Yet ANOTHER blown B5 Ethernet port

Products B5
#21

@jack6 Most of my runs are less than 250’, none are over the Spec of 310’. The one that is currently having a problem is a 120’ run at 80’ ALG on a rail way tower. Railway guys do grounding like telco’s do grounding and they did the installation, not my guys.

The flapping problem is so random that testing at the tower site is not practical. I have a test rig that we put them on in the shop, with a 300’ cable run and they might run for a week at gig and then flap for an hour or a day, or not at all. Brand new B5/C’s do the same thing.

All sites are powered with Netonix POE switches. I’ve tried driving the Mimosa on Both 48V and 48VH (which is power on all four pair) when they are flapping and it doesn’t matter.

I RMA’d 2 B5’s a couple years ago that were doing the same thing - I never heard back.

I am 100% certain that Mimosa knows they have a problem and 99% certain that they know what it is - BUT they refuse to step up and recall their broken products - which have been faulty since day 1. I refuse to support that idea.

#22

Ian1, I feel your pain. I have had the same problems. I have done all of the recommended things which have been suggested. I have learned way more about grounding than I ever wanted to know and I am a mechanical engineer. Recently Mimosa replaced a good many of my out of warranty radios because of the same issues you are having, primarily port flapping, some of mine had water in them. Two of my B11s went down yesterday early and did not come back until today, no power outage, no reboot, the Ethernet ports just quit working for 24+ hours, tower completely down, (traffic all rerouted, gotta love OSPF). I appreciated Mimosa sending me the replacements. And believe it or not my problems with these units has all but disappeared! Those darn Ubiquity radios just work! I left the Mimosa replacement radios on the shelf for future use to replace the few Mimosa links I have left and I am not totally sure I will use them even then, but out of fairness I should because they said they had changed the Ethernet ports for the better in their manufacturing process. Oh, and if you check my other post, three of the replacement radios they sent did not work right out of the box, but to their credit, they replaced those too. I think the radio side of these radios is second to none, too bad the Ethernet side is just none.

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#23

@Dave1 The last B5 I bought - supposedly Brand New - there was a random piece of Hot Glue, about the size of a dime, rattling around inside the enclosure. Nothing says “quality control” like Hot Glue that wasn’t even applied properly.

A few people now have said Mimosa have fixed the hardware issue with the ports. But if they DID do that, then did they recall all the broken ones in the distribution channels ? Because if they didn’t then all that broken crap will still be sitting on shelves and it’s a crap shoot if you get one of the “fixed ones” or one of the “old” ones.

There’s no way to know, but since they have ALWAYS avoided admitting that there IS an Ethernet port problem I really really doubt they would recall the junk that’s already out there.

I have never been a UBNT fan, in fact I have avoided them and mostly hated on them since the SR9/XR9 fiasco, but since I started this thread we’ve setup 2 new links with UBNT AF5x and no issues. I have a few ISO backup links running for ~4 months now and no issues. Yet it’s very rare when I get a week without a Mimosa flapping somewhere in the network.

#24

Hi Ian, I know this is late, but I have a curious question.

Are you running Transtectors at both the top and bottom of the Ethernet cable? Top one as close as possible to the radio and bonded to the radio, shortest jumper cable to the radio?

Just wondering if what we have done is enough? Had B5 units on a 300’ tower since 2016.

Thanks, Brian

#25

I have B5/C’s at 150’ and 250’ since they were on pre-order (2015?) which - knock on wood - have not puked up their Ethernet ports yet. But I have a couple dozen more that do it randomly and for no reason.

Mimosa’s own installation instructions, as well as Jamie’s comments on the forum here say not to use surge suppression. But I’ve done with and without and it doesn’t matter. Also mounted a Netonix 6 port in a Scepter box about 6’ from the B5/C’s on the tower. All bonded and it doesn’t matter.

I was at CanWISP last week in Ottawa Ontario and every other WISP I spoke to that uses Mimosa - probably 2 dozen different companies, were all saying the same thing about the Ethernet ports on all the Mimosa products.

(The C5’s are by far the worst though - I have a > 50% failure rate on C5’s ! and most that I spoke to said the same!!! That. Is. Insane.)

The conclusion is that we all are moving to anything else that works reliably.

It sucks because I’ve been using Mimosa B5/C’s since they first came to market, but it’s been > 3 years of telling Mimosa about this problem and absolutely zero confirmation/effort on their side to resolve it. So we take our money somewhere else.

#26

Thanks for the info!

At this point I only have B5’s … I guess Mimosa needs fiber ports and DC input. It might fix a lot of the issues.

So the B11’s suffer with the same issues? Yikes!

#27

Sorry, No one I spoke to uses the B11 - PtP licencing is very expensive in Canada, so if you use 6 or 11 Ghz then you probably use a lot more expensive equipment than a B11 - that might change this year though as the Feds seem to be realizing that charging us per 64kbps channel is a bit outdated.

#28

We are running 3 B11 links in our network and have had no problems that were not self inflicted. (Especially not with the Ethernet Ports)

8 A5c’s and no issues there either.

We have been running 2 B5 lite links on and off for the last 8 months and have not seen any issues with them.

C5, we do a poor grounding job so we expect them to die. But they don’t die any faster then Ubiquiti equipment.

C5c, no problems with those that I can recall. (Other then obvious direct damage to the equipment)

C5x, only have a few dozen of them in use and have only been doing so for 4 months. So can’t make any comments yet, but they seem to be working alright.

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#29

We have always grounded CPEs. Mimosa’s requirements are no different that Cambium or Telrad which we use extensively. But still C5’s fail at a ridiculous rate.

As I said all of Wisp’s I spoke to at the conference that were running Mimosa’s gear have the same experience.

My guess is that you might be in a more arid and less weather extreme location than we all operate in here in Canada, but I have numerous other manufacturers in the air and none of them have this number of issues so I’m moving on… and so is almost everyone else I know of.

#30

Just sharing my experience, yes we are a pretty arid area, but we get plenty of lightning, occasional dust storms etc. Heck, from my experience we have a worse power system then most other places. Power flickers and surges all the time.

Good luck

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#31

I have found on the various forums on the 'Net that ISP’s with Mimosa kit in arid areas seem to have fewer problems. I don’t know if that’s factual but it appears to be so.

Regardless this stuff should just work - set and forget; like a customer’s 5Ghz PtP Tranzeo link I set up in 2005 - 14 years ago - and totally forgot about until this AM when it finally died. That’s reliability. Having kit puking as soon as it’s out of the box? That’s garbage.

#32

We were forced to move on because of all the Ethernet heartache issues. We still have a few Mimosa links up but replace them as they fail. I keep visiting the forum here occasionally hoping to hear some good news regarding this but here we are…

#33

Mimosa would have probably have retained or gained a lot of us back if they had the ■■■■■ to admit the Ethernet ports sucked on the Gen1 gear (my term - assuming they actually did make said changes - which they have never officially announced as far as I know).

I have yet to speak to WISP in Canada who hasn’t gotten fed up with their head-in-the-sand mentality and moved on to other products. UBNT ironically being the top mentioned.