IBB Breeze Line of Sight Issue

Red Alert

Hi,

Thanks to everyone here i eventually got sorted out with Breeze 1Mb access after a long and drawn out battle with IBB over ripwave and whatnot...

I noticed a marked reduction in my speeds recently. It's practically become unusable now, and up until about two weeks ago was performing perfectly. The only thing i can think of is that the leaves have come into bloom on my tree. AFAIK the antenna isn't firing straight into the tree but i honestly can't tell as it's up on the chimney. Has anybody had this problem before? and more importantly, can IBB supply a longer pole etc. if necessary?

cheers
Red Alert.

Mutant_Fruit

Technically, i believe strong foliage cover can disrupt the signal. I was told before that the 2.ghz frequency is especially susceptible to that, but i assume all frequencies are affected to some degree.

Ring them up, tell them your problems, and see what they say. If no-one else on that tower/sector is having problems, then i suppose it must be the tree, and tell em that. If possible jump onto the roof and check out whether the antenne is aiming through the leaves or not.

Blaster99

With IBB the problem could be anything. They can tell what the signal strength is like remotely by checking radio stats. Have you tried running a trace route and pinging the tower?

optiplexgx270

Leaves on a tree can kill it with the old equipment not too sure if it is as big an issue with the new stuff.

With old equipment they wouldnt install it on my house as it was too far from 3rock and a tree with no leaves for rte.
guy said would work fine until the leaves came out and screw up the connection.

I got it in there 3 months ago on 3rock as new stuff has greater range etc.

Mutant_Fruit

best thing to do would be ping the gateway server and see if the packetloss/interference is coming from that hop. If it is, then the answer is you're either getting interference from someone/something on the same frequency, or the trees are causing the problem.

Blaster99

Or something is wrong at the tower, which is equally likely. The only thing that will tell anything for definite is the SNR which only support can access.

Ciaran500

I would of thought increased pings and connection dropping would be the result of LOS problems.

Red Alert

I did a traceroute last night and I'm getting (what i think are) outrageous ping times to the tower, in the order of 400ms or so. I'm in college typing this and the connection is too slow even to SSH to my server and check so i can't copy it here - i'll try when i go home.

As regards to the equipment, i'm on the new Alvarion VL gear (the solid square antenna). How does one check the SNR - i'm vaguely aware that there's some management interface on the antenna but i don't know how to access it, has anyone done this?

Also i was going to give them a ring today and see about getting a longer pole for the antenna installed - have they done this for anyone and how much will it cost?

My dad's also giving the tree surgery crowd a ring to see how much it would be to remove the offending branch from the tree. Does anyone know where exactly the 3-rock transmitter is, as I was thinking of going up there with a telescope to see exactly how much of the tree needs to go. (AFAIK it's not at the top where the broadcasting arials are)

Cheers!

puma5k

[QUOTE=Red Alert

As regards to the equipment, i'm on the new Alvarion VL gear (the solid square antenna). How does one check the SNR - i'm vaguely aware that there's some management interface on the antenna but i don't know how to access it, has anyone done this?

Cheers![/QUOTE]

You can use Telnet but when they install the SU they hand it over the Login app to IBB thru the wireless link so it's impossible to go login to it. The SNR readings your are looking for is what the Base Station recives for your SU (Subscribers unit) If you go up to the SU while it's pinging the Gateway, put it on a cintinuaos ping. Where the cable is attache to the SU there is a set of LEDs the more the better. At SNR 19dB to 21dB you should get 3 to 4 green LEDs

If this is less then there is something wrong with your link.

Red Alert

Thanks for the info! I can't actually see the LED's as the antenna is bolted to the chimney. On my PoE box I only have power, local ethernet and a WAN light.

I was talking to IBB about this yesterday, and they say that they're getting a few calls about trees at the minute. The tech support guy said he'd "refer it to the engineers" but I don't know how long that's planning to take.

Blaster99

Did you ask the support guy to check the SNR and if so, what is it?

Red Alert

I can't remember if/what he said the SNR was. I'm getting 78% packet losses on pings - he was getting around 65% or so. I'll be phoning them this evening to see what sort of an update they have for me.

Do they take long to schedule service (i.e. Non-installation) house calls?