[Immortalarena]

I'm setting up a wireless bridge between our Scout building and Church.  The distance is around 100 yards, so the Wireless at the Building doesn't reach far enough to just use a repeater.

 

I purchased a pair of EnGenius 5GHz Long Range Bridge from Amazon (http://a.co/c7Vx4xO), and connected them together, but the signal at the church is degrading to the point that it doesn't work.  They are both wired into Netgear R6400 routers.  One operating as the primary Router, the other in Access Point mode.

 

At the Scout Building, we're getting 71 Mbps down and 5 Mbps up.  At the Church we get 0.28 Mbps and 5 Mbps up.

 

I've tried changing several configuration settings, without success.  I will admit, that I'm not entirely sure what settings I should change, or if is a hardware/wiring issue.

 

Before we re-run the Cat cable, I want to make sure I've got the settings correct.  Currently, it's CAT5e cable, if we have to re-run it, we'll be upgrading to CAT6.

 

Attached is a Network Map that shows the position of both EnGenius devices, and Both Routers.  I've also attaches some of the settings and tests I've performed to try and identify the issue.  

 

Any assistance, or suggestions would be welcome.

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Attached Files

•  Network Map.pdf   208.9KB   276 downloads

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Assume your connection to the ISP is via the Scout building.  Looking at the manual for the thing I assume at the church side you have your second Netgear plugged into the 2nd jack on the power adapter.  If you unplug the router and plug a PC directly in what does it give you for a speed test?  If the speedtest is still poor then it's possible you have the two antennas off enough so that you are running on a sidelobe.  You may need to realign them.

 

In the setup for WDS there is an option for Channel Bandwidth?  Is 40 as high as it will go?  More would be better.  There is also one for Distance.  Can you change it?  Less would be better.

[RKinner]

Assume your connection to the ISP is via the Scout building.  Looking at the manual for the thing I assume at the church side you have your second Netgear plugged into the 2nd jack on the power adapter.  If you unplug the router and plug a PC directly in what does it give you for a speed test?  If the speedtest is still poor then it's possible you have the two antennas off enough so that you are running on a sidelobe.  You may need to realign them.

 

In the setup for WDS there is an option for Channel Bandwidth?  Is 40 as high as it will go?  More would be better.  There is also one for Distance.  Can you change it?  Less would be better.

[Immortalarena]

Hi RKinner,

 

Sorry, yes the connection to the ISP is in the Scout Building.

 

Yes, the router at the church is connected from the POE port to the second port on the power adapter.  When I'm directly connected to the Bridge instead of the router, I get a similar speed of less than 1Mbps down, 5Mbps up.

 

In the WDS settings, I have Wireless Mode { 802.11 A/N Mixed, 802.11 A, 802.11 N (5GHz) }

Currently I have it set to 802.11 N (5GHz).  My Options for Channel HT Mode are { 20MHz, 40MHz }.  I've selected 40MHz.

The options under Channel HT Mode don't change if I change the Wireless Mode.

 

The Channel Frequency has varios channels between 36 (5.18GHz) and 165 (5.825GHz).  I picked Ch100-5.5GHz because it seemed nothing else was operating in that Frequency range.  I can change it if something else would work better.

 

Under Advanced Settings I can Change Data Rate, Transmit Power, RTS/CTS Threshold... and more.  I've attached a screenshot of the current settings.  It was set to 30 km, I'll change that to 2km.

 

As for alignment, the RSSI (dBm) for each is currently at -33 at the Scout Building and -37 at the Church.

 

If you need any other screenshots of the current menus, I can check them from anywhere.  I won't be able to test the speed again until tomorrow evening EST.  I'll see if the speed got better by reducing the distance parameter then.

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[RKinner]

I would try realigning the antenna.  I didn't see a received signal meter in the manual.  Just something in the specs about an LED that shows it is locked on but I suppose:

 

As for alignment, the RSSI (dBm) for each is currently at -33 at the Scout Building and -37 at the Church.

 

 

 

 

indicates there is one.  I would expect them to be equal.  Something which can potentially go 30 KM is going to be a very tight beam

so some tweaking left or right or up or down on one or the other might help.  I would try the Scout one first and monitor the RSSI at the church when you move it.  If it's a sidelobe the signal will drop then get higher as you move it.

[Immortalarena]

Hi RKinner,

 

I wasn't able to spend much time at the building over the weekend, but I was able to confirm it's working a bit better with the distance being adjusted.  It's now getting closer to 10Mbps.  That might be sufficient for us until the spring.  I tried rotating the antenna a bit, but the signal didn't appear to change.  If you think there are any other changes I should try to adjust, I appreciate the advice.

 

Thanks for all the help so far!

[RKinner]

If changing to 2 KM helped try 1 KM.