Is There Anything Better Than Ubiquiti For Wireless To Parking Lot Poles?

I find Ubiquiti is hit and miss. I have radios that work for less than a year and others that have been on for 3 solid. As much of a pain in the rear as it is, finding the right firmware for the radio's is the best advice I can give.

Mikrotik is one that I have had heard good things about. I am going to give them a shot pretty soon here, just to see how they perform vs Ubiquiti.

Comnet works reasonably well.  I will not say flawless but we do have a lot deployed and the service level required has been minimal.

Have a look at Cambium networks.  They actually made firmware that can run on UBNT hardware that makes the wireless more reliable.  

 There are some settings in Ubiquiti that will reset the units automatically if there is a loss of signal in between radios. Can't remember exactly but we had this issue with some radios on solar panels. We thought the solar wasn't lasting long enough on battery power but it was the radios. When we made the change we haven't had much issue since. Are their better radios, indeed their are but for the money these are hard to beat. As UI3 stated comnet is really good. Four times the price but they also have lifetime warranty on their products as well and their tech support is topnotch and are made in USA.

We have been using Ubiquiti for over 10 years, and with units in the field numbering in the high hundreds at least, found it reasonably reliable, with a few caveats:

Always use shielded cable to the radios, we had a lot of problems with resets,lockups, etc. when using unshielded cable.

The setting referred to by Shannon above is called Ping Watchdog, and can be useful in some instances.

In areas with a lot of electrical disturbances, the radios can sometimes reset to default. This can be prevented by turning off the "reset button" setting in the system tab. This is enabled by default to allow resetting through the PoE injector, but in some high electrical noise environments can cause a reset of the radio.

Having said all the above, we generally use Cambium equipment (ePMP 1000/2000 series currently, looking into deploying the PMP450 series) in more critical (citywide, prison, etc.) environments, and Ubiquiti in smaller deployments.

The exception we have made for using Ubiquiti in larger environments is the AirFiber24, it's been an absolutely rock solid choice for getting 700+Mbps over fairly long distances.

There are a number of WISP's that are using the Ubiquiti platform successfully for deployments in the tens of thousands of radios.

We have used Mikrotik in the past with variable results. Where Mikrotik really shines is in the ability to combine wireless, switching, and routing in one platform, but it does have a learning curve.

Ignitenet Metrolinq is another platform we have used for smaller range deployments, although alignment of 60GHz radios is much more of a challenge. (newer models have beamforming in the AP, which helps).

I worked for a company that did a lot of Ubiquiti and we had numerous issues running typical outdoor CAT5, cheap switches and no UPS. During the time I was starting to research these issues, I was relieved of my duties. I started my own company and we now use the Ubiquiti Tough Cable, their connectors, Tough Switches with Ping Watch Dog (The radios only ping each other wirelessly, the switch pings via the lan port so if either side stops communicating, it reboots), and we have had great success. We also inherited a client with 20+ properties running 10+ Ubiquiti wireless devices at each location. Very rarely do we have an issue.

Full Disclosure, I am the KBC Networks rep in NY/NJ.  Take a look.  www.kbcnetworks.com

Have you looked at FluidMesh? We use it quite a bit for remote cameras. Works great. 

If you need plenty of throughput and reliable I would go Siklu, it has been great for us.  

We have had great success with EnGenius.  Great phone support.  Not as cheap as Ubiquiti

We have had good success with Wavesight and Fluidmesh.

The only way I know of to get Ubiquiti tech support is if you buy from Scansource. We had a PM go through the Ubiquiti training. The trainer came to Kansas City but charged around $3,500 or so. They wouldn't even give us a discount if more students showed up and the training was on their old software and devices. Scansource gave Ubiquiti a significant PO for their product so they could become a training house for their products otherwise they didn't want to allow them to be a certified tech support. This didn't make any sense as the only way to get support directly from Ubiquiti is either email or chat. 

For name brands, I heard of EnGenius being a great solution because of support and function. 

Mikrotik, I would keep your distance.  I know some people swear by them, but I believe they are cheap for a reason.  I know a provider in CA that uses them and they have tons of problems traces down issues they are having.  We have had many VPN/IPSEC related issues over their hardware, for example.

We (Dijkstra Solutions, which I own) also OEMs another brand that is a cloud based controller.  Prices are pretty good and I don't have issues with them.  Indoor and outdoor models available.

-Walt

We use Avalan Wireless and have not had any issues with the units dropping off. The team at Avalan is great to work with.

The Stellar line from Alcatel Lucent Enterprise has an unmanaged mode that makes it extremely easy to install, even in large environments.  They have outside AP's that are designed to do what you need with the meshing to exterior poles. You can set up a group of 16 without the need for a controller or cloud management.  There is a big cost savings and minimal technical knowledge needed in the unmanaged mode.  We started selling this recently over the major brands like Ruckus, etc. and the feedback has been great when used in high bandwidth applications like IP cameras.

Without question:   Ruckus Wireless.

When the olympics came to London, they  covered the city with Ruckus.....and they used in alot of locations street lamp poles.....

The secret sauce with ruckus is the directional antenna.   Provides the best wireless client connection.

Ruckus also does mesh very well.  The first hop is 100% bandwidth, the second hop is 75% bandwidth.....the third is I think 50%.....

But with the self healing system functionality of the zone director.......Ruckus provides rock solid wifi.  Commercial integrators can sign up direct......and get good pricing and direct support.

To get a good guess for client pricing.....  visit ruckussecurity.com.   That is pricing you can use for bid proposals....

Mike

Thanks Mike!......I have zero experience in outdoor long range extension of wifi....I am residential and mdu systems integrator....where i can most of the time specify a cleerline fiber connection ahead of time.....do love ruckus though.....never an issue.

Mike

Its not really trunk slamming when you have a client that needs 5+ links meaning 10+ radios. A NanoBeam Gen2 AC is around $100. That means $1000 in radios versus $9,000 + depending on the manufacturer. 

That simply puts the project out of the budget for many clients.

It would be great if I could get all of my clients to run fiber, bore under streets, and skip the wireless completely. But it's our job to find a solution that works, and Ubiquiti seems to fit the bill well.

Just curious, is there a way to tell if we are losing data? 

Ubiquiti will be at the top for a while as long as you know what you are doing, they can be a great value and are well built.

 That being said, I found ligowave to be much better in the SMB market. They have premade kits P2P or P2MP that are basically plug and play (they say wire replacement). 

Price point is probably 15% higher apples to apples, but I saw a head to head throughout shootout and ligowave was much higher than Ubiquiti and Openmesh. 

They have training coarses around US right now. I think there is one being set up in NYC soon. I’m going to attend one in Dallas on Wednesday. They have some nice backhaul units and emergency band licensed product. 

Their cloud works relatively well. Needs some integration. They are a pure wireless company, no switches, media converters, or other hardware. Factory in GA where they do assembly and firmware/cloud development. 

As a PoE switch manufacturing company, Ive been brought in to several jobs by them, and them by us. 

For short hops across parking lots there is absolutely no reason to use anything more expensive than Ubiquiti. We have deployed hundreds of links in similar scenarios with absolutely minimal issues.

You just need to follow some basic principles to make the links as robust as possible:

* Use minimum channel size for the throughput required - for 1-2 cameras 10MHz is plenty

* Restrict the maximum modulation on the radios, e.g. down to 26 or 39 Mbps. 

* Set the output power so that receive signals are between -40 and -55 dBm

* Choose a clear channel for operation

* Ensure adequate RF isolation between colocated radios (physical separation plus a minimum of one channel of frequency separation)

* Use up to date firmware but never deploy the first version of any new feature release, for example use 8.4.3 rather than 8.5.0

* Use good quality outdoor grade Ethernet cabling

* For multipoint always use sector antennas

* If power is in any way suspect, disable the reset button (but keep a permanent record of the IP address and login credentials)

I have radios in service since 2012 (NSM Loco M) that are flawless. Is it possible you are asking too much? Is there abundant interface nearby? Give us more info to assist.  

Sounds like time for a sub-$200 wireless radio shootout. UBNT, EnGenius, Ligowave, etc.

Set them up and run them for a week with a network monitor that logs drops, high latency periods, and all while generating high, constant throughput usage where you can note extreme dips in bandwidth availability.

After a week running maybe do one last test where you zap them with a cattle prod and see which ones survive! That'd be fun, right?!

I second the Cambium recommendation.  Rock solid product compared to the UBNT gear.

Disclaimer - I work as Director of Business Development at Siklu

You may want to look at using millimeter Wave (mmWave) wireless which operates in the license free 60GHz frequencies.  The most important benefits of this technology are:

1. Interference free because it operates outside of the Wi-Fi spectrum (Ubiquiti is based on 5.xGHz frequencies same as Wi-Fi.  If there is a lot of interference in the area it can be unreliable as a result)

2. Much higher bandwith due to the greater amount of spectrum available.  Up to around 1.8Gbps bandwidth is available.  You might not need that for only a few cameras granted but if it is a largedeployment with high bandwidth cameras you may soon get up to 100Mbps where 5.xGHz wireless like Ubiquiti struggles

Downside of mmWave wireless is that it is significantly more expensive than Ubiquiti to purchase, although the prices have been coming down over the past few years (about half that what was quoted previously) and now it is on a par with many other Wi-Fi based wireless products (although still higher than Ubiquiti).  BUT - if you look at the Total Cost of Ownership (having to go back to site repeatedly to get the wireless up and running let alone unhappy customer) it could be less costly.  Also bear in mind with mmWave wireless you do need clear line of site (it will not shoot through trees).

A number of mmWave wireless manufacturers (including Siklu) are now offering point to multipoint mmWave radios which are ideal for parking lots, since they are lower cost, very easy to install, short range (up to around 1000ft or 300m), compact form factor and can be configured point to multipoint as opposed to point to point (so you need less radios). 

Having radios which will also provide PoE output (pass through) to the cameras is also very nice as it means you don't need an additional switch on the camera pole or additional PoE injectors - just connect the cameras directly to the radio.  Makes for a very clean installation with minimal boxes.

You can do remote reboot with Siklu radios if ever required as long as you can access one side of the link so no need to go to the actual radio itself to do a hard reboot.

I have had several deployments/installations using almost all of the vendors mentioned above (UBNT, Fluid Mesh, EnGenius, Ericsson BelAir, ALU, Aruba, etc..) and can tell you for fact that there is no clear cut product for every project.  Each product has it's pros and cons and there are alot of factors to consider:

GUI/Ease of use - some vendors consider that the average tech has minimum experience with wireless (EnGenius, Fluid Mesh) whereas others require more experience (BelAir and Aruba).  Some vendors even have entire communities created around deploying their hardware (UBNT). 

PoE - almost every vendor uses 24VDC PoE.  This can be especially challenging considering that most outdoor PoE injectors are 48VDC.  Do your homework.

Distance and terrain - 900 MHz for long distances, multiple obstacles, and low bandwidth, 2.4 GHz for longer distances or narrower bandwidth, 5.8 GHz for shorter paths or higher bandwidth, 4.2 GHz for Public Safety Band with narrow bandwidth, and mmBands for VERY short distances with huge bandwidth.

Full duplex vs Half Duplex - this is a hidden gem that often gets overlooked in the wireless world and will greatly effect the camera recordings.

Network Configuration - PtP, Mesh, etc... - in the wireless world, this is HUGE and may effect frequency choice, antenna size, and peripheral hardware.  

Size - Yes, it matters!  It's hard enough to have a camera on a pole with a backhaul antenna, but then throw in the additional weight of the radio.  Then EPA of the pole comes into play and you may have to reduce your hardware footprint. Etc...

Personally, my favorites are: 
PtP and PtmP has been the Ubiquiti BM2-Ti or BM5-Ti on the pole to Rocket M at the building.  

Mesh - enGenius has a great GUI. Aruba is a solid platform.

All in One - BelAir radios can be both backhaul and access point radios.  Certain models also have built in antennas.  But you definitely have to know what you're doing to deploy these.

We have used KBC in a small amount of locations (6) with good success. We have done point to point and point to multi both; with a  max of 2 cameras to one receiver/host.

Their tech support is great; they are small but helpful; and we have seen uptimes in excess of 400 days on the clients and hosts. Cameras, not so much. Can configure to your hearts content, mac-lock, etc. We have one location with 6 cameras in a small area (40yds x 100yds) and no issue with conflicts etc.

KBC units also have built in POE for cameras if that's what you are doing.

Cost has been about $300-500 per client, and about $400-800 for hosts. Can get at Anixter, probably at ADI too.

We are small, and they have been a good fit for our applications. Build quality has been good also, we get the rated boxes and have been happy.

Don't get me wrong... I like the UBNT product line.

As for the antenna question, there are several 5.8 GHz antennas that have comparable size and gain out there.  I usually compare L-Com to other sites, but the small footprint, high gain antennas do exist.

Is there another option for an enterprise level client radio that can be connected to an existing wireless network and not require the proprietary base station?  Basically just a wifi client.