cnWave 60 GHz when you have line of sight, ePMP 6 GHz when you do not

Wireless backhaul comes up on nearly every site where a lot, a gate, or an outbuilding cannot be reached from the main IDF. Cambium covers that ground with two families that look interchangeable in a catalog and behave nothing alike on a roof.

cnWave 60 GHz: short, clean, fast

cnWave is the line-of-sight play — a V5000 distribution node with V1000 or V2000 clients where the path is genuinely clear and will stay clear. Throughput and latency are comfortable for several Protect streams plus a small switch at the far end, and the 60 GHz band is quiet enough that interference is rarely the problem.

The catch is honest and physical: 60 GHz is absorbed by rain and by anything in the beam. Distances are short, and the link budget is not forgiving of a path that is nearly clear. This is the right radio when you can stand at both ends and see the other mount.

ePMP 6 GHz: longer, softer, more forgiving

ePMP is the answer when trees, roof clutter, seasonal foliage, or a marginal path would turn 60 GHz into a link that works from November to April. It is slower on paper. It stays up.

For most of our sites — a handful of cameras and a door hub at the far end — ePMP throughput is more than sufficient, and the extra fade margin buys reliability that no amount of specification sheet reading will give you at 60 GHz through a soft path.

The design work both families assume

Cambium's datasheets are written on the assumption that someone did the path engineering. That someone is us, and it is the same list either way:

• Survey in the season that matters. A shot through bare winter branches is not a summer link. If the path clears foliage by inches in February, it is obstructed in June.
• Mounts and grounding. A radio on a flexible mast works on a calm afternoon and misaligns in the first storm. Stiffness, grounding, and how a technician reaches the enclosure belong in the drawing.
• Power and handoff. What the far end runs on, whether PoE at that distance is honest, what VLAN the link carries, and what happens when the far switch reboots at 3 a.m.
• Load. Camera count, resolution, and retention behavior determine actual demand across the hop — not the marketing throughput number.

Why we are Cambium-first here

Not out of loyalty. We are Cambium-first on site links because cnWave and ePMP are what we specify, what we put on drawings, and what we support through commissioning and the first winter. A radio family we know how to align, monitor, and troubleshoot is worth more to a client than a slightly better spec sheet we would be learning on their roof.

The link either has margin or it does not. Everything else is a model number.