WS-8-250-DC install in Western North Carolina

[jww]

We're a small WISP in the Western North Carolina mountains. We had replaced a TS-5 with a $19 TP Link Gbit switch and some Gbit POE injectors a couple of months ago at our first hop while we were waiting for our WS-8-250-DC and throughput increased by about 10 - 15 Mbps to about 55 - 70 Mbps. The ToughSwitches have been a disappointment as we have grown.

When we installed our WS-8-250-DC today throughput increased to a full 100 Mbps! Now the bottlenecks have moved on down the chain.

We have another WS-8-250-DC and will be installing it at our next hop - another solar relay site in the middle of a field on a mountain. We had been powering our sites at 12 volts, but had to move to 24 volts with the addition of our AF5Xs. That meant a bunch of terminal boards, a couple of DC-DC converters and a bunch of wiring. The WS-8-250-DC cleaned all of that up, all we have is a charge controller and the WS-8-250-DC in the enclosure now.

I was worried about power usage when I heard the switch's fan running so much, but it doesn't seem to really use a lot of power. It's nice to see the overall power usage in the GUI and we'll be starting up some SNMP logging soon.

Two issues - The GUI doesn't render very well on the Chrome browser on my Android phone. I can work with this, but really do use my smartphone more than a PC these days. And more insignificantly - a regular ground lug would be nice.

We're pretty basic right now and haven't moved into VLANs and LAG, but it's good to know that these features are available. It's a great relief to see what our battery voltages are!


Thanks Netonix, we'll be ordering more!

[sirhc]

Thanks jww

Would love to see some pics when you get a chance

We spent a little extra money building a cool DC to DC power supply

We spent a little extra money using a high quality switch core - carrier grade

We spent some extra money on high temp components

But I think in the end our switches turned out pretty good and worth alittle extra coin?

[jww]

I'll post pictures when I neaten things up a bit - I installed this in an operational relay station and needed to keep the outage to a minimum. Sure was nice to remove the POE injectors, DC-DC converters, and cheap switch and replace them with one box!

This has been running almost four days now and our little WISP is able to hit around 80 Mbps. Our bottlenecks have moved upstream now.

Two other great things about this switch - I can now monitor the battery voltage and power usage. I had been putting together some Arduinos with Ethernet shields to monitor battery voltage and just don't have time to build them.

But one of the big benefits is that I can stretch some more useful life out this old set of batteries that came from our off the grid house! At around $1,500 to replace them that is a really important! Since the switch will run at low battery voltages and convert the power to what the radios need I don't have to worry so much when the sun hasn't been shining.

So I used to stress when they were getting close to 24 volts (nominal 24 volt battery bank) because that would be 50% depth of discharge and any lower would shorten the life of the batteries. Now I don't care too much (with the old batteries) - I know that the switch will work to much lower voltages.

I'll be able to get through the winter with this battery bank - it goes against my off the grid battery instincts, but I can let these old batteries to get to much lower voltages and defer the purchase of new ones...

[jww]

I don't have a picture of one installed, but here is our second one. It's being reconfigured and will be deployed along with an AF5X link to our next bottleneck.

And the third one is one order... :)

WISP Switch.jpg (1.25 MiB) Viewed 8860 times

[img]file:///C:/Users/James/Desktop/WISP%20Switch.jpg[/img]