Microwave link capacity

Thu Apr 7 18:09:56 UTC 2016

There is no simple answer to your question....

Fixed Wireless technology has come a long way, and there maybe a lot of different variety of products available,  however when you start your product selection for a particular project, it is not un-common to find one constrained in terms of resources.

While one cane make a statement such as .. You can shoot 1gig, 20 miles however that comes with a lot of cavats...
i.e.  What mfg makes equipment that can do this ? 
      Do you need one set of radios or are you stacking multiple radios ?
      Do you have the required Freq and Channel available ?
      and a few other things..
              How big is the antenna required for this ?
              Is the Tower Strong Enough to withstand the wind loading ?
              What would it take to strengthen the tower ? 

All of these above details can send you down the path, into a rabbit hole which may or may not be constrained. 
Then there are different ways to mitigate these constraints .. (making the hop shorter.. ie. and intermediary repeater site.. etc etc etc ).

Delivering 1gig + long distance is not an easy slam dunk task. While Fiber can be a lot of work to put in the ground for 20 miles, it is generally considered to be the better option, because there is a lot of headroom for expanding capacity.
Fixed Wireless, can be deployed quickly, and may possibly be less expensive however there is no headroom for expanding capacity (if the link is designed as per specs of 1gig Capacity).

Hope that makes sense.

Regards.

Faisal Imtiaz
Snappy Internet & Telecom

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jean-Francois Mezei" <jfmezei_nanog at vaxination.ca>
> To: "nanog list" <nanog at nanog.org>
> Sent: Thursday, April 7, 2016 1:52:47 PM
> Subject: Re: Microwave link capacity

> On 2016-04-07 08:28, Bryan Fields wrote:
> 
>> Microwave has it's place, but the 20 mile, >1gb links are marketing more than
>> anything.
> 
> 
> So existing long distance links to reach rural communities are not good
> candidates to upgrade from old microwave that handles just phone to
> something that can serve broadband for the town ?
> 
> 
> If existing towers are further apart than what is realistic for higher
> capacity links, then upgrading would involve new towers at which point,
> the economics might point to fibre.