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ITDharamFlag for United States of America

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Cheap point to point wireless that will optimize my VoIP traffic

Short version:  Can anyone recommend Point-to-point wireless bridges that support QOS or SIP prioritization.

I'm trying to help out a company that seems to have steered their network in the wrong direction.

They have 2 locations, their primary location has a 10Mb fiber service, and their new admin office is about .5 miles away with line of site.  They decided to discontinue their internet service at their admin office and instead install a point to point wireless service.

At the admin office they use 8x8 VoIP phones, and the service has been very spotting.  Ping tests reveal a huge amount of jitter and latency.

Turns out they haven't enabled any kind of QOS, and of the 130mbps wireless N point to point service, they think they are getting closer to 5mb.  This is based on what they are telling me, I didn't get to see what the bridge is reporting as a sync rate.

They appear to be using some pretty cheap enGenius bridges, and on top of QOS I think some better wireless equipment.  Even better, are there wireless bridges that will prioritize SIP?

Your help is appreciated.
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Dirk Mare
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I haven't done any local testing yet.  I have learned that they think the link is syncing at 5Mbps because that is what they get when they run speedtest.net.  So truthfully I have no idea what rates they are getting.

I did spend about 10 minutes inside their facility and I was able to ping one of the servers on the other end of the link.  It was pretty consistent in that for about 5 or 10 seconds I'd get response times in the 4-8ms range, and then for another 5 or 10 seconds it would lump from 300 to 900ms

Their local IT support has increased the power, restricted to 802.11n, changed channels and from what they tell me they will often get acceptable performance for a little while after it has been tweaked, but then it goes down and when it goes down it affects Voice and data as well.

They don't have any QoS setup at all.

My thought is that they are most likely suffering a couple of problems, under performing PtP wireless, and also no prioritization of VoIP traffic.

I'm concerned that the 2.4Ghz range is congested, thus the constant fight (We are a relatively small town though).

They called me in originally to replace the wireless, but the last thing I want to do is replace it and experience the same problem.  I'm not in the business of setting up Wireless so I don't have the fancy tools, but I thought a lot of the current hardware would show you other networks and what channels they're on.

If I end up recommending a replacement of hardware, I'm hoping to knock out the Qos thing at the same time, so I'm wondering what the options are.  I took a look at AirMAX as recommended by craigbeck, I just wish Ubiquiti had an actual sales team.

What about moving to 900Mhz?  Funny, I was searching for a Ubiquity distributor hoping that I might talk to someone and I get a bunch of links about how some of the major distributors are being investigated by various government entities.  Is that for real?
Turns out it was a faulty radio