Read 2 stories and have nightmares

[kbloch]

What I am saying is it should be that way for all equipment. Maybe this is only practical at this point in time if they open up new bands for use with unlicensed equipment. We come across it in our areas where a WISP who is selling 5 meg plans and is using 40 mhz wide channels across all the spectrum to prevent anyone else from trying to setup shop. The FCC or ETSI could always make it a requirement for new equipment and the problem would be solved in five to ten years as the older equipment is phased out or replaced.

The cell phone carriers have this down in that they have a limited amount of spectrum and must use it as wisely as possible. They use automatic power control and other techniques to keep the noise floor low and the performance is high as possible.

With the current rules on the unlicensed band all of the spectrum will become unusable in many areas of the world. I look at the posts on the UBNT website and too many clueless people are allowed to use outdoor radios without proper training or knowledge. AirFiber, Airmax, etc all the posts from people needing help show that they are trying to use the widest channels and can't figure out why they are having poor performance. They use a 50 MHZ wide Airfiber channel to backhaul to a 50 Mbit cable modem. It's great that they are getting 200 Mbits per second but they will never use it and only pollute the spectrum even more.

[rebelwireless]

What I am saying is it should be that way for all equipment. Maybe this is only practical at this point in time if they open up new bands for use with unlicensed equipment. We come across it in our areas where a WISP who is selling 5 meg plans and is using 40 mhz wide channels across all the spectrum to prevent anyone else from trying to setup shop. The FCC or ETSI could always make it a requirement for new equipment and the problem would be solved in five to ten years as the older equipment is phased out or replaced.

no way. describe to me a scenario where abandoning spectrum wont cause someone else to slide in and use it. describe a scenario where the radios back off and narrow their channel to match throughput and that somehow doesn't cause a *massive* congestion issue in prime-time when all radios reach out to grab spectrum. Needing 5Mhz at 3pm doesn't mean you leave 15Mhz wide open because you need 20Mhz at 7pm.


Your description of the cell industry is flawed. They completely own their spectrum. They never have a situation where they back off a channel to make it available, ever. They have high dollar radios that have selective output so each sub gets the appropriate output power level during their timeslot. In other words, they never reduce their spectrum footprint they just transmit on subcarriers at the ideal output level.

when operating in public use spectrum, you can't give up any or someone else will setup shop and then cause congestion during heavy use hours. assuming they are competing with you for the same market, your peak times will be identical.

Quite frankly, what you are suggesting is making the wISP business much less reliable in non-licensed bands by increasing the chances of congestion. We already compete for spectrum, and we configure new APs based on spectrum use. Some of us run a long spectrum analysis so we get spectrum over a few days, but many just hang, scan, set, run and they will absolutely use the momentarily unused spectrum.

[kbloch]

I am not advocating that you abandon your spectrum. What I am saying is that with the current rules and regulations in the future the 5 GHZ spectrum will be unusable. With radios like the Mimosa and other 802.11AC radios using 80 MHZ channels, AirFiber radios using 50 MHZ and what ever else is coming the end result is that the spectrum will be unusable in many areas. in the early 2000's it was possible in many areas to put up a outdoor link in the 2.4 GHZ band and not have any issues with interference. By 2005 that band was unusable in many areas. Although the 5 GHZ band has much more spectrum available without better rules or technology the same fate will happen. How well is your network going to work when a business sets up a Mimosa link using 2 80 MHZ wide channels for a link that sits idle from 5:00 PM to 7:00 AM but still uses all of the spectrum. They may be able to justify its use or need for that amount of spectrum during the day but more than half the time it is idle.

The other thing I have noticed is that many 802.11a and 802.11AC access points do not use the DFS band even when indoors. This would be the perfect band for indoor use as it has the lowest outdoor power levels. For whatever reason the manufactures do not seek or get approvals to use the DFS band indoors.

[rebelwireless]

what is that business going to do when I occupy those channels during their business hours? you think they want to share that spectrum? welcome to public use spectrum!

[kbloch]

I agree they won't want to share it any more than you do.

The point I was trying to make and you may have missed is that something better needs to be done so that it works better for all. Automatic power control (which the new AirFiber beta firmware supports) is a step in the right direction. If all radios were required to use a dynamic bandwidth based on actual loading then it would be better for you as well. That business customer who needs a large bandwidth during the day would automatically scale back at night. The same goes for the guy who puts up a PTP link to a friends house and uses a 40 or 80 MHZ wide channel that is then idle for most of the time. Too much of the spectrum is idle at any given time. Many WISP's, businesses and individuals will try to use as much bandwidth as possible. Partly so that when they do need the throughput it will be available and possibly to keep others from competing.
I know that all ISP's will oversell to the customers the total amount of Internet capacity they have purchased. This makes sense as not all users will be sending or receiving the amount of bandwidth they have purchased 24 hours a day. The same basic thing needs to be done with outdoor wireless in that AP's and CPE's should only use the amount of bandwidth needed at the time needed.

For a WISP the majority of the bandwidth used might be between 5:00 PM and midnight as the people from work return home and use the web or stream Netflix etc. A manual solution where business or WISP's change bandwidth as needed won't work. An automatic system where bandwidth can be increased or decreased as needed would be beneficial to all. I would guess that for the majority of the day your radios are not anywhere close to running at the maximum throughput possible. There may be times at night when more bandwidth would be needed.

We are a utility company and the majority of our workers work between 7:00 AM and 5:00 PM Monday through Friday. Our wireless LAN access points are idle for most the time at night although they are still sending out lots of broadcasts and other packets that use more spectrum then needed. The same goes for our point to point links except after midnight for a few hours system backups will use the links for an hour or two. We could easily use 50 MHZ wide channels on all of our AirFiber links so that we have the maximum amount of bandwidth available. We do not do this though as we only configure links to provide for the amount of throughput needed. We monitor all links every minute with an application called "Statseeker" and will adjust links up or down in bandwidth depending on the actual needs. We do this so that when we need to add a link to a tower we know we will have the spectrum available. One one tower at my office we have 10 PTP links in operation all in the 5GHZ band. Five are AirFiber and the others are the M Series Rockets. We can easily add more links or wider channels if needed.