PTP Wireless Bridge Setup 2022 - Step-by-step Guide! 

Create a ubiquiti account at account.ui.com, then create a free UISP instance at uisp.ui.com, get the UISP key in SETTINGS - DEVICES - DEVICES ADOPTION - COPY UISP TO CLIPBOARD (and paste it somewhere to easily retrieve it in the future) then plug that UISP key into the radios you're using, then "assign" the devices as they show up in UISP to a site or a client (which you need to create). Take an hour to poke around UISP to get comfortable with using it to manage your sites/devices (and even customers, if you flip UISP into "ISP MODE" so you can use the CRM app for customer management - an AWESOME aspect of UISP, easy to build a business off of!) UNMS (the predecessor to UISP) was better IMHO, but UISP has been redesigned to eventually integrate Unifi and UISP as a single management platform for both product lines (will take Ubiquiti YEARS to get this fully realized, if ever, IMHO). UISP is an amazing, free product, that you can even self-host, host in the cloud, and spin up business with by being a Managed Service Provider for your customers who use Ubiquiti (or you move them to). Good luck and enjoy.

From one installer to another, thank you

They're pretty fun to play with - go for it!

Hit me up - I have 12 instances of UISP for my own WISP, customers, and other businesses with IT folks who manage it themselves (Management As A Service). Not difficult to do at all. Ubiquiti makes it simple.

Follow-Up. Power cycling the LiteAP fixed for one base station, the other was left without PoE when someone else was troubleshooting. Plugged back in and all is well again. If I had known about the PoE adapter that provides 24V passive from 802.3af, I could have fixed most of this issue remotely. Thanks for the video!

@@tompuryear Be careful if you're powering the LiteAP with a PoE port of an ERx or ERx SFP. I've found many times, the hard way, that not using a PoE brick and letting the ER's power the LiteAP eventually led to a lot of bounces and instability. Edge Switches on the other hand have never given me problems, oddly enough.

@@seanzigmund858 Thanks for the heads-up on this Sean. Really invaluable information here. Appreciated.

@@brandonbrand2338 You're very welcome. ERx is a powerful little router, but after about a year, it's PoE output on port ETH4 just starts going south and the gear powered off it bounces constantly! I have yet another customer with the same issue - just started a week ago... be well!

@@seanzigmund858 Noted. Thanks.

IF the radios are close enough together, and are configured for FULL power, you can literally point them in any direction. I've configured Nanostation Loco 5AC radios in a basement and had the Stations connect to an outside AP quite a distance away (1500 feet) and pass over 100 Mbps symmetrical, then using AIR MAGIC (a tool availabe on the AP side), get the radio to tell me the best frequency to use to increase symmetrical bandwidth between the AP and the stations, then change to that frequency on all the remote stations, then the AP, and boom - top bandwidth across all radios pointed in whatever direction is possible at the locations needed. I have campus locations with an AP pointing in one direction, and Stations pointing in various directions with perfect signaling and great bandwidth. Using the built-in tools on both sides (AP and Station) is key to making this work. Look up AIR MAGIC and AIR VIEW (older tool, but still indispensable to find the best channel/frequency for the radios to communicate over).

@@seanzigmund858 Many thanks for your generous reply.

@@seanzigmund858 At what distance would it start to require a directional antenna at the access point side?

@@samdotson7297 It depends on many factors - the radios being used, the frequency being used, channel width, capacity desired, the fade margin you're looking to achieve, etc. It's really a matter of what you're trying to achieve. As an example, consider a campus scenario where one building might only have 2 people with 2 devices (a smartphone and a laptop each) and a voip phone for them both to use - do you need 100 Mbps, or will 20 suffice? If 20, then you could set up a PTP or PtMP that only gets around 23 to 25 Mbps (20 Mbps total with a 15 percent fade margin (3 Mbps)). All things depend on what you really *need* on the other side(s). I don't ever look at the links as "maximum bandwidth all the time" but more "what do you actually need to accomplish" as a least common denominator starting point, then ramp up from there. So if an AP is behind a 300 foot thick forest and a station side only needs 25 Mbps total to serve the CPE devices, I know I can achieve that with a pair of Nano locos and an AirCube ISP (about $150 of gear and probably $400 of labor depending on cable runs and how I have to snake the cabling from point a to b, etc. Make sense?

@@connclissmann6514 you're welcome, Conn. :)

Second that! I would love to see a video with alignment tips and how to maximize speeds. I have a setup like this and I'm getting only 100Mbps on a distance of less than 0.5 mile

@@rafaelpadilha4511 Is there obstruction between the radios? What models are you using? Did you use the alignment tool, AirMagic, or AirView? If not, look into those tools - super helpful to get the best possible link and capacity. I'll try to do a video soon - just super busy now with summer on my heels!

​@@rafaelpadilha4511 Because you have to check settings. And be sure it's not an older NanoBeamM5 19 model..

Hey Chris, great video. Wish it was done in early 2020 when I set up a PTP for our church and had difficulty finding Ubiquiti documentation. Man they owe you big time for the best tutorial! Maybe Ubiquiti will take the hint and create an in-depth video tutorial on all of the settings. Anyway, many thanks!

ah, so alignments does matter just like microwave, good to know!

PoE is just as you listed above, pretty simply four levels of power provisioning and active or passive (the device providing power is unable to intelligently determine if PoE is needed by the connected device, so you MUST know the device you need to power can take the PoE and not get zapped by the power it's being injected with). Active PoE (af / at / bt) are intelligent and can detect if the device needs power, how much, and gets powered without bad affects. Passive power sources can be used by some devices (like laptop computers) without bad affect, but be careful in general with passive. Other than active/passive, the three active levels (af / at / bt) are based on wattage needs of the device(s) being powered. Then there is 24v vs. 48v vs. 56v and what PoE power source you need (switch, poe adapter, etc.) All networking devices needing PoE will have a voltage rating, so as long as you provide the corrent voltage and amperage (volts * amps = watts), you'll power the connected devices just fine. Ubiquiti has some cool switches (and there are many others on the market) for PoE provisioning, like the Nanoswitch (a 24v 4-port switch - 1 port is PoE in and 3-ports passive PoE out. I forget the voltage/amp/wattage on it, but check the docs on UI's site (or whatever manufacturer you use). With PoE, the devil is in the details of the devices you need to power (active or passive needed, voltage / wattage needed) and the device providing power (switch or PoE adapter) to make sure they match up properly. Considering the adapters are pretty cheap, I keep a variety in stock to ensure I can power a wide variety of devices, known or unknown, when I'm doing an install / at a customer site and have a need for an unknown situation, etc. Good luck.

Hit me up sometime. I run a small WISP and it is easy and ROCKS! Awesome application UISP is!!

nice! I recently had a patch cable go bad and it's just so simple you rarely check that first!

Yeah, Chris, a video talking about fine-tuning or troubleshooting PTMP connections would be phenomenal. I've been in a situation, where I've had clear line of sight, great signal numbers from the AP to the Station, but garbage numbers from the Station to AP. I'm also not entirely clear on how to improve alignment when signal chain 0 is low while signal chain 1 is high. the UI ISP crowd has not been incredibly helpful (or supportive) when trying to look for help.

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No need to upgrade if you don't need the bandwidth - what are you requirements on the remote side? If you can get a capacity + fade margin (usually 15% more than your total need) then your PTP or PtMP link can be set up to achieve just that - size the radios based on that as a minmum, then consider ramping up from there. I mean, are you running a storage server in your outbuildings? Of course not. Do you have 20 people streaming Netflix out there? Probably not... If you just need to check email, do a video call from a smartphone, maybe watch a youtube video - you only need about 10 or 20 Mbps total capacity in throughput MAX. A cheap pair of nano locos for $49 a piece and an AirCUBE ISP is all you need. However, if you have events and have 50 people out there using wifi on their smartphones, they all need roughly 2 Mbps download by 512kbps or 1Mbps upload to function happily, so 50 to 100 Mbps symmetrical would suffice - that's the older M2 and M5 gear, not even the AC series gear. But even that older gear is more expensive than the Nano locos, Lite AP AC, LiteBeam Gen2, etc...

@@seanzigmund858 big bandwidth need is for HD surveillance cameras in the outbuildings. It’s a new farm to me so I’m just installing the equipment and already seeing the bandwidth becoming a limitation as I add cameras.

@@johnmerryman1825 Are the cameras really just HD (1080p) or are they 2k or 4k, and, how many? And, what is the current capacity between the radio bridge you're using? If you use the AC series radios, you can lean on the AIR MAGIC tool on the AP side and switch to the frequency the AP recommends will bring more bandwidth over the link. Use the antenna alignment tool to properly align the antenna. Ensure the class of radio you use has a wide enough beam width to cover all the radios you're connecting up. Change to the channel width that provides the bandwidth you need in total plus 15% (fade margin). Other things to consider, potentially...

No - those devices are all very similar in speed and capability.

The 5AC allows you to put an additional dB of output power if your country allows for it. The first gen also uses the XC chipset, where as the Gen2 uses the WA chipset which supposedly doesn't deal with noise as well, also the Gen2 has two ethernet ports with the second port capable of PoE passthrough

No, but speed differences will show up when you tune the radios properly using the built-in tools (air magic and air view - air magic is only available on the AP side radio and really improves overall capacity and throughput performance! Look it up and use it on every deployment - it'll drastically improve capacity!)

Nanostation 5ac locos have a gig port and can do 500+mbps. I think you're referring to the nanostation loco m5.

Nanostation Loco AC's are GIG ports (but only if you use a GIG PoE adapter!!! Always, always, always use Poe-24v-G adapters, not the older 100 Mbps PoE adapters!) and they can lock up at 655 Mbps symmetrical MAX capacity on Point-To-Point (PtP) links - I have many in the field like this. However, in Point-To-MultiPoint (PtMP) scenarios, YES, the AC-branded radios will only hit 340 Mbps MAX capacity because they are servicing on a 40 MHz channel width, not 50/60/80 MHz channel widths. The older models of Locos (Nano M2's) have 100Mbps ports only.

Great feedback - thanks!

I use 2 locos to my workshop with a Aircube and it works like a champ. 2 years and no issues. Can’t believe the Aircubes are $29. That and $49 each for the Loco’s is a bargain to provide access to a remote building.

@@reg_in_sc4572 Yes! No need to integrate UNIFI gear into the mix for simple scenarios like yours - having to use two different management platforms (UISP and UNIFI) makes no sense if the coverage needed from the AirCube is neglible). It's an awesome WISP solution and totally manageable in UISP for FREE (if you have 10 AirMAX and/or EdgeMAX devices!) Love this gear.