I have had a long day so please bear with me and my slightly ticked off posting

 I started with a 6.5 mile link with a Brand new radio connected via N connector to a 26Db grid antenna with 30' LMR, to a Horizontal 13DB omni with 250mw card running Star-OS in a 2x or half width channel... After my other guy climbed up the 40 foot tower and got the Grid in position and somewhat bolted down. We had a decent signal. Re-adjust, everything is pretty good at a -63 Client and -65ish at the AP.. FANTASTIC.. This shot isn't perfect LOS but pretty good.

I had seen at the AP the data rates were a bit low, staying at the 9Meg mark (observed as 18 in Star, since they kept the rate display the same across width spacings) And I figured it was an ACK issue like I have seen with other Delib radio and Star AP's. So I adjust the ACK to 150 (Not knowing what to set it at since it's a raw number) Go through the tedious process of Save,Reboot, Wait, Etc.  And there is no longer an association.. NOTHING.  I change the ACK back, Nothing...  I, and my part timer faught with this for a while, back and forth with different ACK settings and such until I figured maybe the tower was moving a bit after my climber had gotten down, changing the pitch or something. Send him back up, and we re aquire signal in the Mid -60's.. Problem solved right? Nope..;  I lose power to the radio because my little battery set up died. And after re powered, No signal again.

 I swap out radios thinking maybe a bad radio or defect. Same deal, Nothing..  I gave up for the night..

I am not sure if or what is going on, and I will know better tomorrow after I build a Star Client to test this set up against the Delib.  BUT, Today sucked, and let me tell you why

Today was 0 degrees F with -10/ -15 below zero wind chill. For FOUR flippen hours we faught with the rediculous and tedious process of Saving and then having to reboot the radio to make ANY kind of change to the device.  This is FLAT CRAP!! It takes way tooooo long to wait for that stuff in this kind of weather, And almost no other manufacturer that we use takes this long, or in some cases requires a reboot to apply a simple radio setting change.  Next, The status screen shows that the radio is in Full channel mode when it's set for half channel size.  This caused some concern in our dealings today, and was changed 3 times. (Half,Full, then back to Half) Just to make sure it wasn't some kind of error. Figure at least 7-8 minutes in the bitter cold waiting for these changes to take effect while fumbiling with gloves and a keyboard and touch pad on the laptop (of course while my guy was hanging on the tower waiting for me)  I had quite a few times where my session would time out and I would have to re-login during probably 50 radio setting changes today.

 I'm trying not to bash Delib because I genuinly like, and have had good luck with your products and support over the years. But today was a very large exception.

This stuff needs fixed:

• Channel size in status page reports wrong setting
• Ack timing setting needs a "real" number to work off of, like miles and Km.  Atheros is picky about that if you fall short.
• Occasional time outs in session after reboot, causing re-entry of username and pass (Wastes time)
• Figure out a way to make changes without a reboot (this is a Show stopper for us at this point)  Riddle me this.  50 changes to a radio with a reboot after each one, equals how much time? Then multiply that answer with numb fingers, cold toes, a ticked off potential customer, a ticked off employee who is also freezing his flippen but off, and me the guy who bought the radio that is taking Forever to get the job done.

In an average install some of these things don't matter as much.  When trouble shooting however, it sucked something I won't say on here.

 I'm in the same climate-I can relate.

Formula for determining ACK= 23 + meters/150. In your 6.5 Mile link that would be 23 + 10,461/150 = 93.

An ACK of 100 should work fine.

You are correct about the mis-reporting of half channel in the web interface-it stays on Full.

Can't help you out with Star OS APs- I don't use them, but here is a discussion thread on them.
http://support.deliberant.com/forums/p/877/4082.aspx#4082

Good Luck-spring is coming.

We have used Delib for quite a while, from 2100's, 2300's, 2500's, and all of the newer CPE 2 series.  They have almost all (in the older series's) had to have the ACK turned up to 255 to keep the data rate up to 11 on our B only AP's. Fixing the rate seemed to cause us more trouble then it was worth. I guess I am somewhat familiar with how the Delibs work for us, so it doesn't bother me too much and I work around it.

 The problem with this last deal is that with the Star Client I put on the AP today, it worked just fine. Passing about 8 meg over it, with good signals and all that stuff.  I did leave out yesterday that while scanning in a half channel mode, I was picking up various full channel systems. Which to me was weird, but figured maybe Delib had added this "feature" at some point. Since most radios I have worked with can't do that. This did happen on both of the new CPE's I had tried.

 In regards to the other thread you posted. I can tell you Star will not work towards any compaitibility issues with other brands. And will just tell you your out of luck, buy our stuff, pretty much. The delib radios also do not show up as Atheros super feature enabled even after having the boxes checked in the radios.

Yesterday was a frustrating day to say the least. So my tone was/had a lot to do with that. BUT, these are issues that should be looked in to and really need a resolution to. It put a bit of a red flag up for me and what I really need to be looking at for future growth if they can't be fixed. It's just a sad reality for the area I am in, and what decisions I have to make to keep ahead here.

gunther_01:

This stuff needs fixed:

• Channel size in status page reports wrong setting
• Ack timing setting needs a "real" number to work off of, like miles and Km.  Atheros is picky about that if you fall short.
• Occasional time outs in session after reboot, causing re-entry of username and pass (Wastes time)
• Figure out a way to make changes without a reboot (this is a Show stopper for us at this point)  Riddle me this.  50 changes to a radio with a reboot after each one, equals how much time? Then multiply that answer with numb fingers, cold toes, a ticked off potential customer, a ticked off employee who is also freezing his flippen but off, and me the guy who bought the radio that is taking Forever to get the job done.

Hi Gunther, sorry for all the trouble you had. Let me try to address some of your requests.

• We will fix the status page reporting the wrong channel bandwidths.  This should be a simple fix, but necessary regardless.
• Currently the ACK timeout is based on time (uSeconds), but I can understand how it's not possible to convert the speed of radio waves and distance into a time value in your head while in the field Because of this we're changing the GUI to show a km/miles option to make it easier. Until then you can use this chart to help determine what value to use:
  http://wiki.deliberant.com/index.php/Frequently_Asked_Questions#ACK_Timeout_Lookup_Table
  The units when shipped should work efficiently up to a distance of around 7 miles.
• The web server on the device handles session state for your login sessions, so if the device is unexpectedly rebooted, you may need to reauthenticate. We are adding in the functionality for the device to remember login information though, so you don't have to manually type in the username/password every time you login
• We completely understand this issue. We are adding instant changes to the CPE web interface in a future release, similar to what we have in the AP web interface:
  http://wiki.deliberant.com/index.php/DLB_AP_Configuration_Manual#Instant_Settings
  If you wanted until we release the new firmware, you could load the AP firmware if you feel you will need to be making a lot of tweaks in the field. Then you can instantly test datarates, channels, etc. Or if you want to continue using the CPE firmware, you can do a lot of things instantly if you SSH into the device from shell. If you want examples of how to do certain things, feel free to post here and we can post the commands.

As always, thanks for the feedback, and let us know if you have any other questions or requests.

-Matt

Matt,

I'm glad you guys are working on these issues, as I am sure it will help myself and plenty of others out in the field. We all know time is money (and warmth in my case the other day LOL)

 I wasn't sure on the site survey finding "full" width channel AP's while set to Half though.  Are you enabling the radio to scan through all the channel widths during a survey?  If not I think something is wrong in that area, and may be why I was getting intermitant associations to our half widthed Star AP.. That deal was just damned wierd, with the association coming in, and then never to be seen again except once in a blue moon of setting changes.

I don't expect your radio to be perfect with another brands AP. Esspecially one like star that kind of does it's own thing via programing.  But, to have a new CPE's association come and go like that has to be some kind of incompatibility and or possible bug.. Send me an email if you need some testing done if you don't have a Star AP handy ;)

PS I do like the new cases. Small, light, low price, good signals, and it looks nice also.  If we could take out (what I would call) the clumsiness out of the GUI it would be a great deal.