The AirFiber backhaul radios are good, but the rest of their product line is not very reliable IME. Cambium is much better performing and more reliable.
I am curious as to what issues you had with the AF5x. I've personally deployed about 50 of them with nothing but overwhelming success. The entire AirFiber line is some of the best equipment I've ever worked with.
Mostly interference, even by our own equip. We operated in an area that has multiple other WISPs and the last network step to our customers was entirely 5ghz, so almost all bands all across our network had at least some interference. And with the competition we could not ask to please not use 50mhz channels everywhere even when unnecessary.
I guess I should have said that right away. If interference or false DFS positives aren't an issue, they're excellent radios and with the 34dbi antenna dish UBNT offer you can potentially bridge unbelievable distances.
For LOS Backhauls I'd always go for the AF24HD unless the steep price is an issue. Then again, the license for 18ghz radios alone costs more in Germany and tbh I haven't seen any interference ever with 24ghz, even if it is a free band.
I think the false DFS hits are an FCC issue -- I've used radios from multiple vendors, and any that have been recently certified (Such as Mimosa, Ubiquiti Airmax AC) all have false DFS issues. The older lines(such as Rocket M series) do not. I've deployed over 100 Rocket M series and never once have seen a false DFS hit on them. I believe the FCC updated the trigger requirements for a DFS shutdown which greatly increased the possibility of a false positive.
Airfibers are our choice any time there is interference. They handle it better than any other radio we've tested. Have you found another vendor that can handle it better? Obviously there would be no comparison against a licensed setup.
As for the AF24, they're not an option in Florida for distances over 1 mile due to rain fade. They are great radios, but 24ghz is not a viable frequency if you need it to work when it's humid, foggy, or raining.
Na, I think we were mostly facing band congestion. Think an area of a few dozen square miles with three independent wireless providers all doing customer connections with 5ghz plus another country's border with other users of these bands again right next.
Probably unfair to blame it on the AF5X.
As for the weather, I would assume Southern Germany has as much in common with Florida as Switzerland with Hawaii. Snow is an issue but in LoS links it was never a big one. Only on 60/80 Gigahertz links, but those you can kill with a well placed wrapper of tinfoil anyway :)
Our DFS false positives were, since FCC reqs don't matter here, most likely due to congestion or Swiss mobile providers playing with nanocell setups or what not.
All in all I prefered Ubiquity over Mikrotik, Ruckus and Cambium. Mimosa I liked, too, but when it came down to it Ubiquity had the nicest features, the best build quality, the most accessible configuration and the best resulting links.
Not in the WISP biz anymore but I do enjoy talking shop. Did you try the Amplifi the article mentions yet? I have my Unifi setup at home and really don't think I will change it to something else, but I would love to try their first consumer product :)
I don't get much into the consumer side of things, so I haven't dealt with most of the brands mentioned in the article, but I have deployed 500+ Ubiquiti access points, some in a network with 5,000+ users, with mostly great results (just watch those bad firmware builds!).
As a rule of thumb, any time I see "mesh" I run far far away as it usually refers to a bunch of single-radio half-duplex access points and some sort of super "self-healing" magic. One second you get great speed, the next you have horrible speed. But most of the routers mentioned in the article are dual radio with a dedicated "backhaul" thus probably work much better than the mesh networks of the past.
On 24ghz I do have an 18km link running at 250mb/s FDX on a standard set of AF24, but the slightest atmopheric disturbance takes it out. Even my 3km link will drop in a heavy storm. I haven't even bothered with 60/80. I doubt they would make it across the street!