Wireless bridge - redundancy options

Networking
1

We recently deployed a redundant radio link between 2 of our sites just as you want to do.

This was my original set up

which we decided needed redundancy as there are approx 100 users at the far end of the link and this is there sole connection to our servers and the internet

This was the solution

In my case the first link uses 24GHZ spectrum radios operating at 775 Mbps full duplexand the 2nd link uses 5GHZ spectrum radios operating at 500 Mbps full duplex with matching cisco switches on both ends. The radios are actually the easy part. The switches were the issue in my case. I had to bring in a Cisco guy to do the programing and it still took him to attempts to get it working. It will depend on the capabilities of the switches you have. At the start we had hoped to be able to use both radio links and aggregate the throughput but due to limitations with the switches we had we were forced to settle for simple active passive failover. If a link fails it will fail to the second link an only drop a single packet.

As a backup I also have ping watchdog enabled on my radios (a feature of Ubiquiti) basicly if the radio link goes down and the radios can’t see each other for a set period of time and number of pings they both restart and try to re-establish the link

There are a few things you will need to make this work

You need switches on both ends that will support port trunking \ aggregation so you can link the 2 connections together
You will need a 2nd radio link (2 radios) with similar speed \ capacities (port trunking \ aggregation requirement) to the first link but on a different frequency. For example if your first link uses radios in the 2.4 GHZ range the 2nd link should use radios in the 5.8 GHZ range (or 900MHZ, 24GHZ, etc) The key is to use a completely different frequency range to avoid interference between the 2 links
Mounting - Is your existing mount heavy enough to support both radios? If not you will need a 2nd mast \ mount. In my case I was able to use the same mast on both ends
cabling to the roof for the new radios 
Downtime to configure port trunking (possibly)
Someone with the skill sets needed to assemble the pieces

If you can meet those needs then this can work.

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2

Curated:

So, I have been tasked with creating better redundancy for our wireless bridge that we used to network our employees in an adjacent building. The current single setup works like a champ. To give you the general layout.

2 buildings - Access points are 75’ clear line of site from each other. 250’ vertical from ground at both AP install points.

7 VLANS to the extended building - 4 of which are end user related. 1 of those being for VoIP traffic

2 - Cisco AIR-CAP1552E-A-K9 (autonomous)

Company management firmly requires no less than 15 minutes of downtime in the event of failure during production hours. Being that these are on a roof top environment it takes 15 minutes just to get to one of them. So I’m trying to think of a few options.

A) Same setup redundant units (side by side) that I can remote enable from any “putty” installed device.

B) Redundant and active units with load balanced routing configured

C) I haven’t thought of option C and hoping someone might have a more intelligent recommendation other than what I have thought of above.

Concerns that have been brought up in internal discussions.

A) Having more than one wireless bridge pointing in the same air space may saturate the signal and cause packet drops or network quality issues. - If this is the case than above is not an option because the bridge also passes VoIP traffic.

Roadblocks

A) Cabling between buildings is not an option. It’s against city code to run cable in the open air between buildings at our location.

B) Tunneling cable is not an option. We don’t own the space between the buildings.

I’m open for discussion and thanks in advance for any help and advice.