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Comment by grahamburger | Hacker News Reader

Yes interference and channel planning can be a big headache. I do have planned a section that will cover this but haven't finished it yet. I've typically gotten around interference problems by 1) using licensed (or at least not 5ghz, preferably full duplex) backhauls and 2) using AP antennas with narrow beamwidths (higher gain, less area covered.) I'm sure you're doing the same things if you've been doing it that long.

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Actually I didn't see anything about licensed spectrum on the site, but of course that helps with backhaul and high-end subscribers. For many years we really didn't see any interference issues with P2P links @5GHz but that has changed recently. We have been deploying dishes with shrouds to cut down on sidelobe gain.

My experience has been that interference is as much a problem at the CPE side (and much harder to diagnose there) than at the AP. I've also noticed that with Ubiquity/Mikrotik-grade radios in the 5GHz spectrum you can easily get interference from your own co-located radios at the same site, using different channels (because they are not so good about suppressing out-of-band radiation).

Shrouds should help against out-of-band radiation. I'm no expert but I assume that they do more harm in a single radio environment than without but they should help when you have multiple radios next to each other.

Not only out-of-band, but also in-band interference from local and remote transmitters (whether direct by transmitters operating on the same channel, or indirect via out-of-band harmonics transmitted by low-cost radios).

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