Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question
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@anthonyh said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
So, I'm here at the repeat site (yay for mobile hot spots). I swapped my 1 foot homemade CAT5e cable out for a pre-made 7 foot CAT6 cable.
When I connect the two radios together, they still negotiate at 100mbps.
When I connect each radio to my laptop (running Fedora), the link comes up as gigabit.
So, now, I'm confused. Not sure what's going on here.
Yes, yay for hotspots indeed.
Do you happen to have a crossover cable around somewhere? It shouldn't make a difference, but apparently the APs are not happy without one.
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@travisdh1 A home-made one that I left on my desk. According to a Ubiquiti employee (I posted on their forum) it should work. So I'm confused.
https://community.ubnt.com/t5/airFiber/Directly-Connecting-Two-AF5-s/m-p/1607575
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Apparently I'm just dense - what are you connecting together at the remote site? The large AF5 outdoor antenna/dish/whatever to what?
You talk about connecting to radios together? what radios?
OK I think I got it. You have a total of 4 AF5s
one in your building, two on a building in the middle, one pointing at you and one pointing toward your other location, and a fourth at the remote location.OK I got it.
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@anthonyh said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
@travisdh1 A home-made one that I left on my desk. According to a Ubiquiti employee (I posted on their forum) it should work. So I'm confused.
https://community.ubnt.com/t5/airFiber/Directly-Connecting-Two-AF5-s/m-p/1607575
Confusing for sure. At this point I'd almost just leave a switch in place if they're going to be this finicky about a direct connect
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@Dashrender said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
Apparently I'm just dense - what are you connecting together at the remote site? The large AF5 outdoor antenna/dish/whatever to what?
You talk about connecting to radios together? what radios?
I have two Ubiquiti AF5 radios at a "repeat" site bridging two locations. Originally I had a switch installed here so the connection between the two was like so:
Radio <---> PoE Injector <--> Switch <--> PoE Injector <--> Radio
Because of the odd issues we've been having with the link, I suspect the switch may be part of the issue. So I'm trying to eliminate it by directly connecting the two radios like so:
Radio <--> PoE Injector <--> straight CAT6 cable <--> PoE Injector <--> Radio.
The problem is when directly connecting the two, they only negotiate 100Mbps. I need them to negotiate at gigabit.
Hopefully it makes sense.
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@travisdh1 said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
@anthonyh said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
@travisdh1 A home-made one that I left on my desk. According to a Ubiquiti employee (I posted on their forum) it should work. So I'm confused.
https://community.ubnt.com/t5/airFiber/Directly-Connecting-Two-AF5-s/m-p/1607575
Confusing for sure. At this point I'd almost just leave a switch in place if they're going to be this finicky about a direct connect
I'll need to find another switch if that's the case, which I can do. I was just hoping to simplify things.
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@anthonyh said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
@travisdh1 said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
@anthonyh said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
@travisdh1 A home-made one that I left on my desk. According to a Ubiquiti employee (I posted on their forum) it should work. So I'm confused.
https://community.ubnt.com/t5/airFiber/Directly-Connecting-Two-AF5-s/m-p/1607575
Confusing for sure. At this point I'd almost just leave a switch in place if they're going to be this finicky about a direct connect
I'll need to find another switch if that's the case, which I can do.
Needs must, and I bet a 100Mb connection would really crimp the network performance.
I was just hoping to simplify things.
Yeah, it's what I'd want to do as well.
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@anthonyh said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
So, I'm here at the repeat site (yay for mobile hot spots). I swapped my 1 foot homemade CAT5e cable out for a pre-made 7 foot CAT6 cable.
When I connect the two radios together, they still negotiate at 100mbps.
When I connect each radio to my laptop (running Fedora), the link comes up as gigabit.
So, now, I'm confused. Not sure what's going on here.
This suggests that something is wrong with one of the NICs. Or both.
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I do have a spare radio. I can pull the PoE injector from that one and swap it around to test I suppose.
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@anthonyh said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
I do have a spare radio. I can pull the PoE injector from that one and swap it around to test I suppose.
The PoE injectors can definitely screw this up. They get in the way of the autosensing.
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@JaredBusch said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
@anthonyh said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
We are using Ubiquiti AF5's to connect two of our sites together. Because these sites do not have line of sight between them, we are leasing roofspace off a neighboring building and using it as a "repeat" site.
We've recently started having trouble with the link, and I'm working on troubleshooting it. I'm not sure where the problem lies, but my suspicion is that it may be the switch we have at the repeat site.
Can anyone think of a reason why I couldn't just eliminate the switch and conenct the two radios together directly? I'd use a crossover cable if they're not auto sensing.
Thoughts?
No reason that your should not be able to just connect them. TCP/IP does not care about a switch.
We always did this. No reason to have a switch. However a PDU for reboots can be handy.
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@JaredBusch said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
@anthonyh said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
I do have a spare radio. I can pull the PoE injector from that one and swap it around to test I suppose.
The PoE injectors can definitely screw this up. They get in the way of the autosensing.
If you can hard set the adapters (though my spidey sense tells me that scott scolded me once because there's no longer a such thing - maybe I was dreaming that?).
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@Dashrender said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
@JaredBusch said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
@anthonyh said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
I do have a spare radio. I can pull the PoE injector from that one and swap it around to test I suppose.
The PoE injectors can definitely screw this up. They get in the way of the autosensing.
If you can hard set the adapters (though my spidey sense tells me that scott scolded me once because there's no longer a such thing - maybe I was dreaming that?).
I wanted to try this as a test, but it'll only let you hard set the interfaces to 10-half, 10-full, 100-half, or 100-full. No gig options.
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@Dashrender said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
@JaredBusch said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
@anthonyh said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
I do have a spare radio. I can pull the PoE injector from that one and swap it around to test I suppose.
The PoE injectors can definitely screw this up. They get in the way of the autosensing.
If you can hard set the adapters (though my spidey sense tells me that scott scolded me once because there's no longer a such thing - maybe I was dreaming that?).
Correct. officially autosense is the only way to do GigE.
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Swapped out both PoE injectors and when directly connect to each other the link is still 100Mbps. Looks like I'm bringing back a switch.
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@anthonyh said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
@Dashrender said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
@JaredBusch said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
@anthonyh said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
I do have a spare radio. I can pull the PoE injector from that one and swap it around to test I suppose.
The PoE injectors can definitely screw this up. They get in the way of the autosensing.
If you can hard set the adapters (though my spidey sense tells me that scott scolded me once because there's no longer a such thing - maybe I was dreaming that?).
I wanted to try this as a test, but it'll only let you hard set the interfaces to 10-half, 10-full, 100-half, or 100-full. No gig options.
Then your radios are likely only 100mbps interfaces and you get 1gbps from the injector?
No idea what the specs of this unit are. I guess I should look before spewing random crap.
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@anthonyh said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
@Dashrender said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
@JaredBusch said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
@anthonyh said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
I do have a spare radio. I can pull the PoE injector from that one and swap it around to test I suppose.
The PoE injectors can definitely screw this up. They get in the way of the autosensing.
If you can hard set the adapters (though my spidey sense tells me that scott scolded me once because there's no longer a such thing - maybe I was dreaming that?).
I wanted to try this as a test, but it'll only let you hard set the interfaces to 10-half, 10-full, 100-half, or 100-full. No gig options.
Yeah, that's how GigE is supposed to work. so that's expected and correct.
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@JaredBusch said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
@anthonyh said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
@Dashrender said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
@JaredBusch said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
@anthonyh said in Ubiquiti AF5 Connection Question:
I do have a spare radio. I can pull the PoE injector from that one and swap it around to test I suppose.
The PoE injectors can definitely screw this up. They get in the way of the autosensing.
If you can hard set the adapters (though my spidey sense tells me that scott scolded me once because there's no longer a such thing - maybe I was dreaming that?).
I wanted to try this as a test, but it'll only let you hard set the interfaces to 10-half, 10-full, 100-half, or 100-full. No gig options.
Then your radios are likely only 100mbps interfaces and you get 1gbps from the injector?
No idea what the specs of this unit are. I guess I should look before spewing random crap.
The AF5's have a gigibit interface. The radio links are faster than 100Mbps.
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They are supposed to be 1Gb point-to-point.
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"UBNT-Chuck" from my Ubiquiti thread (the employee who initially tested this for me) re-tested and confirmed that in his environment directly connecting the two results in a 100Mbps link. Hopefully they fix that in a future revision.
In the mean time, I put a different switch out there. We were originally using Ubiquiti's 5 port ToughSwitch. We had a spare, but I ran across a thread with lots of people complaining about throughput when using those switches in gigabit environments. The only other gigabit switch I have that'll fit in the cabinet we installed at the repeat site was a TP-LINK desktop switch. Not ideal, but if it resolves the issue it'll do for now.
