General Mimosa rant

[daniel29]

Why does every Mimosa product I test never perform like like should?

I’ve tested a B5c on 3 different links, it fell flat on its face when encountering even a minuscule amount of interference. from 1gb/s+ down to 7mb/s. I got them when they first came out, and I’ve heard from Support that it’s the firmware, then it’s the cables, then it’s the N/RP-SMA adapters, then it’s the antenna, then it’s the alignment. I gave up on it and have 3 B5c’s on the shelf now collecting dust. I pull them out about once a year, update the firmware, and waste some more time testing to see if they still suck.

I’ve tested a B11 on a 1.5 mile link with 3ft dishes, it rarely hits MCS9, and usually bounces between MCS7 and MCS8.

I just put up a 1 Mile B24 link and it won’t maintain 300mb/s on 2x40 channels – it falls on its face down to ~100mb/s every few minutes.

I don’t have these kind of problems with my Ubiquiti and SAF links.

The B5C link, I pulled off the radio, (same dish, same alignment), attached a NxN and put on 2 AF5x radios, and the link is dead stable and has been for at least a year now(with 7db less signal because of the NxN)

Just replaced the 2x AF5X with a 5XHD, still works great.

The B11 link we’ve just accepted that it won’t perform like it should and stopped wasting time troubleshooting. We are running fiber to the site soon so it doesn’t matter at this point. I’ve deployed two AF11FX links now and both did exactly what I expected them to do.

I now have another $2000 in radios(the B24 link I just deployed) that isn’t performing that I’m not sure what I’m going to do with.

I read all these ‘success’ stories, like the one that takes up 90% of the screen of every mimosa page I try to visit, and wonder if they are paid by Mimosa?

I would love for this gear to work like the marketing material says it will because we could really use the products.

I’ve been doing WISP-type work since 2002, grew up in a family that did tower and RF work, I was playing with Spectrum Analyzers, TDRs, and Yagis before I could drive. I’ve worked with gear all the way from Breezecom, Orinoco, Lucent, Avaya, Hyperlink, RF-Linx, STAR-OS, Mikrotik, Dragonwave, Motorola Canopy, Cambium, SAF, Ubiquiti, Mimosa and probably a bunch more that I can’t think of. I won’t say it’s not me – I have been wrong before – but I have a pretty good knowledge of the field and what I’m doing.

Please, someone show me that I’m doing something wrong and that the gear really does work?

Dan

[Hector-M]

Hi Dan,
I’m sorry you are having issues with your Mimosa products. At Mimosa we are committed to providing quality products and services, and want to make sure we address each of these issues. I will contact you through our Support case handling system to collect more information and revisit any support case you may have opened in the past. Your success with our products is our success, and we will do everything we can to make sure you are completely satisfied with Mimosa. We want you to join the thousands of happy customers around the globe that use Mimosa, and from where we pull material for our Case Studies. Thank you again for your patience as we work these issues. We value feedback from experienced users like you, and use it to always continue improving.
Kind regards,
Hector
Mimosa Product Support

[William5]

I may look like a fanboy some of the time, but I have spend sooo much time diagnosing and entire days on hot black roofs figuring out why my Mimosa equipment isn’t working. Can’t say they are magic bullets for every situation. But I do think that for what Mimosa advertises and following their manuals they tend to hit their marks.

As far as stuff that works:

I have 3 B11 links that are good.

This one is the closest I have to 1.5 miles. I am pretty sure we used Jirous 3’ antennas. We have a 12 mile and an 11 mile link running as well. All three have been good for us, though my situation is a bit quieter then most guys’ links so I don’t know how much I can help you. Backhauls don’t have internet access so can’t pull historical reports and I’m lazy and don’t want to deal with LibreNMS right now, sorry. Only time I see MCS drop on these is the worst of storms, otherwise no problems with the B11s. Maybe I have the best link coordinator? (Liz at Intelpath)

As far as PTP 5 GHz goes we only have a couple B5-Lites we use for temporary links when we are moving other antennas or swapping towers. So far they seem to be ‘fine’. I can’t say I have much other knowledge, but maybe I am crazy and the blind pig will find an acorn.

As far at 24 GHz, haven’t used much of it, if it’s not made to go more then a mile I don’t have much use for it, but there are a couple guys who got their setups running maybe @Neil or @Christopher might have some comments. I have no problem taking a look at pictures and shooting a couple ideas.

Looks like @Hector-M replied as well. Can’t say anything bad about Mimosa’s support, give them a chance and they will “hook you up”. Probably better then anything I could find/point out.

[daniel29]

Thanks for the response – the B11 link is the one I have the least complaints about.
1.7 miles

Liz@Intelpath coordinated this link also. Spectrum looks perfectly clear.

We’ve spent some time working with support, re-aligning antennas, adjusting rate adaption settings, increasing power, decreasing power, and more recently we replaced one radio due to lightning damage (Out of 3 Airfibers, 8 AC Prisms, and 1 Mimosa B11, only the Airfibers survived)

The B24 link:

I purchased it to handle a 250Mbps X 250Mbps customer connection, hoping to run it in GPS sync mode, but even at 2x80 4ms, it couldn’t sustain a stable 250x250. I backed down to 2x40 and turned off fixed framing, I can get 300mb/s usually, except sometimes I can’t. I’ve surveyed the path and see nothing 24ghz in the line, yet it acts like it gets interference

Speed test between routers on both ends of the link.

I thought of one possibility for this specific B24 link that I will investigate tomorrow that could be the culprit, and if so I will eat my words. But being prejudiced to blaming the gear due to prior experiences sure didn’t help.

[daniel29]

Thank you for the response Hector – I’ll provide equipment serial numbers etc… direct via email but would like to keep as much of the troubleshooting in the open as possible. I’ve “Grown-up” on forums and using Google to solve many many problems(because if I have them, someone else probably had the same problem and already solved it, and hopefully posted it to a public forum).

I hope we can find a problem here(even if the problem is ME) that someone else may be able to Google and save themselves time or an embarrassing rant, rather than keep the info locked away in a private ticket.

[William5]

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you, had to go climb a tower and deal with a 10 year old Ligowave link.

lol “quiet” this is quiet:

This thing could probably hear a mouse fart in the next county.

But seriously… Sorry to hear about the lightning.

From first looks on your B11 I agree, you should be fine, but obviously something isn’t right so let’s see… SNR is good. (Mimosa says -64 dB signal + 27.5 SNR or better should make 9 MCS: http://backhaul.help.mimosa.co/backhaul-faq-sensitivity-for-each-mcs-index and http://backhaul.help.mimosa.co/backhaul-faq-snr-mcs) Would you mind posting the stuff from the other side? It looks like whatever the issue is, the other side of your link is not having the same issue sending MCS 9…

I just want to account for the differences between your link and mine, not pointing fingers, yet…

Is your link not rural? (unlike mine) which would account for the spectrum wide higher noise.

How high up are each of your points? I am 140 ft and 90 ft. So that might be why I don’t have the funkiness with my chain 1. But if your links frenzel zone was getting cut into then I should expect to see lower RX on both your horizontal chains.

How much does your EVM vary? Mine goes from 24-27 pretty frequently on all my streams on both ends. God knows how to get +30 EVM (Excellent by Mimosa’s standard http://backhaul.help.mimosa.co/backhaul-faq-evm)

Is there a time deal when the link drops to 7 MCS or does it just randomly bounce up and down?

If the link is quiet will it negotiate 9 MCS? I only have 5 customers behind my link so its really quiet most of the time.

When I do a bandwidth test through the link, (Mikrotik to Mirkrotik) If I am not pushing more then 300 Mbps in each direction my MCS drops from 9 to 8-7. If I go above 800 Mbps aggregate the link goes back up to 9 and stays there. I have not noticed this happening before I tried duplicating your 24 GHz system, because I am an idiot and can’t read.

[William5]

I get you on the prejudiced part. I am pretty much shooting in the dark here, I only have 1 24 GHz link (UBNT AF) and it never rains/snows here (Just ask the farmers) so I don’t have to fight with it very much, I also have a 5 GHz link just in case. Side note ever since I setup the link the customer hasn’t pushed over 12 Mbps on it when before he was maxing out the original 5 GHz link we setup for him, when I noticed this I spent 2 hours doing diagnostics to make sure the link was fine. The dude paid 8 grand for us to do all the work and then hasn’t had anyone in the office for months.

So, Mimosa has a funky way of looking for interference, http://backhaul.help.mimosa.co/backhaul-faq-spectrum-analyzer-work . It makes sense, but sometimes it’s hard to catch noise that comes and goes without watching it for a while. I sometimes miss the UBNT spectrum analyzer just for how fun it is to see little bits of noise pop up. (If you have an AF 24 you can pull up the real-time spectrum analyzer, still brings down the link though)

As far as site survey goes, I am pretty sure Mimosa B24s can only see other Mimosa stuff, not tested this extensively, but something tells me a site survey isn’t gonna be very helpful… Unless when you say “survey” you mean “spectrum analysis” I assume you have bounced around your channels, so it wouldn’t be another Mimosa product anyways. Haven’t seen anyone else selling a radio that uses less then 100 MHz of that frequency so the noise would be pretty consistent unless you were lucky and were able to get on the opposite sides of their transmit and receive. (If it is another link causing the issue) Have you tried spacing your channels out 100 MHz and swapping them around?

Do you get the bandwidth drop in both directions at the same time?

Thank you for being open about solving issues publicly. I have been temped to post about some of my experiences with Mimosa support showing me fixes and tricks, but people probably don’t want to hear more from me anyways.