Will one house stop signal of cpe 210 PtP?

[Ashvin Srinivasan]

I am planning a Point to Point wireless link using two Tp link cpe210.
Distance is 500m.
There is one house in the middle blocking line of sight.
Will it interfere or stop the 2.4 Ghz signal?

[da na]

It definitely will interfere with the signal, how much interference you get will be determined by what material the house is and how large it is - if it's brick, good luck getting any signal through. But if it's a relatively small house shouldn't be too much of an issue.

[Ashvin Srinivasan]

12 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

It definitely will interfere with the signal, how much interference you get will be determined by what material the house is and how large it is - if it's brick, good luck getting any signal through. But if it's a relatively small house shouldn't be too much of an issue.

Yes it is a brick house. But just a small single house. Not any apartment or anything of that sort. Only 4 walls.

Edit : it is in the middle of two cpe's. i.e. 250m from both AP and client.

 

[da na]

8 minutes ago, Ashvin Srinivasan said:

Yes it is a brick house. But just a small single house. Not any apartment or anything of that sort. Only 4 walls.

Edit : it is in the middle of two cpe's. i.e. 250m from both AP and client.

 

you'll probably get a bit of packet loss but no major drops.

[Alex Atkin UK]

2 hours ago, Mel0nMan said:

you'll probably get a bit of packet loss but no major drops.

I had to stop using 2.4Ghz for PtP because the number of WiFi networks nearby interfering caused very low speeds.  Outdoors you can end up competing with other houses networks over a very large area.

@Ashvin Srinivasan

Ideally you'd use 5Ghz or even 60Ghz and have the transmitters above the houses rather than trying to brute force through them.

I mean it might work, but its a gamble.

[Falcon1986]

Even with a few trees, 2.4GHz can still penetrate, but you might not get consistent speeds and latency. However, you can imagine what the performance will be with a solid object always in the signal path. And keep in mind, this house is not just concrete; it might be broadcasting its own WiFi network which will cause more signal interference.

 

For PtP links to be optimum, you don't only need perfect line of sight. The Fresnel zone has to be clear of any obstructions or else your signal will suffer.

 

You can improve your particular PtP link by elevating the antennae at both ends, which effectively reduces how much obstruction falls within the Fresnel zone.

[Alex Atkin UK]

14 hours ago, Falcon1986 said:

For PtP links to be optimum, you don't only need perfect line of sight. The Fresnel zone has to be clear of any obstructions or else your signal will suffer.

I personally have a 5Ghz link via a couple of Ubiquiti LiteBeam 5AC 23 that passes pretty much through a tree and a fairly thick double wall.  I was intending to mount both outdoors, but when I discovered it works reasonably well for a 100Mbit link in this configuration, I never got round to it.

The interesting thing about this is I don't think I'm doing line of sight exactly, I think its picking up the signal bouncing off the walls as its at an angle to an inset balcony.  One reason to suspect this is a got a more stable signal removing the side deflectors off the dish for the unit indoors, at the cost that transmitting from that end is slower as its not all of the signal will hit the dish my side.

The signal however DOES vary a lot depending on if wind is blowing the tree branches and especially rain.  But its a HUGE improvement over 2.4Ghz as it doesn't have signals from other people interfering too.

The 2.4Ghz worked really well when I was the only person with WiFi in the area as I've been using WiFi since before it was common.

So to summarise there is definitely a way to get a working setup when doing it wrong, but through an entire house is unlikely as every item inbetween in that house will block/deflect the signal, including people.

[Falcon1986]

27 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

The signal however DOES vary a lot depending on if wind is blowing the tree branches and especially rain.  But its a HUGE improvement over 2.4Ghz as it doesn't have signals from other people interfering too.

Yeah, that's the quirk. If you could elevate the antennae at both ends, it is likely to perform better. 

 

The nice thing about airMax devices is that you can use the signal meters to help with positioning. Some setups even come with scopes that you can use at both ends for alignment.

[Alex Atkin UK]

6 minutes ago, Falcon1986 said:

Yeah, that's the quirk. If you could elevate the antennae at both ends, it is likely to perform better. 

 

The nice thing about airMax devices is that you can use the signal meters to help with positioning. Some setups even come with scopes that you can use at both ends for alignment.

Yeah the newer models do scopes, but honestly if both ends were outdoors I'd expect to be hitting full link rate despite the tree.

Problem is its next door neighbours tree and I'm trying to get just under its lower branches (like you said, they WILL be impeding the fresnel zone, as will the trunk itself), but they aren't trimming it so its becoming more of a problem over time.

That said, I've not been over there since the pandemic due to shielding and its continued to function, I just had to reduce the channel width as one polarisation has dropped lower than the other causing the MIMO rate to reduce.  Its really quite fascinating how the channel width can make a huge difference to stability.