engenius enh202 slow speed issues

[Rsopha]

I have a pair of enh202's running in wds bridge mode. I am using them to send internet to a house with no high speed access. The distance between the two points is just shy of 1,400 ft. I have a clear line of sight across a grass field. The only obstruction is a power line at one end. I am out in the country on dsl and at the isp router I am getting 9.75 mb/s. across the bridge I am receiving .15 mb/s. The claim of 2 miles on the enh202 had me thinking that a quarter mile shouldnt be an issue. I have tried changing channels, switching between n only and n/g/b, and changing from 20mhz to 40mhz. Am I just out of range or do I need to switch something else around. Also the link strength is at -63dbi
Thanks

 

[Cloud200]

Your aim may be off.
I doubt it though since popping the calculations into Airlink I am getting a theoretical limit of -52db with a 10db radio with roughly the same power output. Your other issue may be something called a Fresnel zone.
This is the clearance between objects such as the ground you need to avoid.

Read about it here:
http://www.proxim.com/products/knowledge-center/calculations/calculations-fresnel-clearance-zone

The only way to solve that is to raise the Antennae until they are above this.

In addition, when testing out a link go for 20mhz first.
If it is clean and stable then you go to 40mhz.

Finally you can try testing it out with a much shorter distance to see if something else may be up.

Personally I prefer a line of products called Airmax by a company called Ubiquiti for P2P links.

If you want to read more about successful P2P links try here:
http://community.ubnt.com/t5/airMAX-Stories/con-p/airMAX_Stories

 

[Rsopha]

thanks for the help. I will try raising them up, one is about 54 ft higher in elevation than the other. I never though about that.

I looked at the ubiqiti products before I went with the engenious 202. I might have to try them if I cant get this to work. anything would be better than the .5 mb/s I was getting at the home from the dsl.

 

[CaptainSTX]

Higher gain antennas would probably help. Modified wire grid yagis can give you up to a 24 db gain or you could try making your own Pringle can yagis.

The Engenius outdoor AP/Bridging equipment I used in the past had the terminal to connect an external antenna. Not sure about the newer models.

When you installed your current system did you use cat5 cable rated for outdoor use? Water wicking through standard cat5 cable can wreak havoc on your devices.

 

[azazel1024]

That does seem oddly low performance. You mention powerlines in the way, what kind and how much "in the way" are we talking? Like significant obstruction? Wiring is a significant impediment to wireless signals. That said, if we are talking a few strands of typical residential medium voltage pole wiring, that shouldn't be having a huge impact.

The fresnel zone is the widest point at the mid point of the link. It gets narrower as you get closer. Using 2.4GHz I am getting about 13ft wide for a 1400ft link. Since it narrows up, at something like 100ft away from the bridges, it only needs to be about 3ft of clearance (and how I am deriving that is probably not totally accurate).

Even though it is showing a link strength of -63dBm, which is pretty good, I'd try adjusting the aiming and if you can, raise the lower of the two. If the aim is off and you are actually throwing a lot of the signal in to the ground, you might be getting nasty reflections.

With a -63dBm link strength, ignoring interference (external or induced by reflections, etc. in the link), you should be able to easily get >54Mbps of actual performance.

 

[ab288]

I have a pair of enh202's running in wds bridge mode. I am using them to send internet to a house with no high speed access. The distance between the two points is just shy of 1,400 ft. I have a clear line of sight across a grass field. The only obstruction is a power line at one end. I am out in the country on dsl and at the isp router I am getting 9.75 mb/s. across the bridge I am receiving .15 mb/s. The claim of 2 miles on the enh202 had me thinking that a quarter mile shouldnt be an issue. I have tried changing channels, switching between n only and n/g/b, and changing from 20mhz to 40mhz. Am I just out of range or do I need to switch something else around. Also the link strength is at -63dbi
Thanks

I have used a lot of these enh202s and sometimes when they get old, one of them will start acting like this. I have found when I buy a pair of them on the net use anbd one of them acts very slowly. as if the processor speed had dropped to a crawl. Thats probably why it was taken out of service and put up for sale. Its still works although Its sluggish to load even the gui page, and ping times are high. So often out of a purchased used pair, i will find that one unit will act like this. . fully functioning but very slow. they were probably taken out of service and resold. these are dated anyways.

 

[sfx2000]

I have a pair of enh202's running in wds bridge mode.

I would suggest Client/Bridge mode (one is client, the other is AP) - WDS will impact your bit rates...

Stay with narrow channels, going to 40MHz halves the receive sensitivity and transmit power (3 dB hit - 3 dB is half or twice depending on adding or subtracting).

Consider N-only mode for the bridge as this removes the legacy overhead of 802.11b

Antenna gain is good enough at 10 dB, and Tx power on the enh202 is 29 dB - so I don't suspect a power issue... just note that the 10 dB antenna is going to be very directional on both the horizontal and vertical axis, so a bit of work to ensure they are pointed at each other...