Agree with Mike that WISPA is probably the place to get real world experience from people who make a living with microwave links. We use primarily Dragonwave (in FCC part 101 frequencies: 11, 18, and 23GHz), which can get ~600-800Mbpas over the air, depending primarily on channel width and distance. For shorter links (~1 mile), we use Siklu 80GHz, which can do 1-2Gbps over the air. -- Tim Huffman Staff Manager – Fixed Wireless Engineering | Windstream 999 Oak Creek Dr | Lombard, IL 60148 timothy.huffman@windstream.com | windstreambusiness.com o: 630.590.6012 | m: 630.340.1925 | f: 630.986.2496 -----Original Message----- From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces@nanog.org] On Behalf Of Mike Hammett Sent: Monday, April 04, 2016 9:16 PM Cc: Nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Microwave link capacity You might be better served with the lists over at wispa.org. Not saying the people here don't have the answers, but that's what those guys do. ----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com Midwest Internet Exchange http://www.midwest-ix.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jean-Francois Mezei" <jfmezei_nanog@vaxination.ca> To: Nanog@nanog.org Sent: Monday, April 4, 2016 12:28:41 PM Subject: Microwave link capacity In a context of providing rural communities with modern broadband. Reading some tells me that Microwave links can be raised to 1gbps. How common is that ? I assume that cell phone towers have modern microwave links (when not directly on fibre). What sort of capacity would typically be provided ? And in the case of a remote village/town served by microwave originally designed to handle just phone calls, how difficult/expensive is it to upgrade to 1gbps or higher capacity ? Just a change of radio ? or radio and antenna, keeping only the tower ? (keeping spectrum acquisition out of discussion as that is a whole other ball game). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This email message and any attachments are for the sole use of the intended recipient(s). Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message and any attachments.