I have a 4+ mile LOS link to my local AREDN access point. It's a Rocket M5 on a 60 degree sector. On my end I had a Powerbeam M5 300. The link has very good SNRs both directions.
Several weeks ago the Rocket started not responding for 10s of seconds every couple of minutes. Coincidentally my old Powerbeam, which has been up on the tower for 5+ years, started locking up every couple of days, requiring a power-cycle to recover.
It's an easy drive to the hilltop so I went up there up there a couple of weeks ago and swapped out the old Rocket with a shiny new Rocket r5 ac, which I had on hand after helping KN6PLV debug the dev software. After sorting out a few revealed software issues with Tim (PLV) the site was stable and performance was improved.
A week or so after that my son KB6DYJ went up my tower and swapped out the failing Powerbeam for a Nanobeam ac gen2 (also left over from software debugging).
I did iperf3 throughput testing before, during, and after the hardware swaps.
I did iperf3 throughput testing before, during, and after the hardware swaps.
Results:
old 802.11n stuff - ~14-15 Mbit/second both ways.
All new 802.11ac gear: 18-19 Mbit/second one way, 29-30 Mbit/second the other.
Summary: I won't be buying any more 802.11 gear :-)