Hi Graham, thanks for authoring and sharing such an interesting topic!

My main question is, how is the latency of these wireless networks? How well do these roof antennas perform in rain or covered in snow?

Is gaming suitable with wireless ISPs such as common.net?

And finally, what are the biggest complaints from your customers?

> what are the biggest complaints from your customers?

The other questions I think were answered below but this is a great one so I'll answer it directly. Biggest complaints that I currently see / would expect people to see:

1) No public IP addresses (this is addressed on the site and elsewhere in the thread)

2) No TV package, have to cut the cord

3) Can't provide service everywhere. "My neighbor can get it why can't I?" Well .. your house is 1 story buried in trees, unfortunately.

4) Sometimes wireless is just weird and there are things that don't work, especially when you're optimizing for a cheap home install. Some customers have a bad experience and as hard as we try we can't ever get it much better.

No the OP but this is my thing so I'll answer:

These numbers are from an 802.11ac based network using proprietary MAC (Mikrotik NStreme), YMMV.

Here's a 2 mile link @780Mbps modulation rate, tested with ping -s 1500:

72 packets transmitted, 72 received, 0% packet loss, time 71108ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 1.051/3.132/26.567/4.466 ms

Here's a 10 mile link @650Mbps modulation:

122 packets transmitted, 122 received, 0% packet loss, time 121164ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.984/2.174/20.479/3.260 ms

And finally here's stats over the two links combined (the path between my office and civilization):

68 packets transmitted, 68 received, 0% packet loss, time 67102ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 1.755/4.471/14.968/3.658 ms

Note that if you allow too much traffic on these links they will saturate and QoS will go to crap. So careful traffic shaping is in order. They are half-duplex so achievable throughput is much lower than the modulation rate (these links are delivering me around 250Mbits/s).

At unlicensed frequencies (2-6GHz) snow and weather are generally not a problem. You do have to choose antenna design wisely : the satellite dish type antennas that have a separate reflector can get snowed up, but people here in snow country are aware of that issue and brush the snow away. Rain fade is not a practical problem : you need some link received power margin for reliable operation and the worst that happens is rain eats into that a bit. Lightning is a much bigger issue in my experience: you need to be aware of proper grounding techniques (which can be expensive) and you need to be prepared to replace some gear every year due to EMP damage. Also fyi you want to at all costs avoid deploying CPE antennas on a roof. The roof is a nightmare for access, insurance costs, risk of causing leaks, and potential injury. For that reason WISPs will try to mount on a eave, soffit etc rather on the roof surface.

My son uses our network for gaming and while he does complain quite often about QoS, when I investigate the problem is _always_ with our upstream provider or the server end and never to do with our network.

OP stated above that he is using licensed spectrum for backhaul (probably 11 or 18GHz) and therefore will have better latency (full-duplex radios and hence lower MAC overhead).

Also very interested in knowing average latency numbers for your network, Graham.

Most of our customers see 3 to 12 ms round trip times to the edge of our network.

That's incredible, thanks. Can't wait to dump Comcast.