Q: Why haven't we heard of you before?
We have not tried to market ourselves in the past.But we feel that the time is right for everyone to get the benefit of a
great performing card, at a ultra competitive price.
Q: Compared to other brands, what is the difference besides the price & performance?
This is a hardware business, we believe those are the only 2 things that matter in the end. You know the competitors out there, there are just a few that innovate and many that copy. You as the
customers decide who the innovators are, who gives great value, and which brand keeps the better connection wirelessly. We only ask to give us a chance to prove it.
Q: Are the cards certified?
The F20, F50, F20-PRO, and F50-PRO are FCC & CE certified & they have a Modular Certification, which means it can be used in any host board.
Q: Do they work with Mikrotik router boards?
Mikrotik's Routerboards such as the RB411 or RB433 among other host boards are fully compatible with our miniPCI radios. In fact, they work very well based on our testing as well as feedback from multiple customers.
Q: What drivers are compatible with your miniPCI radios?
Our current miniPCI radios are based on the Atheros AR5414 chipset. Any driver that supports this chipset should be able to work with our radios. Madwifi drivers, that are open source, seem to be popular with our customers.
Q: Can we see the certificates?
Sure, you can access our FCC certificates and test reports directly from the FCC website using a company code of "VKV" for Dbii Networks
FCC Website URL
Q: Why do the cards show 19dBm when the specs are much higher?
All our miniPCI radios currently have an offset of 8dBm to account for problems with some of the opensource
drivers. Certain of these drivers are not able to set the output power higher than 19dBm. We work around this issue by having an offset in the output power. So, if your driver software reports an output power of 16dBm, the real output power is 16 + 8 = 24dBm.
Q: When the card use under heavy loading conditions, we hear a slight hissing noise.
Yes, we have experienced that. Although this hissing noise can be irritating, we can guarantee you this sound has no effect whatsoever on the performance.
Q: Can we use the F50 at 4.9GHz?
Yes, the F50 is also certified with high power for the 4.9GHz public safety frequency band in the United States. It can be used with an wide variety of high gain antennas in this band.
F50-PRO
Q: The Mikrotik Routerboard reboots when manually changing the power settings
Short answer: Tested routerboards such as RB411 or RB433 might reboot because the actual power is more than what the RouterOS sees.
Long answer: We have a power offset of 8dBm on the cards. If the driver reads 19dBm, it is actually transmitting 27dBm. In any case, our recommendation with all our cards (F20, F50, F50-PRO & F20-PRO) is to use "default" power in Mikrotik. We do a lot of optimization of the power settings and squeeze the most out of the card for the end users. These default power settings are tested over all temperatures and extreme conditions. This is why we recommend they always use default powers. Another strong reason for sticking to defaults is the powers are different for different data rates. This is standard with any 802.11 based radios. The highest power applies for lower modulations (6-24Mbps) and for higher order modulations (36Mbps, 48Mbps & 54Mbps) the power gradually decreases. This is true for any card, R52, R52H, XR5, etc...
Other cards such as R5H or R52 can be manually set to higher settings as they reflect the actual Tx dBm. This is a software issue. You can read more about this power offset issue by going here http://www.wifi-stock.com/file/ubi_mtik_power.pdf
Q: When I hookup the power meter or spectrum analyzer I see 28dBm vs R5H 32-33dBm
These are negative numbers you see on the power meter----Lower is better----Ours is 4dBm better than R5H. R5H is actually rated at 25dBm so ours should be around 29! Secondly, DONT make a comparison with the 28-29 you read on the power meter to our (offset power) of 27. They have ZERO relation. Before the signal enters the power meter there are a lot of attenuators. Bottom line is from above comparison, our card output power really is high
