A few years ago, when the electrical utility trashed the 900 spectrum with “smart” meters, I did a forklift upgrade of a bunch of 900 PtMP with some old Wavion beamforming sectors talking to ubnt clients in 2.4. I was surprised that I got just about the same coverage that I had with 900 (Trango) and of course better throughput. Those original Wavions were b/g; I’ve since found a couple of .11n versions from the brief last gasp of Alvarion (R.I.P.) that did even better. Anybody know if anybody’s currently producing a beamforming 2.4 sector that will talk to standards compliant 11n radios?
I’m assuming that the beamforming saved this location—one tower plus a couple of other little nodes in a little spread out village in the middle of a dense National Forest of mixed tall evergreens and hardwood. I just don’t see how 2.4 could match the old 900 penetration otherwise, but maybe somebody can enlighten me. It wouldn’t be worth it to try and change out all the clients--more than a few are 50’+ up in trees. If there was an ePMP medusa in 2.4 and that sex-change from ubnt to ePMP worked it would be worth a try, but as far as I know Cambium's just doing medusa in 5GHz. With my other hand I'm working to see FTTH across the region and it looks like it'll probably happen within the next five or six years, so any serious wireless investment here doesn't make any sense. -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
