GTTH - suburban density

Products A5
#1

I’ve been reading the forum but haven’t found a clear answer as to the realistic expectations of the A5 or A5C w/sectors and C5 client line.

Here’s the scenario

  • Recently built suburban neighborhood - approximately 550 homes

  • No tree issues to speak of

  • 400 meter width/length of neighborhood / 200 meter max distance from center

With no terrain interference, what is the realistic maximum number of clients that can be connected to an A5 or A5 w/sector and what are the maximum speeds that a single user could expect to see? I’m not interested in what the marketing sheets show, but what an ISP should reasonably expect.

The reality is that most users will never exceed 10 - 20 Mbps in a normal usage, but if selling against an existing cable provider with speeds up to 300 Mbps offering 25 Mbps max is not an easy sell - as opposed to showing a speed test of 400 Mbps even though they would likely never use it.

#2

Some pretty good discussions have been going on over here. Kent has been really kind to answer a lot of questions that the community has had about his deployment. It sounds to me like up to 600M radius is possible off a single a5-14, and multiple providers, Prairie Hills being one of them, are offering 200MBps. Granted you will need more than one access point as your customer base grows. Given that their are no trees and if the terrain is flat, you may be able to serve the entire neighborhood off a single giga-pop using A5c.

#3

I had actually read that thread and it was interesting, however, didn’t really get down to the details I’m looking for. I’ve seen they’ve gotten 150-200 Mbps with good latency - but is that the max one could realistically expect? That’s a good ways below the 500 Mbps on the marketing page if that’s true.

Also, how many clients are connected to the AP when getting those speeds? Do they get better results from the KP sectors?

At the end of the day we’ll simply have to test some things out but it would be nice to have some real answers and expectations before going down a path that someone else may already be able to tell you is not going to work.

#4

500 Mbps is an aggregate speed. Keep in mind, almost all your wireless equipment out there is half duplex, not full, so this number represents combined upload and download. This is effected even more when you look into using the SRS mode and TDMA, as 50% will be reserved for uplink, and 50% for your downlink. Eventually mimosa will release 75/25 traffic split, and this is listed on their page here.

I recommend trying mimosa’s free cloud design service, as it can help you get an idea of what type of performance you should see from the AP based on the number of clients connecting to it (the calculator will pull up when you are creating a new PtMP). The resources on the support site do a good job of explaining how to use that effectively. My understanding is that 200mbps download should be obtainable with 25-40 clients in a single AP, but my numbers could be off.

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#5

Full/Half Duplex is a good point that I wasn’t thinking about - I’m used to being able to split up/down traffic.

With that in mind I think at this time it would be fairly difficult to implement this product as a serious competitor to an existing cable provider. It’s certainly possible to make an argument around service and other factors to try and get customers to switch from their existing provider, however without higher speed options it’s a tough sell.

Appreciate the input.

#6

Hello Ryan, probably in your area, 200 Mbps is too poor profile to sell, but in many other areas like mine, for example, a single 100/25 profile is really good option.

I’m curious to know how much it cost a 200 or 500 Mbps profile into your area.

#7

I should be clear here that I’m speaking about using this product in a specific use case of a neighborhood with an existing cable provider. In many areas we offer 25/5 options which is fantastic and our clients would probably faint if 200 Mpbs were available. Of course there are trees and terrain issues that make that somewhat impractical.

Their are offering 300 Mbps for around $89/month

#8

Here in Italy, actually the incumbent provider offer only in main city, following profiles:

  • 100 Mega / 20 Mega . The download could reach up to 300 Mega if available. 19,90 € /month for first year, then 39,90 €/month. In that profile is included 1 voice line (unlimited traffic on fix and mobile) and a sort of streaming TV.

I think it’s simply not possible with wireless, but a good real 50 M / 10 M with a voip line with unlimited traffic to 25,00 €/month should be a really good cheap option to sell.

Where I live substantially, many peoples look for a cheaper offer instead of super speed line with too many services included that finally you will don’t use totally.

This is our fortune.

#9

Hi,

Sounds like our neighbourhood, except its 15 years old… still very little trees and we do have some elevated terrain (a small hill) in it.
We have one A5-14 running with 60 3rd party (Mikrotik SXT-n) clients and we offer them up to 50Mbps.
So far it runs absolutely fine! Before we’ve had two Mikrotik AP’s serving the same in tdma and clients had 25Mbps max but regular comments about slow internet.
Now this AP’s client base is silent, everybody seems to be happy. We see top usage of 60-80Mbps downloads to clients where most of the clients themselves are allowed to use up to 50Mbps in burst.
But like you already stated, we rarely see a client using more then 15Mbps by itself.

We know we have clients using IPTV (including myself) and playing games or making Skype calls and it all seems to be working fine…

On the moment we are changing al ‘n’ SXT’s for ‘ac’ SXT’s so we can try to work in 80Mhz channel (or use the higher modulation in 40Mhz) and see how many clients we can really serve before the A5 starts to crack… Only after that we might go for the extra mile in huge investment in 60 or more C5’s…

We are so happy with the present results already that its hard to explain the extra investment in C5’s to get the extra speed that in fact nobody asks for.
Clients pay only 25€ per month so the ROI half a year at least where same money better be spend on the expansion in more Mimosa AP’s in the rest of our network. (we have 20 AP’s with even so many backhauls to feed them for some 700 clients. Our budgets are very limited hence the priority…)

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#10

How far are tour clients from Ap?

#11

25 to 400 meters, most in a sector of 230 degrees. The back has only 3 clients…