Why Does QoE Degradation Happen on WISP Networks?
With the exception of optimization gear, any equipment in your fixed wireless setup can cause QoE degradation. You will obviously want to make sure you have sufficient backhaul capacity and the appropriate performance access points (APs). That said, every hop and buffer along the way can increase latency, limit bandwidth, and also introduce packet loss.
This can happen at the transit point, your routers, backhauls, and also at your APs.
Learning from all of the Preseem deployments we’ve done around the world, quality of experience degradation almost always comes down to the access points.
There are exceptions, like backhauls with insufficient capacity or maybe congested transit links. Most often, however, the vast majority of problems we’ve found are at the access points.
For example, the performance between different APs, even if using the same model on one tower, can be very different. You can have very good latency numbers from one AP in one direction. However, and this can be very frustrating, the one next to it may have high latency and various QoE issues.
There are many different factors that can impact the QoE delivered by your access points. These include but are not limited to:
- Congestion
- Interference
- Adverse weather conditions
- Individual subscriber’s signal strength
- Plan enforcement mechanism
The key is figuring out which APs have the issues, what the issue is, and also of course knowing how to fix it.
Watch our video as Preseem co-founder and CEO Gerrit Nagelhout explains the biggest culprit leading to poor quality of experience (QoE) for WISP subscribers.
To learn more about quality of experience, check out our previous post.
To find out how you can monitor and optimize your subscriber’s QoE and access points, book a demo with us and we’ll get you started on a 30-day free trial.
