Hmm yes I think we will definitely be getting in touch with the ISP, I thought/knew that some degree of loss is acceptable with wireless but was unaware that Trangos have this polling system you speak of. I'm not entirely sure how the AP is shared, I presume at worst there are a few other users on it but no huge amount, as far as I'm aware it's not just set for us. Normally there's no loss, and between 3pm and now the graph is a nice flat green line showing no loss, so whatever was causing the problem had stopped by then. I've managed to wrangle up a temperature graph thing from the handy inbuilt thermometer in the SU on our roof, but I've a suspicion that it doesn't actually work as the only value that's come off it so far tonight is 21 deg and considering that it's close to 6 degrees outside now I somehow doubt that. Hopefully it'll show some reading tomorrow... Unfortunately there's no measure of the RSSI unless the SU is switched into a different mode, meaning that it doesn't actually provide internet. If I catch the problem happening tomorrow or whenever I'll be sure to flick it across and see what's happening though. I'd heard about differing elevations making problems for wireless links before, but this was referring to a more extreme variation in height like sending wireless up a mountain. If there is variation in height it'd only be marginal and not be enough to make a difference, then again I don't really know what I'm talking about so I'll bring this up with the ISP too. In reply to Tim Price: I know what you mean about increased traffic causing problems, loading up the link causes increased jitter but doesn't seem to effect loss (unless the link is entirely saturated). Certainly at the time of the problem today there was almost zero traffic going across. Fortunately trango sits a bit further away from the 2.4 guys at the spectrum table, up in the 5.8 region like the 50km links you mention so I guess that pretty much counts out weather effecting things, unless it was a specific problem with our model which seems unlikely. Anyways, thanks for all the responses and info, it does narrow the mystery slightly. I'll get in touch with the ISP and see what they have to say and if they come up with anything really interesting/groundbreaking I'll dig the thread back up. Best Regards, Michael ________________________________________ From: jediblair(a)gmail.com [mailto:jediblair(a)gmail.com] On Behalf Of Blair Harrison Sent: Tuesday, 1 August 2006 8:50 p.m. To: Michael Davies Subject: Re: [nznog] Wireless link adversly affected by the sun? Hiya, You should definitely get your ISP to look at the link - sounds like they need to do some tweaking, a trango graph shouldn't look anything like what you've posted - should be a nice 10-20ms line with NO packet loss - is it a point-to-point dedicated link just for you, or is the AP shared by a few others? either way the polling system used by the Trango network should ensure no packet loss.. The only time I've seen Trango links have drop out issues in the sun, is when the radios reach the high 30s and 40 degrees, after about 40 degrees things just start to go haywire.. if the radios are in direct sunlight all day then they might be heating up a bit much - if you can start graphing the rssi and heat as Jonathan suggested then that would help a lot in determining issues.. Cheers, Blair On 8/1/06, Michael Davies <michael(a)hereisasite.co.nz> wrote: Hi there,   As the subject suggests, I've been noticing an interesting problem with our internet. We're lucky enough to be on the receiving end of a wireless net connection running through Trango broadband hardware, fairly conventional wireless tech. However I've noticed through monitoring the connection with smokeping to various places around the country that the connection quality seems to decrease dramatically through the middle of the day, but not every day. At first I thought that this was simply related to congestion somewhere, but from following the weather a bit I've started noticing that it gets worse on the nice sunny days.   For example: Today, a balmy 17 degrees in Dunedin and beautifully sunny all day. Packet loss and jitter begins to increase at about 9am and peaks about 1pm with 60% loss, then at 2pm as if flicking a switch it returns to nearly 0% loss. From looking at the graphs over time, this does happen quite often but not every day and the loss today is definitely the worst I've seen it (but also the warmest/sunniest day we've had in Dunedin for quite a while).   Has anyone seen or heard of this happening before? Would there be any way to prevent this – supposing that the sun is the culprit – short of installing a Mr. Burns type sun shield?   Regards,   Michael   _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog