in the middle. If you think I don't need that much gain to go 1/2 a mile should be able to get decent band width using 14DBI antenna's I would go with that I have another controller that I can use which does have 6.5.x code on it since I'm doing bridge mode the it would only be used for configuration.

You're correct, the 36x are not compatible with 6.4, so you will need to stay within the 27x range. 

The issue with the higher gain antennas are:

a) They are not FCC approved for our hardware. FCC requires products to be approved 'as a system', so we test and submit all our antennas with all our APs, but no other 3rd party antennas. Cisco and all other WLAN vendors are the same. 

b) At 34dB, that means the AP *could* exceed the max EIRP in some bands (if the AP power is set to even 2dB) and *absolutely will* in other bands (even if the radio is set to 0dB/1mW). 

c) 34dB antennas have beamwidths on the order of 5-6deg, which is increbily narrow and unnecessary at these ranges. The high gain antenna will result in a large amount of RF overdriving the receiver and causing a decrease in performance. 

Anything under 1km will work with a 60deg to 30deg antenna (we do 30Mbps at 7mi and 70Mbps at 4mi with the 30deg antenna on a 274).

Two APs in the middle will ensure maximum thorughput and the most efficient datapath (esp if the intent is for voice). With only one AP in the middle, you will have to deal with a multi-hop mesh which will double the latency and cut the throughput in half, but you will also need to set an RTS/CTS threshold to avoid hidden node issues between the two far endpoints, which will decrease performance and add a slight bit more latency to the path. With four APs and two distinct and separate point to points running on separate channels, the datapath is linear and not impacted by the hop (impact is approx 1-2ms).

See attached for a quick and dirty graphic that is exactly what you are looking at. And four AP-277s will be THE most efficient topology, as you won't have to worry about mounting APs and antennas or weatherization or antenna cables, just mount, point, and shoot. 

You can also use something like these two products to provide power and interlink between the two mid-point APs on the pole, with an outdoor industrial rated multiport POE injector. 

https://www.microsemi.com/products/poe-systems/pd-9002gho

https://www.microsemi.com/products/poe-systems/outdoor-poe-switch

Attachment(s)

AOS Linear Mesh.pdf   107 KB 1 version

 I have had some experience with the AP-277 it's a very good AP but it has a wide 80HxV Deg antenna would that be good enough to go 2500 feet? That would cut down on lot of work and I could get this installed faster I don't want to invest all that time and money and get 2-3 megabit at the guard shack. I do have another small controller I'm using for a few RAPS I could terminate 367 on it has version 6.5 since this will all be bridge mode the 377 has 4x4 radio would allow for higher bandwidth?

The Linear mesh document is very good information thanks. 

277 PtP @ 1KM is anywhere from ~80Mbps to 250Mbps (HT20 through HT40 resp) in clean RF, expect half that in noisy environments. 277 is fine for that distance.

A 367 PtP will be around 75% of that number (60Mbps to 200Mbps roughly) but will be signifianctly less expensive.

37x APs are not released nor are they shipping yet (more info will be released soon, price list in Nov-ish, shipping in Dec/Jan) but they will ONLY run on AOS 8.3 which is not due out until Dec. 

Thanks for this post. This is great information and I have almost identical setups including running p2p to guard shacks using 277s. We have several 277 P2P but our longest is only 1000 ft. They have been solid for the most part. Our only issue is anytime something happens to the controller (reboot, link issue) they go down. Looks like the recommended solution to this is to run a standalone controller on site for the P2Ps? Would love to see your results after you have this set up. 

Also your picture looked super familiar. Turns out our plants are neighbors. :)

I was thinking the same thing running a small controller which I have a couple of RAPs running on since we are not tunneling traffic I can put that controller anywhere. What kind of speed do you get with the 277 at 1000 feet?

Note if you are running in bridge mode for your mesh APs you can extend the timers on the mesh to keep the links and APs up for up to 24 hours of controller downtime.

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@kell490 wrote:

I was thinking the same thing running a small controller which I have a couple of RAPs running on since we are not tunneling traffic I can put that controller anywhere. What kind of speed do you get with the 277 at 1000 feet?

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The 277 ptp is actually closer to 900 feet but here are the stats I have for it:

(mcisbaruba1) #show ap active | include apkys-whse
apkys-whse-portal AP-KYS-WHSE 1.1.1.1 0 0 MPP:VHT:165/31.5/31.5 277 ME 10d:22h:30m:50s N/A
apkys-whse-point AP-KYS-WHSE 1.1.1.2 0 0 MP:VHT:165/31.5/31.5 277 ME 10d:22h:31m:31s N/A

Mesh Cluster Name: kys-whse
---------------------------
Name Mesh Role Parent Path Cost Node Cost Link Cost Hop Count RSSI Rate Tx/Rx Last Update Uplink Age #Children
---- --------- ------ --------- --------- --------- --------- ---- ---------- ----------- ---------- ---------
apkys-whse-point Point (AC) apkys-whse-portal 1 0 0 1 38 6/6 3m:3s 1d:0h:35m:31s 0
apkys-whse-portal Portal (AC) - 0 1 0 0 0 - 3m:3s 10d:22h:33m:25s 1

See attached for our internal performance values based on US Regulatory. These are not guaranteed at every site or every region, based on interference, country regulatory, etc. 

Attachment(s)

11ac Mesh Performance - PtP.pdf   313 KB 1 version

Do you have any test using the AP-275 I setup a mesh with AP-275 didn't have very good results very low RSSI distance was about 75 feet.

Is there an CLI command to see actual mesh speeds?

275 to 275 at 75 feet should be very strong RSSI. Check AP radio power and any environmental obstacles/blockages.

show ap mesh neighbor is a more responsive command. However, the reported rate will change based on a number of factors. The most important metric is the mesh link RSSI (which is actual SNR). Should be above 30 and not above 50. 

I incorreclty stated the distance just guessing but I used google maps it's actually 275 feet one side is an AP-275 the other side is a AP-114 with a panal antenna I'm not sure which antenna it's a wide angle antenna I'm going to add another AP to the portal side dedicate it to the PTP mesh instead of using that other one.

Excellent performance graphs. Do you happen to have performance graphs for AP377 or at least statistics at differnet ranges? I would like to know if they can achieve 1gb in clean RF environment clear line of site with no fresnel impact. Specifically I am looking at under 100m but curios on other ranges. 

AP387 graphs if you happen to have them too :-)

Attached. 387 PtP is approx 850-950Mbps from 10m to 400m (depending on TCP or UDP, resp). If you have optimized tools (Ixia hardware) you can make it do right up to 1G, but adapter overhead will take some off the top from regular devices, which is what I test with. 

Attachment(s)

11ac Wave2 Mesh Performance.pdf   342 KB 1 version