I am considering getting a couple Ubiquiti M3 Rocket units to experiment with.
Does anyone know whether units produced in 2014 have the WX boards? I am looking a couple NOS units that have a June 2014 inspection date but haven't been able to get further details. Unfortunately, the units aren't local to me so I can't read them or otherwise inspect them. It is unlikely that I can get the person who has them to read them for me.
Thanks.
Fred Bray
KE6CD
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Ubiquiti 3 GHz Equipment
Wed, 03/30/2016 - 19:44
#1
Ubiquiti 3 GHz Equipment
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I was thinking of it mainly for backhaul. It also could work for mesh in situations where 2 and 5 GHz is heavily congested and can't be adequately deconflicted.
I take it from the prior posts that 2014 M3 units aren't likely to experience the boot loop bricking problems that M2 and M5 devices are subject too?
Thanks.
Andre
The performance advantage of UBNT AirOS WDS link (versus a pair of mesh nodes) is substantial for a point-to-point connection. Its at least 4:1 throughput advantage, in my experience.
Configuring the UBNT nodes is simple, if you select the "simple configuration" option in UBNT. You manually assign addresses for each node. You enable the AirMAX mode, make one an access point, one a station, and you run in transparent bridge mode. If the link is long, you select the Long Range PtP option.
There are various options for the interface between AREDN mesh and AirOS - not all of which I understand. But I did do some testing more than a year ago and got it to work. One way is basically to make the AirOS nodes be your "WAN" connection at each mesh interface point and check the AREDN mesh gateway box at each end of the backbone. The addresses on the backbone need to be a different network than 10.x.x.x and you manually enter the appropriate WAN address at each mesh end setup.
As I recall, there was an issue with tunnel connections when I first tried this, but I believe it was fixed in the next release.
In this arrangement, no Internet connection is needed. Note that non-mesh nodes on the backbone (if any) cannot access the mesh, without more work.
Subsequent to this testing, I have been operating both mesh and backbone networks, but have never implemented a production mesh-to-mesh connection, so I was a bit hesitant to respond to your original note. Nor am I likely to be a technical resource for advanced questions (but others on here are!)
Ken
Especially relevant to 3GHz, as it's a licensed band. I know we use "export" nodes for 3GHz, but do they work on the correct frequencies in AirOS by default?
Yes that's right. You can operate part 97 frequencies on 3 GHz (and other bands), but have to ID properly. The Access Point unit can be said to ID adequately if you use a call sign for the SSID. But the Station node probably does not meet FCC requirements.
Its a shame that AREDN dropped the point-to-point configuration option of the AREDN software, but they had their reasons.
To use AirOS, it has been suggested that you can run a program on the station node which sends a beacon message periodically to meet the requirement. The problem with that is the newer versions of AirOS get all excited if you try to start them up with a foreign program of some sort (or any other change) in the boot up sequence. What I have tried was to change the MAC address so that the pairs of numbers, interpreted as ASCII characters, spell out my call sign. If you use a wireshark program (or something similar) on the data being sent by the Station node, the call sign will be very obvious and I think that means it is an OK ID. You are limited to 5 character call signs since you cannot change the first pair of digits. And you have the same issue with more recent versions of AirOS because any program you run to change the MAC will be objected to by UBNT. That means you have to do the change with an external computer or terminal. There are various ways to do this and which ones are supported by UBNT may depend on the version of AirOS that you are running.
If anyone else has experience in this area I would be interested to see what they did.
Wouldn't be too bad if you had a 1x2 or 2x1 callsign as you could set one octet as a serial number; everyone else is out of luck and gets one unit per network.
Vendors usually have several ID blocks but I have 9 units and only 4 different ID blocks; they cross over product lines too, so not all NanoStations (for example) have the same ID block
yes - it is an incentive to upgrade your license!
But with a big backbone you probably are a club operation and only the sponsor of the club call sign would need the extra class license.
I would point out that non-printable characters could be appended to the 1x2 or 2x1 call to generate more than 100 MACs that all have the same call sign when displayed as text. And you only need to do it on the station nodes not the access points (which may be half of the nodes). The FCC allows many transmitters to use the same call sign (think of field day or a multi-multi contest station).
I like the option of using netstat to send a beacon message from the station(s) to the access point since no fiddling with the node firmware is needed. The only downside I can think of is that you really need to turn off the node if the computer sending the beacon stops for some reason.
Whether you are already, or upgrade to, Extra, there aren't many available, and there's usually a lot of competition for them, so not an easy thing to get at all, let alone if you want one for a specific district.
Does allow a lot of options for a prefix number. Leaving out A, K, N, & W, leaves you about 250 possibilities.
Certainly doable, just difficult.
Couldn't an external file tansfer, say via MeshChat, with the ID in the text be setup to transmit periodically from the Station node?