smartphones connected to directional antennas
Hi all, I was wondering if any of you have had any experience, or done any testing, of smartphones connected to APs with directional antennas at multi-km distances. I have an extremely radio quiet rural valley that I’d like to push wireless signal into for VoIP but over distances of 1 - 5km. There would be APs on the range beside it with clear line of sight into the whole valley. To help reduce the issue of the hidden node problem (if any devices can even connect at all) I’d look at putting bandwidth limiting on each connected device of maybe 100-200 Kbps to keep the throughput of each one, and therefore collisions with other transmitting devices, as low as possible. I’d also only allow VoIP traffic through the router or AP to make sure that downloading emails doesn’t ruin their phone calls (or maybe just limit non-VoIP data to a very small fraction of throughput if needed). The VoIP client will mostly take care of jitter and buffering, and almost anything would still be better than than not even having a 3G signal as is the case at the moment. Obviously there are a mountain of gotchas and it depends in this scenario but I’d love to hear from anyone that has tried something similar. Thanks, Andrew
We're doing something similar with a mANTBox to fire WiFi over to a BBQ area off of a building - Works well, no complaints. Obviously 5Ghz only with that unit, so older phones don't work. Dave Browning | Network Engineer P 1300 791 678 Level 1, 12 Railway Tce, Milton QLD 4064 -----Original Message----- From: Public [mailto:public-bounces@talk.mikrotik.com.au] On Behalf Of Andrew Radke Sent: Thursday, 21 September 2017 12:22 PM To: MikroTik Australia Public List <public@talk.mikrotik.com.au> Subject: [MT-AU Public] smartphones connected to directional antennas Hi all, I was wondering if any of you have had any experience, or done any testing, of smartphones connected to APs with directional antennas at multi-km distances. I have an extremely radio quiet rural valley that I’d like to push wireless signal into for VoIP but over distances of 1 - 5km. There would be APs on the range beside it with clear line of sight into the whole valley. To help reduce the issue of the hidden node problem (if any devices can even connect at all) I’d look at putting bandwidth limiting on each connected device of maybe 100-200 Kbps to keep the throughput of each one, and therefore collisions with other transmitting devices, as low as possible. I’d also only allow VoIP traffic through the router or AP to make sure that downloading emails doesn’t ruin their phone calls (or maybe just limit non-VoIP data to a very small fraction of throughput if needed). The VoIP client will mostly take care of jitter and buffering, and almost anything would still be better than than not even having a 3G signal as is the case at the moment. Obviously there are a mountain of gotchas and it depends in this scenario but I’d love to hear from anyone that has tried something similar. Thanks, Andrew _______________________________________________ Public mailing list Public@talk.mikrotik.com.au http://talk.mikrotik.com.au/mailman/listinfo/public_talk.mikrotik.com.au
Andrew, Would the client devices have the capability to get the signal back to your AP in this case? I would imagine they would receive fine, but transmissions wouldn't arrive at the AP due to the omnidirectional design... -----Original Message----- From: Public [mailto:public-bounces@talk.mikrotik.com.au] On Behalf Of Dave Browning Sent: Thursday, 21 September 2017 12:33 PM To: MikroTik Australia Public List <public@talk.mikrotik.com.au> Subject: Re: [MT-AU Public] smartphones connected to directional antennas We're doing something similar with a mANTBox to fire WiFi over to a BBQ area off of a building - Works well, no complaints. Obviously 5Ghz only with that unit, so older phones don't work. Dave Browning | Network Engineer P 1300 791 678 Level 1, 12 Railway Tce, Milton QLD 4064 -----Original Message----- From: Public [mailto:public-bounces@talk.mikrotik.com.au] On Behalf Of Andrew Radke Sent: Thursday, 21 September 2017 12:22 PM To: MikroTik Australia Public List <public@talk.mikrotik.com.au> Subject: [MT-AU Public] smartphones connected to directional antennas Hi all, I was wondering if any of you have had any experience, or done any testing, of smartphones connected to APs with directional antennas at multi-km distances. I have an extremely radio quiet rural valley that I’d like to push wireless signal into for VoIP but over distances of 1 - 5km. There would be APs on the range beside it with clear line of sight into the whole valley. To help reduce the issue of the hidden node problem (if any devices can even connect at all) I’d look at putting bandwidth limiting on each connected device of maybe 100-200 Kbps to keep the throughput of each one, and therefore collisions with other transmitting devices, as low as possible. I’d also only allow VoIP traffic through the router or AP to make sure that downloading emails doesn’t ruin their phone calls (or maybe just limit non-VoIP data to a very small fraction of throughput if needed). The VoIP client will mostly take care of jitter and buffering, and almost anything would still be better than than not even having a 3G signal as is the case at the moment. Obviously there are a mountain of gotchas and it depends in this scenario but I’d love to hear from anyone that has tried something similar. Thanks, Andrew _______________________________________________ Public mailing list Public@talk.mikrotik.com.au http://talk.mikrotik.com.au/mailman/listinfo/public_talk.mikrotik.com.au _______________________________________________ Public mailing list Public@talk.mikrotik.com.au http://talk.mikrotik.com.au/mailman/listinfo/public_talk.mikrotik.com.au
Hi Philip, From what I’ve seen with people doing this sort of thing with ESP8266 and ESP32 IoT sensors the AP should receive the signal okay with a directional antenna. But if they end up needing to be too directional I may end up needing too many APs too. When I was talking to Alen at Duxtel this morning he wondered about all the weird and wonderful chipsets in smartphones could mean that if it did work for one device there is nothing to say it definitely would for another. Andrew
On 21 Sep 2017, at 1:17 pm, Philip Loenneker <Philip.Loenneker@tasmanet.com.au> wrote:
Andrew,
Would the client devices have the capability to get the signal back to your AP in this case? I would imagine they would receive fine, but transmissions wouldn't arrive at the AP due to the omnidirectional design...
-----Original Message----- From: Public [mailto:public-bounces@talk.mikrotik.com.au] On Behalf Of Dave Browning Sent: Thursday, 21 September 2017 12:33 PM To: MikroTik Australia Public List <public@talk.mikrotik.com.au> Subject: Re: [MT-AU Public] smartphones connected to directional antennas
We're doing something similar with a mANTBox to fire WiFi over to a BBQ area off of a building - Works well, no complaints. Obviously 5Ghz only with that unit, so older phones don't work.
Dave Browning | Network Engineer P 1300 791 678 Level 1, 12 Railway Tce, Milton QLD 4064
-----Original Message----- From: Public [mailto:public-bounces@talk.mikrotik.com.au] On Behalf Of Andrew Radke Sent: Thursday, 21 September 2017 12:22 PM To: MikroTik Australia Public List <public@talk.mikrotik.com.au> Subject: [MT-AU Public] smartphones connected to directional antennas
Hi all,
I was wondering if any of you have had any experience, or done any testing, of smartphones connected to APs with directional antennas at multi-km distances.
I have an extremely radio quiet rural valley that I’d like to push wireless signal into for VoIP but over distances of 1 - 5km. There would be APs on the range beside it with clear line of sight into the whole valley.
To help reduce the issue of the hidden node problem (if any devices can even connect at all) I’d look at putting bandwidth limiting on each connected device of maybe 100-200 Kbps to keep the throughput of each one, and therefore collisions with other transmitting devices, as low as possible. I’d also only allow VoIP traffic through the router or AP to make sure that downloading emails doesn’t ruin their phone calls (or maybe just limit non-VoIP data to a very small fraction of throughput if needed). The VoIP client will mostly take care of jitter and buffering, and almost anything would still be better than than not even having a 3G signal as is the case at the moment.
Obviously there are a mountain of gotchas and it depends in this scenario but I’d love to hear from anyone that has tried something similar.
Thanks, Andrew _______________________________________________ Public mailing list Public@talk.mikrotik.com.au http://talk.mikrotik.com.au/mailman/listinfo/public_talk.mikrotik.com.au _______________________________________________ Public mailing list Public@talk.mikrotik.com.au http://talk.mikrotik.com.au/mailman/listinfo/public_talk.mikrotik.com.au _______________________________________________ Public mailing list Public@talk.mikrotik.com.au http://talk.mikrotik.com.au/mailman/listinfo/public_talk.mikrotik.com.au
participants (3)
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Andrew Radke -
Dave Browning -
Philip Loenneker