DECT Site Survey with Old Avaya IP DECT RBS Antenna

[trinetintl]

This is kind of an odd question but just this year we have been contacted by a couple of institutions that do health care and they have requested new equipment with 1 or 2 WiFi phones, quoting WiFi is kind of rare for us and we feel that at this point in time the cost of the survey kit may be too much considering our sales history. If things change and we get more opportunities with WiFi then I guess we are going to have to get one but in order to confirm our current design I wanted to put together a home made survey kit without having to spend a small fortune and I found a used Avaya IP DECT RBS (700466394), Will this old antenna do the job? What DECT phone should I look for? I was thinking about 3720 since this is the one I was planing to quote and will be nice to get familiarized with the unit.

RE

http://www.trinet-intl.com

APSS, AIPS

 

[trinetintl]

Got everything in, the base station, SARI, 3725 and I cannot get the stupid phone to subscribe, to me it is simple and straight forward process. We added SARI to the IPBS, tried subscribing the phone and always subscription failed. Did noticed the IPSD LED is flashing green and red the one on the bottom is solid green. I can browse the IPBS no problem, am I missing something wrong or do I have hardware issues?

RE

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[tlpeter]

Get the install manual and follow it to the bone.
Try not to use provisioning the first time and do it after you know how it works.
Provisioning is nice but a little bit harder to implement.

BAZINGA!

I'm not insane, my mother had me tested!

 

[trinetintl]

I was afraid I was going to get the answer you just gave me, I am not a very patient person and the last think I like to do is look at the manual. I found the Avaya IP-DECT Base Station and IP-DECT Gateway Installation and Operation Manual Software version 7.2x, well I was going to ask about the software version but another guy here in the office just jumped the gun and upgraded the antenna software to 7.2.24 before I had time to tell him to go through the manual, the phone is still on 3.something, is this going to be a problem? I do not have the advanced charger, yet.

RE

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[trinetintl]

We followed the manual and still a lot of trial and error but we got it to subscribe, manual is very unclear and confusing it took us a bit but in the end it was the Air Synchronization configuration that got the IPBS up and runningthe, the handset subscribing and the upper LED that was flashing green and red to stop flashing. The real bad news for me and what is currently giving me a royal panic attack is the fact that we left the IPBS on the work bench and we started walking around our office in survey mode with the phone and we were shocked to find out that the stupid signal dropped past -75db just like 40 feet away from the base, mabye less, that's not good, not good at all!!!
I have walked around with EnGenius DECT phones that we have deployed in very large plants where we had the base on top of a desk of a users inside their office and we literally walked to the outside of the plant on the opposite side of the building past every type of material you can imagine in between and well past 350' probably close to 400' and we still had a signal, a very good signal and the call never dropped.
I cannot believe these thing is crapping out at less than 40', this is worse coverage than WiFi to be honest with you and expensive as hell.
Do you know if Spectra link offers a better DECT solution? I remember submitting a project to them a very long time ago for a large plant and Spectralink send me back a design that only required 3 or 4 antennas, which, by the way, I believe were onmni-directional, building size was easily 500' by 300'.

RE

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[derfloh]

Don't use the DECT R4 manual. There is an extra one for installation with IPO. It describes every step needed.

 

[trinetintl]

Completed our first survey, our rig worked beautifully but results sucked, the range of the RBS sucks but what do you expected with a directional antenna, still cannot understand why Avaya selected directional antennas for an indoor applications and actually ATAC doesn't either but I guess it is what it is.
I do have a question regarding the survey, this particular site is basically shaped like an asterisks with a large circle in the middle. We came up with our official design however we experimented a little bit and tried other more "conventional" positions including presenting the antennas on the wall like Avaya recommend right outside one of the hallways pointing to the hallway on the opposite side, this configuration provided excellent coverage to the aimed hallway however we will be forced to point at least 5 additional antennas directly at each other in order to cover their respective opposite hallways. This sound so wrong in so many levels but maybe it is an acceptable design since Avaya seems to think directional antennas are good for indoors. Unfortunately currently we only have one antenna, do we need two in order to perform a more complete survey?


RE

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[amriddle01]

So the new bases are directional? That's fu£@ing moronic, perhaps Avaya development work in a corridor so got excellent feedback from themselves

 

[trinetintl]

amriddle01, maybe they do! This is the reason for all of my questions, I am still trying to understand what is going on because after all of my research I believe that the antennas have always been directional, look at the knowledge base, by the way, omnidirectional is optional but you need to purchase a set of external antennas that can only be attached to Standard base stations and I believe only available outside the US, could be that they are only available in the EU and did I mention that according to Avaya it is supposed to increase the coverage range?

If your design, like mine, requires Compact Base Stations, in order to try to keep it inexpensive and because the customer only wants 2 phones? Well then you are screwed because the only flavor available in the compact base station is directional however since the coverage sucks, by the time you are finished with the survey, no worries, the number of antennas will be well over the limit of 5 and the price of your design will simply skyrocket because now you have to use the more expensive standard base stations.

ATAC told me that maybe it is a 90%-10% scenario, it works on 90% of the applications and if your project falls on the 10% well they suggest to go look at Spectralink. I wanted to ask them that if 90%-10% is so wonderful then why is it that Avaya's WLAN or WiFi indoor antennas come standard with omnidirectinal antennas but ATAC was as perplexed as I am, actually I am still wondering why all of this information is news to ATAC or to anybody to be honest with you, maybe it is because nobody actually sells Avaya DECT? I also asked ATAC about the limitation on the compact base stations, why 5? What is it about 5? Why limit the number? Crickets!

RE

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[amriddle01]

We don't sell any DECT no, well apart from single standalone analogue or SIP. DECT along with Wi-Fi is guaranteed to give you a virtually constant stream of support tickets if you install it

 

[tlpeter]

amriddle01 (Programmer)20 Sep 16 23:23
So the new bases are directional? That's fu£@ing moronic, perhaps Avaya development work in a corridor so got excellent feedback from themselves smile

Andy, Avaya doesn't build those basestations, Ascom does so you can't blame Avaya for this

BAZINGA!

I'm not insane, my mother had me tested!

 

[Pepp77]

Page 9 -

https://downloads.avaya.com/css/P8/documents/100152396

Shows the antenna areas, they are not single direction, but do favour straight ahead

| ACSS SME |

 

[amriddle01]

Avaya spec and then buy them, so we can. They didn't have to choose such directional antennas, I used to install Kirk DECT systems and they had excellent coverage all round, even the old IP DECT had good coverage, they weren't directional either

 

[trinetintl]

By the way for this specific building our final design ended up positioning the antennas as if they were normal ominidirectional antennas, facing down, yes let that one sink in, a directional antenna, an antenna configuration that for all practical purposes is designed to be installed outside, but installed inside about 10' from the floor facing down. This position offered the "best" coverage and actually it was the only one that my brain was able to relate to, the coverage still sucked, but I guess it is Avaya DECT. As a matter of fact, no matter how we positioned the antennas, coverage sucked, this is the one that sucked the least and the only positive I see is that the pattern it created actually makes some sense, it is somewhat symmetrical to the spoke, will allow some overlapping and the pattern looks very workable, bad part is that I am looking at having to include a minimum of 6 antennas on the quote.

Couple of quick question, can I mix 1 Standard Base station with 5 Compact Base Stations? Has anybody worked with Spectralink? Are the Spectralink phones easy to use? Do they offer soft keys for basics such as call parks, transfer, voicemail, etc? Do the Avaya DECT phones offer soft keys for call parks, transfers, voicemail, etc?


RE

http://www.trinet-intl.com

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