[CUWiN-Dev] Less RF output in the 5.8 GHz band too

[Patrick]

I was reading one of the recent threads regarding poor 802.11b Channel 11
performance.

We noticed an identical issue in the 5 GHz band. We had been having
trouble getting the backhaul links to operate, so we decided to try all of
the channels suspecting that maybe there was a Ham radio operator that was
blowing away our links.

We think that there is a much lower RF power output at the higher end of
the frequency band because we had significantly more signal strength (as
measured by the receiving card) when we operated at the lower end of the
operational range of the card (from 5.1 to 5.8 GHz). The nodes are close
enough to each other (about 200 yards) where the difference cannot be
soley better RF propagation characteristics due to the lower frequency.

Our nodes currently use SOEKRIS 4826-50 boards with two Atheros-based
radio cards (CM9) running our own software (Linux). One radio card
operates at 2 GHz to provide 802.11b/g AP services to clients. The other
radio card operates at 5 GHz for ppp backhaul links. Routing between the
two radio cards is done onboard. Since we deployed these nodes (about a
month ago) everything has been working great.

We're didn't bother comparing the Channel 1 versus Channel 11 on the
802.11b band (2.4 GHz) because we have plenty of link margin (we burn
through multiple walls of multiple townhouses with margin to spare) ...
but ... we now plan to do some testing before locking in on a Ch 1, 6, 11
scheme throughout oue neighborhood.

Patrick Smith