Licensed Links

[taytrho]

How is price of SAF link compared against AF24 (Not HD) ? Is it way more expensive ? (I know bandwidth is different on each product and you need license for the SAF).

Depends on what you get with SAF. I personally don't have the most experience with them, other than replacing them with something else... Our network design is pretty wide, and we get a lot of broadcast traffic on our infrastructure (don't ask me why... it's already a headache). SAF's seem to have issue's with too large a broadcast network... They have both Licensed and Unlicensed links, but for most things you have to get a quote from a supplier. some CFIP-23-Lumina (23ghz) licensed links we use run around 9.4k online. It wasn't clear if that was per radio, or per link... Wouldn't surprise me if it were per radio. Licensed links always seem to be more expensive.

We've been favoring Exalts at my company. A little more pricey for the ones we're using, but they push around 940 megs up and down pretty reliability. Haven't replaced any links yet after about a year and a half (knock on wood...).

Our AF24 links are the cheapest backhaul we use. They really seem pretty reliable to me. Everyone else here is scared of Ubiquiti for some reason. I think the furthest link we have is about 7 miles, which is WAY pushing the limit. But it stays at full modulation under most circumstances. Snow fall gets us the worst, but still haven't lost the site... Of course, since we're not at capacity on the link, and we haven't technically lost it yet, our company wont approve us to replace or upgrade it with something else. It would be expensive to replace in comparison with what we need it to do.

We've also been favoring DragonWave links, which are licensed as well, and a little pricey, but very reliable once you get it aligned properly and setup correctly. We've only lost links due to tower guys physically dropping them off the tower (once...) or not being tightened down enough and the wind taking it's toll.


It really seems like anything that's a well known brand with a fair reputation will work great if you use them in spec, and plan accordingly. Get good grounding, aim as best you can, and lock it down real good.

[wolfcreek]

If you are looking at licensed links I would give Trango Broadband a call. We have these all over the mountains of SW Colorado and our longest link is over 50 miles at 11ghz almost a gig of capacity with 2+0. These towers are struck by lightning, frozen in ice and snow, temps down to -20F and below and they are setup and forget. Price is competitive with SAF. I think support is much better as they are San Diego based so you can get spare parts overnight in most cases where as the SAF links we have I am not sure that is possible. Also, tech support is readily available to diagnose problems. Who do you call for SAF? If we lost an SAF tomorrow I would not know where to call to have new equipment the next day. This is the same issue we had using Cerragon. Both SAF and Cerragon make great gear but support is a little shaky if you are a smaller customer.

[jjonsson]

Nice pictures :-)

I'm in Europe so actually getting spare parts for SAF must be easier than from US based companies.

80 miles! Awesome. What is bandwidth on such a link at 11 GHz and what is size of dish (It must be huge!)

I can see with the prices You charge your customers it's not difficult to buy expensive equipment

In Denmark we provide around 40-50 Mbit/s for around $38 per month....

[tma]

For licensed links, we're using Ceragon IP-20 with XPIC (2+0) at 18 GHz with 2' dishes for shots up to 12 km at 512QAM, i.e. close to 800 Mbps net. Ceragon takes a long time for repairs, so the solution is to keep spares (one high and low ODU) for each band - but in fact we're only using the 18 GHz band. That keeps us pretty much tied to Ceragon, i.e. I'm not saying anything against SAF. It's only that at the time we had to decide, Ceragon had the higher data rates available. So, good look for your decision :-)

One hint though: When doing 2+0, you'd better take a close look at how the load is spread onto the two radios. On the IP-20G, Ceragon did it the usual way until now - i.e. balancing according to IP address/port or whatever. Of course, that turns out pretty much 50:50 in normal circumstances, but once you get rain fade and one polarization (typically the H one) switches to lower modulation (earlier than V), you get packet loss although the overall capacity would still be enough. I've just received (but not tried yet) their newest firmware which supports 'multi-carrier ABC' ('adaptive bandwidth control') which spreads the load at the byte level onto the radios according to their current capacity. I suspect that not all manufacturers can do that yet, but of course it's only important for 2+0.

[tma]

Never mind, just received an email ad saying that SAF can do "true bonding" which seems to be the equivalent of Ceragon's multi-carrier ABC.

[therealstu]

We run an assortment of Apex9, Exalt, and Cambium PTP 820S which is a rebranded Ceragon product. All 11ghz, 9-21mile links. The Apex9 radios are very simple to configure, but are ODU/IDU radios. The Exalt and the 820S are POE, the Exalt is easy to configure, and the PTP820S was kind of a pain in the ass to setup but once you know the tricks its not too bad.

At this point our go to for licensed links is the 820S.

[ste]

Never mind, just received an email ad saying that SAF can do "true bonding" which seems to be the equivalent of Ceragon's multi-carrier ABC.

And there are 42 GHz Integras now which do 112 MHz. 880MBit FDX with one device. Soon connected to one of our Netonix Switches.

[ste]

How is price of SAF link compared against AF24 (Not HD) ? Is it way more expensive ? (I know bandwidth is different on each product and you need license for the SAF).

It is way more expensive (while beeing on the cheaper end of licensed gear). But you get real carrier grade. UBNT is carrier grade for the poor. Every SAF Link we installed delivers exactly the signal and speed as calculated. Not a single RMA or failure up to now. Both companies have a very different approach to what they claim and how they build their products. There will not be a rusting screw on a SAF gear. They would feel ashaimed.

So if you have links your business depends on it is no question where to go (or not).

[jjonsson]

Actually I have some Ceragon stuff laying around if anyone is interested ?

2013-07-27 17.31.38.jpg (1.79 MiB) Viewed 25768 times

With IDU with STM modules....

[tma]

Is that from the generation that required a 56 MHz channel for STM / 155 Mbps? if yes, it won't be easy to get an operating license these days (at least in Germany) due to inefficient spectrum use.