An alternative for your situation could be the 450i LITE, which comes with either an integrated 90 degree sector or as a connectorized unit (for which you could re-use the antenna).
This product costs more than the MicroPoP, not as nicely integrated, but does not have the range limitation (but still does have the 20 SM limit). Regarding your comments on lightning, certainly this is a concern, and best practice would be to ensure that the MicroPoP is not the tallest thing on the mast/mount. We recommend a lightning rod at the top to draw/ground the pole, and direct energy away from the radio. The thin rod does not cause too much ripple in the antenna pattern, and will not impact the performance very much (in any measurable way). Here is a recommendation on the lightning rod: A locally sourced steel lightning rod needs to be min. 4 feet long, maximum 5/8 inches thick and secured with two separate hose clamps and should be at least 0.5m higher than the top of the omni, with 3 feet (1m) over the top as a maximum. Either type of lightning rod can be used, the single blunt tip version or having a dissipator on top (the dissipator concept has many smaller rods clustered together so they have many weak streamers instead of one large streamer which would attract a lighting hit better). An example is from the LBA Group (DAT-160SS), 5 feet long, 5/8" O.D., but there may be better sources for this type of equipment. It is mandatory to have the mast grounded, if this is not possible a 6 -8 AWG Cu ground wire needs to attach to the lightning rod base and run down to the ground (PE) bonding point. Matt From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> On Behalf Of Ken Hohhof Sent: Friday, October 23, 2020 10:20 AM To: 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' <af@af.afmug.com> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] [ External ] Re: 450 and 450i AP CPU limit on throughput? So Matt, that's an interesting suggestion. I see some pros and cons compared to just swapping out the existing 450 AP for a 450i. We would still need the unlock key because micropops or omni sites are 3 miles for us, and this site has a customer at 2.5 miles and another at 2.2. It would be the 2 mile limit not the number of subs driving us to need the unlock key. Once you add the unlock key, the advantages of the micropop product are features and packaging, not price. Omnis in general suck. I think we have one of the KPP or L-Com 13 dBi omnis there. Probably the gain varies from 9-13 dBi depending on azimuth. With the 450 micropop spec of 9 dBi, we're probably talking 5-9 dBi. Most WISPs are shrinking cell size to around 3 miles, but the idea is to have every link at 6X or 8X, so giving up antenna gain may not be acceptable. I have one other site with an omni, but that's a 450 CBRS site with an Alpha omni which performs very well, it's an exception to my rule that dual pol omnis suck. Also this site has added a bunch of customers in a subdivision in addition to a scattering of customers throughout 360 degrees, so we added a sector and kept the omni, so that has worked well. In other sparsely populated areas, the customers refuse to all live within one 90 degree sector, the are stubbornly all over the place. Another reason omnis suck is they tend to get hit by lightning. We've had pretty good luck with inline coaxial surge protectors, the antenna gets blown to smithereens, or the top gets blown off and it fills with rain, but we replace it and the AP is still good. With an integrated product like the micropop, we have to buy a whole new AP. Worse, if we bought an unlock key, the key goes in the dumpster along with the AP. The built-in GPS is nice, assuming this time it really works. At this site it would potentially free up a cable, but we could put a Syncbox or cnPuls at the 450i to accomplish the same thing. The main decisions would seem to revolve around potentially losing 4 dB of antenna gain, and needing the unlock key for the 2-3 mile subs. It would certainly be a cleaner, more integrated package to install. From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com<mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com>> On Behalf Of Matt Mangriotis via AF Sent: Friday, October 23, 2020 8:33 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com<mailto:af@af.afmug.com>> Cc: Matt Mangriotis <matt.mangrio...@cambiumnetworks.com<mailto:matt.mangrio...@cambiumnetworks.com>> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] [ External ] Re: 450 and 450i AP CPU limit on throughput? The original 450 AP and SM were roughly the same PPS, and had similar limits... the AP having more FPGA gates, it has some additional resources to handle more things. In practice, in a typical network with mixed packet sizes, this ends up around 55-60 Mbps in a 20 MHz channel (PPS did improve over time going from 13k when they were first released, to ~20k these days... but we reached the limit of what those chips could do). The good news is that 450i, 450b and the new MicroPoP radios are all built using a next generation FPGA (SoC), which has embedded ARM processors, and with Release 20, we've unlocked some serious gains in PPS on these bad boys... effectively increasing PPS by 250% or more (from ~40k to >100k). If it's a budget-constrained site, I might suggest a MicroPoP as an upgrade, depending on how many SMs you need to serve (and how far away they are). Standards-based chipsets have a distinct advantage in this area because the MAC/PHY is baked into the ASIC chip and does what it does very well... but limits the flexibility on what can be done. With our current approach, nearly anything is possible given time and resources, because everything down to Layer 1 is coded into that FPGA... but it adds a bit of cost. Matt From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com<mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com>> On Behalf Of Ken Hohhof Sent: Friday, October 23, 2020 8:21 AM To: 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' <af@af.afmug.com<mailto:af@af.afmug.com>> Subject: [ External ] Re: [AFMUG] 450 and 450i AP CPU limit on throughput? Not talking about sustained speed keys (finally gone in the 450b) but the point at which you haven't maxed out the RF capability but the CPU horsepower becomes the limiting factor and you can't get any more pps through it. I think the SMs also have this issue, but less likely to be a problem unless using them in PTP mode or having a small number of very high bandwidth customers. Or maybe you are saying the APs never had the CPU limitation like the SMs, but I'm pretty sure they did. Each generation 450, 450i, 450m having a more powerful CPU. Although not as powerful as we might think from the price, I guess maybe the result of using a processor core in an FPGA, it seems like lowly WiFi chips have more CPU power. I think most of us were surprised to find the limitation could be CPU not RF. From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com<mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com>> On Behalf Of Adam Moffett Sent: Friday, October 23, 2020 6:42 AM To: af@af.afmug.com<mailto:af@af.afmug.com> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] 450 and 450i AP CPU limit on throughput? I thought the limitation was on what a single SM did. .....maybe mistaken. On 10/23/2020 12:14 AM, Ken Hohhof wrote: Does anyone know off the top of your head what the current CPU limited max throughput is for 450 vs 450i APs? Not based on RF characteristics but packet processing in the CPU. I keep thinking at one time 450 APs were only capable of maybe 20 Mbps but that can't be right because I have some doing over 40. I think Cambium said that firmware tweaking kept raising that number. I'm asking because I have one lone site with a 450 and an omni, and maybe a dozen subs scattered through the entire 360 degrees. So while I am going to need more throughput, it just doesn't justify 4 sectors, and the cables are in conduit and I think we only ran 4 cables and we have 2 backhauls. And it occurs to me what I need isn't sectors, it's to increase the channel width to 30 MHz (450) or 40 MHz (450i). But will a 30 MHz channel really help if the 450 AP is pps limited by the CPU? I'm OK with replacing the 450 with a 450i if necessary. Most sites we have at least 4 sectors, so mostly 20 MHz channels. But an omni with a 40 MHz channel would use the same amount of spectrum as 4 sectors and 20 MHz channels.
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