Airmax and VOIP?

[popcorrin]

I haven't seen too much talk about VOIP and the new airmax polling protocol. Should we see improved performance? Will it be comparable to what wimax can offer?

[WHT]

The performance improvement would be just like any other data transfer improvement.

As for Wimax...Don't get me started.

Sniff test...how can you offer 10 Mbps data speeds (or whatever the current hype is) in a completely non-LOS environment at thirty miles from the tower.

Wimax is like teenage sex...Everyone is talking abou t it.

[UBNT-Mike.Ford]

Hey Guys,

The AirMax also features some advanced QOS AutoDetection settings. It will see VOIP and VIdeo packets and auto prioritize these ahead of others when th links are under load. We are also going to release configurable settings for this, but for right now it is Auto.

Thanks,

Mike

[drwho17]

The performance improvement would be just like any other data transfer improvement.

As for Wimax...Don't get me started.

Sniff test...how can you offer 10 Mbps data speeds (or whatever the current hype is) in a completely non-LOS environment at thirty miles from the tower.

Wimax is like teenage sex...Everyone is talking abou t it.
Nobody who is looking into it has made those claims, and they aren't any more outlandish then what fellows are posting on the WISPA list about the new Ubiquity lines that he's got a network running on he says.

Wimax has a built in polling protocol, it's part of the spec. The equipment we have for Wimax does 6 Mbps/6Mbps, max 5 mhz channel, it should do 10mhz in 3.65 soon enough. It's foliage penetration is pretty impressive, much better then I thought it would be.

It's antenna array they call it 2nd order, seems to add about 12 db on the uplink from cpe to tower when the 2nd antenna is enabled.

Voip should be really solid, Alvarion provisions QOS at the base, and via DSCP or 801.q it will prioritize it at layer 2. I think this is also possible with 802.11 gear, but I've not worked it all out yet. My understanding is that Ubiquity supports this through WMM, but only when the radio is in bridge mode.

[drwho17]

Hey Guys,

The AirMax also features some advanced QOS AutoDetection settings. It will see VOIP and VIdeo packets and auto prioritize these ahead of others when th links are under load. We are also going to release configurable settings for this, but for right now it is Auto.

Thanks,

Mike
So it's using Diffserv? I think the RFC states that auto should be Voice, then Video, then the rest. We are very interested in this, and hope it can be made to work with a PPPoE type connection. Polling puts Ubiquity in the game for Voice delivery, which is a big part of our business, all these potential clients out there we could remove the monthly loop cost to the lec for.

[WHT]

he's got a network running on he says. Considering that he could have only had his network up four weeks at the very most, I wouldn't know how much stress he has tested it with, compared to the two and only two other guys that have networks up and running since April.

The WiMax hype can be found in most WiMax reviews.

[rkj]

I have hands-on experience with fixed WiMAX(802.16d)+pre-WiMAX from 3 different vendors, and I can assure all it's not hype. It works like a charm, mostly because of:
1) Although it's OFDM, the symbol ratio provides significant NLOS advantages. I've once asked Mike if the Atheros chip could use a non-802.11 symbol ratio in order to achieve similar NLOS performance on UBNT gear.
2) The syncing protocol, very similar to PON shared fiber architeture, provides a swiss clock working of the system. Every remote knows the exact microsecond it can transmit and for how long.
3) The only packets transmitted at low coding (BPSK) are the MAP frames, the ones that tell everybody what is going to happen in the next cycle. Everything else combines the data to be transmitted with the different codings that the stations need to receive
4) ATPC does the job limiting cross-site interference
5) The Service Flows and Convergence Sublayer model is incredibly good to define what QoS you want a customer to have. Residential ? Best Effort, MIR, no CIR; Corporate, CIR and MIR defined by contract; VoIP ?, Real Time Scheduling with a latency you define.

But there is always a but... or two
1) Licensed spectrum is sold in very small chunks at a high US$/Hz price-point in most countries. With limited spectrum, the higher bps/Hz doesn't add up to a comprehensive solution.
2) Fixed WiMAX doesn't have the scale of Wi-Fi, limiting price decrease and making it difficult sometimes to build a business case.

The end-math is that you can provide good service to a few customers, about half of what AirMax is now announcing, but with a high cost in both spectrum and gear.

MIMO is available only on 802.16e ("mobile" WiMAX), and only channel sizes of 10 MHz are available, with 20 MHz on the horizon. You can get 40 MHz MIMO from UBNT today for a small fraction of the cost and deal with less NLOS penetration and more channel contention compared to WiMAX with a simple "get more gear out there" approach.

So, WiMAX is great, but if Ubiquiti's AirMax is good enough, AirMax wins.

[kabelfrei]

The AirMax also features some advanced QOS AutoDetection settings. It will see VOIP and VIdeo packets and auto prioritize these ahead of others when th links are under load. We are also going to release configurable settings for this, but for right now it is Auto.

I have a few questions about QOS AutoDetection:

1. Is QoS applied on Layer 2 oder Layer 3? I think it make no sense on Layer2 because of pppoe tunnels.
2. If on Layer 3, which QoS labels are used? DSCP (Hex/Dec)? TOS?
3. On which traffic Characteristic is QoS AutoDetection applied ?
4. Make it sense to label some VoIP traffic with DSCP/TOS before it is carried over an for example Rocket5M PtP Link? Will the VoIP Traffic be prioritized by the Rocket5M?

thanks and with best regards,

kabelfrei

[Dave-D]

And I'm interested to know if VoIP QoS works
with VoIP TCP traffic, instead of UDP (which
is far more common) Dave

[doush]

If "hidden node" issues are eliminated by AirMAX, we should no longer look for QoS at the basestation side, unless our backhauls are completely saturated.