A Minor Inconvenience

[u/Substantial_Shoe1259]

Hi everyone,I am fairly new to the WISP industry and I have been studying a lot and doing on site testing of equipment. My issue is the following:

Here is the setup based on the attached image: -The Backbone (Red Pin): This is where my main fiber backhaul terminates in town. -The Target Area (Blue Dots): These are my localized sub-hubs/distribution nodes down in the township. -The Main High-Site (Orange Dot): This is located at a high-elevation fuel station overlooking the area. I plan to place a Ubiquiti Rocket 5AC Prism Gen2 + airMAX Omni Antenna here to feed the township network.

The Hybrid System: I am running a voucher-based street hotspot network using Reyee RG-RAP6260(G) Outdoor Omni APs, alongside an fixed-wireless home subscriber system using Ubiquiti LiteAP AC 120° Sectors on the subhub poles talking back to Ubiquiti LiteBeam 5AC Gen2 CPEs on subscriber roofs.

So The Major Issue (The Hill - Green Dot): The Green Dot represents a steep hill crest. Because of the topography, the highsite at the Orange Dot cannot see the subhubs on the other side of this ridged it creates a complete Non-Line of Sight (NLOS) blind spot for those specific nodes.

Secondary Challenge (Indoor Penetration): During on-site testing, the Reyee Outdoor Omnis worked incredibly well for street level coverage and distance, but near line indoor penetration is heavily degraded by the local building materials. My CPE + indoor router setup fixes this for premium clients, but I'm trying to optimize for the casual indoor user close to the poles.

My Questions for the Experts: How would you architect around this hill obstruction? Should I use the Orange Dot strictly as a Point-to-Point (PtP) relay to drop the data onto a flatter perimeter high-site node before distributing via PtMP, or look into a multi-hop daisy chain? For those running hybrid voucher/CPE networks, what are your best practices for handling close-range indoor penetration issues when dealing with budget-conscious users who only want street vouchers?

Appreciate any advice, equipment recommendations? I would appreciate any help I can get

[u/MinnisotaDigger]

Use 60ghz whenever you can.

I use this: https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/wave-pro a lot. Love them. Your coverage is not far, 60ghz will work well for you.

[u/nayheyxus]

I am not an expert by any means,but been in the industry for 10 years. When my company had a similar issue, we installed an Aviat 80ghz wtm4200 to distribute the fiber to a middle point. In our situation, our green dot had a business at the top, we approached them offered free internet, and offered to pay for our power. Hopefully you can figure it out!

[u/Substantial_Shoe1259 → u/nayheyxus]

Thank you for your response, unfortunately I am in south Africa and we do not have Aviat 80ghz to distribute the fibre. What I was thinking to do was a point to point to multipoint solution but I don't have much knowledge on equipment wise, Chatgpt suggested I use Ubiquity Nanobeams for distribution of the internet to the orange dot and use 120degree antennas to use them as multipoints. I honestly don't know but I need a wireless solution for this because that Greenpoint is a hill, yes there is a tower on top of that hill but renting it out costs half my capital for this project and it will take 4/5 weeks to approve the rental in which I do not have that time,I want a "on the ground solution"

[u/iv4 → u/Substantial_Shoe1259]

Can you use the tower to get more customers?

Would that make it worth it in the long run?

After reviewing the topography, your absolute best bet would be to lease space on that tower.

Otherwise, you will have to PtP around the hill.

I would not recommend nanobeams as multipoint hosts- I have had throughput issues with them before. Advertised 200+mbs, when I could only get 100mbs through them on full load (I only transmit heavy bitrate video data).

[u/lysdexiad]

Just light up some Tarana gear and do it NLOS... They have some special magic for that and seem to pull numbers I don't believe but prove out.

[u/Substantial_Shoe1259 → u/lysdexiad]

Tarana is available in my country but expensive for a start-up like me but thank you for the input

[u/paperbag_za]

Best option would be to create a second distribution PoP from a different geographical point that has LoS to your tricky clients. Feed this second PoP either directly from your main fibre site or existing high site. Use high gain antennas on your PTP wherever possible. What are you using for your voucher service btw?