The modern tech is indeed quite different, a modern microwave ptp radio system in rain susceptible bands (11,18,23GHz, etc) will be capable of adaptive coding and modulation to change to looser modulations on the fly during rain fade. With no change in latency, but drops in aggregate Mbps capacity. Of course no amount of ACM will help if someone has engineered the link wrong, at a distance too far, antennas too small, or similar.

For an example of a modern radio google aviat wtm4200.

Interesting. They appear to be much cheaper (under $15k for the 4100 for the radio). Very cool very cool. Funny how in my head I've been judging a modern Monkeybrains installation by my 20 year old experience.

It's not at the same level but Ubiquiti makes some impressively "cheap" gear in this space that will do 1gbps over decent distances[1]. I've mostly used their lower powered p2p links but it's amazing to see how far the tech has come.

[1] https://operator.ui.com/ptp-bridging

I would caution people against using the af11 or AF24 if they don't have to. Ubiquiti doesn't know how to make a serious radio.

For something like the af5xhd, it's a great little thing for its price, and with good quality antennas at both ends can make a very effective bridge. But for more serious things? No. It's so bad they haven't even been able to implement snmpv2 on their $1000+ radios. The af11 is so bad it only uses a 56MHz channel mask in an 80MHz channel.

No matter what manufacturer, serious ptp radios can be distinguished by two things: the presence of terminals for a direct -48vdc wiring connection and sfp/sfp+ ports.

At the very low end of cost, ubnt's 802.11ac chipset ptp bridge radios are great and very cost effective, I'm talking about the powerbeam ac series, nanobeam and similar. For when you want to buy a few hundred bucks of stuff on your credit card to link a few buildings together quickly. For anyone looking at that category of stuff they should also look at mikrotik and mimosa radios.