Ubiquiti and Vivotek

[3RDIGLBL 0]

A very brief history here. I have installed about 60 Ubiquiti M5 CPE's including some PICO Stations and I have not run into the problem I seem to be having with a couple M2's I just installed.

 

The NVR is an i3 system with 2GB Ram

Camera 1: Vivotek IP8352 Highspeed 60FPS Supreme Series cam

Camera 2: Vivotek FD8361L

Ubiquiti: (3) Nano M2's

 

Signal strength is 85

Noise is at -96db

 

Distance from CPE's to AP is no more than 200'

 

We have messed with this setup for pretty near a whole day and have it as tweaked as we are going to get it. We have severe lag in the cameras. Even a UPS truck into the driveway and you saw it one second and it was the next. Makes no sense the delay I am seeing coming through this wireless setup. Doing a PING I can see anywhere from 1ms up to 400ms and it jumps around whether the camera is conencted or not.

 

I removed the antennas from the local switch so the AP is connected directly to the server NIC. I have tried to elliminate all I could and I am getting subpar performance. Customer isn't too happy cause we put a 60fps camera and we are lucky to see a blip from a passing car. Don't ask why 60fps because it's moot! I would be happy to get 5fps at this point which is what I have the live view stream set to.

 

I am using the free vivotek software but this is moot because this delay is happening when directly logged into the web interface.

 

I think this issue has a ton to do with the very jumpy pings but I am at a complete and utter loss why I am getting this. I even hired a local wireless guru who has been installing wireless for nearly 12 years come to my customers today. He is the one who tweaked it so the signal is as good as we got now but we can't improve this ping performance and it is really causing a severe camera issue.

 

Anyone with pointers for me to try out? I would love to hear something I haven't tried yet. I went with M2 because there is a single layer of branches from spruce tree in between the CPE and AP. Wireless signal and noice is good. Ping.....well it is just horrible.

[bpzle 0]

what happens when you run airview? anything noteworthy pop up? i had strange issues with some M5s here recently... they would intermittently interfere with other wireless networks in the area. ended up disabling discovery, forcing them to stay on a particular frequency and enabled channel shifting... sounds contradictory, but haven't been called back since... that was about 2 months ago

[bpzle 0]

of course you could always have a dud nano or 2...

[3RDIGLBL 0]

what happens when you run airview? anything noteworthy pop up? i had strange issues with some M5s here recently... they would intermittently interfere with other wireless networks in the area. ended up disabling discovery, forcing them to stay on a particular frequency and enabled channel shifting... sounds contradictory, but haven't been called back since... that was about 2 months ago

 

When I run airview I seem to have more noise and more issues. Strange right? These are within 200' and should not be having any issue at all. It's very weird. These two camera should be flying with all the bandwidth they have to play with. The jumping ping rate is not right and within 200' I should have a consistence <1ms I would think or at least right around there???

[bpzle 0]

also... 85db seams a little weak for only being 200' away... even if there is a branch in the way... what is your strength set to? i do know it's possible to have it set too high if you are close...

[3RDIGLBL 0]

of course you could always have a dud nano or 2...

 

Well I changed out the PICO I had there. The two nano's are 70 degrees or so from each other so I put a nano in place of the PICO since they were so close. I was able to improve the signal quality and performance but not where I find it acceptable.

 

I have the power setting set to 12db on the AP and about 9db on the CPE's. This seems to give me the best overall signal but not able to improve the pings or I should say I'm better than some of the timeouts and 1400ms I was getting initially.

[3RDIGLBL 0]

also... 85db seams a little weak for only being 200' away... even if there is a branch in the way... what is your strength set to? i do know it's possible to have it set too high if you are close...

 

 

I agree totally. I can not max the lights no matter what I have been trying. I have the AP mounted just below the soffit on the corner of the house. The house is vinyl sided but maybe reflection because it's below the soffit? It's maybe a foot and half below the soffit. I mean less the 200'. I can throw a rock and with a couple bounces hit the house where the AP is.

[bpzle 0]

i'm by no means a wireless guru... but i'm leaning towards interference from something else nearby. have you tried forcing them to stay on one frequency? i'd be interested to see if there is a signal difference between the lowest freq and highest...

[hardwired 0]

Make sure you are running them AP-WDS to Station WDS, turn power up until you are as close as possible to -50 on the signal strength, run Airview spectrum analyzer mode (from the AP, it drops the link while running, you can't do it from stations unless you are directly connected to their LAN port) to look for interference in the area, try Auto channel selection/ changing channels on the AP, try turning off AirMax on the AP, try locking MCS rate to MCS7, change bandwidth to 10Mhz (in that order).

 

Try temporarily turning off one of the stations to see if one has the issues, or both.

 

If you are running two different locations with NSM2's as stations, and AP's, at least one of the stations is somewhat out of the beam of the AP (although at that range, you can usually shoot into the back of them and still have it work).

 

I have a set of 2.4 Airgrids going 2.5 miles with one line of trees in the way, and I'm still in the -60's with the power turned down, you should be great at that distance.

[3RDIGLBL 0]

Make sure you are running them AP-WDS to Station WDS, turn power up until you are as close as possible to -50 on the signal strength, run Airview spectrum analyzer mode (from the AP, it drops the link while running, you can't do it from stations unless you are directly connected to their LAN port) to look for interference in the area, try Auto channel selection/ changing channels on the AP, try turning off AirMax on the AP, try locking MCS rate to MCS7, change bandwidth to 10Mhz (in that order).

 

Try temporarily turning off one of the stations to see if one has the issues, or both.

 

If you are running two different locations with NSM2's as stations, and AP's, at least one of the stations is somewhat out of the beam of the AP (although at that range, you can usually shoot into the back of them and still have it work).

 

I have a set of 2.4 Airgrids going 2.5 miles with one line of trees in the way, and I'm still in the -60's with the power turned down, you should be great at that distance.

 

Interesting. I was told not to use AP-WDS so at the moment I am not using it. I am anxious to give this stuff shot. I'm scheduled to head out to the customer this afternoon so I'll let you know how I fair in regards to your ideas. I already have it down to 10Mhz, Airmax is turned off, running the spectrum analyzer the other day my cleanest signal were in the middle around channel 5,6,7. This customer is about 6 miles out of town and lives in the woods. I'm baffled by hard a time I had finding a clean signal range....I asked if was running a power plant in the back woods or something LOL! Blowing me a way the issues I am having there. Most of my installs have been in town or small cities and I have had more trouble at this customer in the woods then any other place. This is the first time I use the M2 though.

[hardwired 0]

Who said not to run AP-WDS to STA-WDS?

 

I agree not to use store and forward WDS repeating (losing half the bandwidth each hop), but running in WDS mode is not the same thing, it is necessary to keep the MAC headers on data packets from being changed, which a lot of systems don't like.

 

WDS mode creates a layer 2 bridge, which appears transparent (like a wire) to the cameras and NVR.

[3RDIGLBL 0]

Who said not to run AP-WDS to STA-WDS?

 

I agree not to use store and forward WDS repeating (losing half the bandwidth each hop), but running in WDS mode is not the same thing, it is necessary to keep the MAC headers on data packets from being changed, which a lot of systems don't like.

 

WDS mode creates a layer 2 bridge, which appears transparent (like a wire) to the cameras and NVR.

 

The one who I have been consulting with said not to use the WDS mode. So I should be setting that to AP-WDS? OK I will set that and see if it fixes anything. Not sure what the store and forward WDS you mentioned is about but I will change the mode to to AP-WDS a little later on.

[3RDIGLBL 0]

Who said not to run AP-WDS to STA-WDS?

 

I agree not to use store and forward WDS repeating (losing half the bandwidth each hop), but running in WDS mode is not the same thing, it is necessary to keep the MAC headers on data packets from being changed, which a lot of systems don't like.

 

WDS mode creates a layer 2 bridge, which appears transparent (like a wire) to the cameras and NVR.

 

The one who I have been consulting with said not to use the WDS mode. So I should be setting that to AP-WDS? OK I will set that and see if it fixes anything. Not sure what the store and forward WDS you mentioned is about but I will change the mode to to AP-WDS a little later on.

 

Actually in the Ubiguiti forums there seems to be folks who say that WDS is useless bla bla bla bla. There not sure why it was ever included....

[3RDIGLBL 0]

switched stations to stations-wds and AP to AP-WDS, set to MCS7 (not automatic), 10MHZ, output power 9dbm, freq 2437 network mode is bridge on both stations and AP.

 

I turned the AP directly to point to one of the stations so I can work with one at a time.

 

Pings 1ms to more than 4ms...HUGE improvement

 

problem now, I get no streaming video, can't access the station webpage unless I'm directly plugged into the station.

 

So now I have awesome pings and no throughput. what the helll is going on here. Distance of this one station is about 150' and I'm not getting a green light on my signal strenth. Noise is right around 96- 98. Played with power up and down. ACK is set to 44 and automatic and distance set to .1miles and I tried .2miles. Currently no security is involved so WEP. The last thing I just did was lock the AP mac in the station when I was at the station but that did nothing.

 

 

 

Station numbers as it stands now:

 

Signal Strength -66dbm

Horizontal/Vertical -69 / -68 dbm

Noise Floor: -93dbm

CCQ: 69.7%

tx/rx locked 32.5Mbps

channel 6

ACK 57/1.3 miles

Channel width 10mhz

 

Pings consistantly 1ms - 4ms hitting 8 ms a few times and this is from the NVR. But I have no through video throughput and accessing the webpage takes minutes for the page to come up.

[hardwired 0]

If you're not seeing the signal strength indicators on the units lit, is almost sounds like the units aren't actually linked. Try searching for the AP from the station, and then try connecting to it that way. Also, make sure "Client Isolation" is unchecked. Try auto channel selection, turn Airmax back on, keep ACK on auto.

 

The CCQ being that bad makes it sound like there's lots of interference, somehow. Do you have two Nano's very close to each other for any reason, or near another source of interference that you can identify?

 

The "useless" WDS mode that people talk about on the Ubiquiti forum is when people are trying to use a single radio at a midpoint to repeat a signal, that doesn't work very well

 

AP-WDS to STA-WDS is the way that most people seem to run Ubiquiti equipment, as I mentioned, that is how to achieve a transparent bridge.