Wireless Ethernet bridge

Ryan Wilkins ryan at deadfrog.net
Thu Mar 11 05:03:04 UTC 2010


Instead of the PTP600, you might try looking at the PTP800.  Again,  
not 5.8 GHz but does up to 368 Mbps full duplex over the air  
interface, jumbo frames up to 9600 bytes, AES 128 or 256 bit  
encryption, 11, 18, 23, or 26 GHz depending on what regulatory agency  
you fall under.  Will do fiber or copper handoff at gigabit speeds.

I also have two BridgeWave links installed.  The older stuff (AR80- 
AES) won't do jumbo frames.  The newer stuff (FlexPort-AES) will do  
jumbo frames to something like 9200 bytes.  These links operate at 80  
GHz.  Both models have had issues but the support has been very good.   
Handoff is fiber on the older line and SFP (presumably fiber) on the  
newer line.

Neither are inexpensive.  You're looking at about USD $32k or so for  
the BridgeWave radios per link.  The PTP600 and 800 are about the same  
at USD $15k or so per link.  Prices vary (wildly) with options.

Lab testing of the PTP600 yielded about 225 Mbps each way even though  
the advertised speed was closer to 150 Mbps each way.  In the end, we  
ended up returning the PTP600 before it was installed, not because it  
was a substandard product, but rather because our landlord chose to  
make liberal use of the 5.8 GHz band for security cameras.  I have no  
doubt that we would have closed the links at 5.8 GHz but it would have  
likely killed our landlord's camera network.  Instead of causing  
problems, we chose to return the radios and go with the PTP800 which  
weren't available at the time we were investigating this radio solution.

Good luck on your search.

Ryan Wilkins

On Mar 10, 2010, at 4:31 PM, Scott Brown/Clack/ESD <SBrown at clackesd.k12.or.us 
 > wrote:

> The Dragonwave would be my first choice too, but they are not in the  
> 5.8GHz
> band.
>
> The Motorola PTP-600 has a 2000 byte MTU, but doesn't do multimode  
> handoff.
>
> What radio to get will come down to what you are willing to give up  
> -- if
> you are willing to drop the 5.8Ghz band and go with 11Ghz then the
> Dragonwave is for you -- the new Horizon Quantum is amazing (and  
> pretty
> inexpensive when I priced it out)
>
> Bridgewave isn't bad either - you can get to 1.25Gbps with some fiber
> handoff.
>
>
> Scott
>
> Mike Lyon <mike.lyon at gmail.com> wrote on 03/10/2010 02:23:33 PM:
>
>> From: Mike Lyon <mike.lyon at gmail.com>
>> To: Stefano Gridelli <sgridelli at gmail.com>
>> Cc: nanog at nanog.org
>> Date: 03/10/2010 02:23 PM
>> Subject: Re: Wireless Ethernet bridge
>>
>> Check out DragonWave:
>>
>> http://www.dragonwaveinc.com/
>>
>> -Mike
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 2:18 PM, Stefano Gridelli
> <sgridelli at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> Hi All,
>>>
>>> I need a wireless bridge solution that allows to pass jumbo frames  
>>> over
> a
>>> distance of 3 miles, using the 5.8 GHz band. The original solution  
>>> was
> a
>>> Proxim Tsunami GX 200, but unfortunately it doesn't go beyond an  
>>> MTU of
>>> 1536
>>> bytes: we need at least 1544 bytes, ideally between 4470 and 9212  
>>> bytes
>>> MTU. The handoff should be MM fiber, the desired throughput 200  
>>> Mbps.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Stefano
>>>
>
>




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