cnMaestro & 450i AP/SM Feature Requests

Hi Folks,

My topic seemed to be deleted somehow, so I'll try again.

So many questions... We run a network primary with the PMP 450i AP's & SM's.

I guess I'll just list out what I'm hoping to see in cnMaestro and on the PMP 450i stuff.  It's mostly related to cnMaestro, but let me know if some of this should be posted in a different forum.  If it's something already supported, I'd appreciate to be pointed in the right direction.  This list is a few months old, so some items may reflect that.  Thanks in advance!

Item ID Feature Entity Notes Response/Q&A
1 cnMaestro VM Appliance for Microsoft Hyper-V environment cnMaestro Workaround can be performed to convert appliance to Hyper-V, but Hyper-v Integration services don't work properly and errors are constantly thrown on the hypervisor while the VM is running. CN: We are planning to support a Hyper-V option in cnMaestro 1.8 (towards end-2017).
2 Mute Radio TX AP/cnMaestro To disable an AP transmitter

CN: Please provide more information on the use case for this.

OP: Tower work where the AP would need to be muted. Interference troubleshooting – being able to mute the transmitting AP to listen for interferer. This is not a mission critical feature request, perhaps doesn’t need to be added. Thoughts? Suggestions?

3 Suspend Subscriber SM/cnMaestro Seasonal, disconnect, nonpay, etc. No current option to do this when SM goes offline before sending a job CN: Is the request to push configuration when the devices come back on-line? 

OP: Essentially , yes until a profiles solution is available. Currently, we’ve disabled subscribers by turning the SM’s LAN network interface off, essentially turning off connectivity between the SM and the subscriber device. We were curious if a feature could be that the SM registers and is remotely manageable but only managed network traffic is available. I think we tried QoS at 0 and that also didn’t work for our application.
4 Historical MIMO Reporting AP/cnMaestro    CN: Is this with dashboards or graphical reports (planned release for latter in 1.7.x)? Also, what MIMO statistics are priority?

OP: If there is an update coming in 1.7.x then we can wait for that. We’re trying to be able to assess the capacity and performance of the AP and SMs attached so we know when we need to trigger a bandwidth increase to continue to support subscriber bandwidth. Subscribers in MIMO-B increase AP throughput capacity. When is an AP considered at capacity in terms of frame utilization with a 2.5ms frame period and bandwidth 75/25? That’s essentially what we are trying to assess, taking into account the frame utilization, frame period, downlink data spilt, and contention slots. Is frame utilization of 70% too high or the point where we’d need to consider taking steps to address the capacity? It would be interesting to get some sort of alert about capacity because one of these parameters were exceeded and the corrective action to take. 
5 Historical Throughput Reporting AP/cnMaestro   CN: This is currently present for a week, but we will be extending that soon as part of a Pro package.
6 Historical Frame Utilization Reporting AP/cnMaestro   CN: This is also present for a week and embedded in the Throughput graph. Over the next couple months we will completely redesign the statistics pages to make the data more accessible.
7 GPS status CMM/cnMaestro   OP: Will CMM monitoring be added to Maestro at some point?
8 GPS status AP/cnMaestro   CN: General GPS status is present in the Statistics >Details pages. Is more information needed?

OP: Not seeing the Statistics -> Details page where GPS is present but I think this is alright with the CMM tracking and controlling sync.
9 More users cnMaestro  We have teams of Sales, Customer Service, NOC, and Engineers who ideally will all have unique accounts. CN: The current count is at 10 users per account. This will be extended in the future as part of a Pro package.
10 Km to Miles change cnMaestro   CN: We will add an option to configure this in global settings.
11 Historical Bandwidth Reporting (more than 1 wk) cnMaestro   CN: Extended analytics storage will become part of a future Pro package (which is expected to start rolling out in the 1.8 time frame)
12 Historical MIMO Reporting (more than 1 wk) SM/cnMaestro   CN: Same answer as with 11.
13 Temperature in Farhenheit cnMaestro   CN: We will add an option to configure this in global settings.
14 Granular User Permission levels  cnMaestro   CN: cnMaestro 1.6 (September) supports Super Administrator, Administrator, Operator, and Monitor roles. These are designed around granular permissions, but we will not enable custom Roles (with granular selection) until 1H/2018.
15 Multiple SM Configuration Deployment SM/cnMaestro  

CN: Can you provide more information on this request?
 
OP: Configuration or software upgrade jobs run one at a time. If you stack configuration jobs, the jobs don’t automatically run after the first job completes. The job must be manually started, even when auto start is selected. Would it be possible to have the jobs run consecutively or even concurrently? I think this is gets to the source of the request.

During the configuration job, it seems that setting the number of SMs to update at the same time doesn’t matter. Also, when updating APs, Maestro will only do one AP at time.
16 Receive Power SM tracking/reporting SM/cnMaestro   CN: We need to explore the availability of this…
17 cnMaestro SM Profiles cnMaestro The profile concept creates a relationship between the device listing in cnMaestro to the actual device.  It would enforce configurations when the device comes online, or throughout its session;  such as bandwidth, service enabled state, etc.  allowing cnMaestro to be the central place of management and ensuring that SM's have a consistent configuration dictated by the provider. CN: This is under discussion, but it is a more challenging implementation than Wi-Fi (due to the amount of device- and sector-specific configuration). We don’t have an explicit date on adding a profile concept in addition to templates.
18 Allow Local Management of SM in NAT mode when enforcing MVID SM When management VLAN is used, a local device can ping the local SM IP (169.254.1.1) but cannot access its webpage.  Once the SM disconnects from the AP, the MVID (Management VLAN ID) is no longer applied and the web page is once again reachable.

CN: Regarding item # 18, Could you please try Release 15.1.1 firmware.

SM, when in NAT mode and VLANs are enabled, webpage should be accessible while it is registered or not, using 169.254.1.1.

OP: We'll retest with 15.1.1 and get back to you.

19 In NAT mode, display RF Public Network Interface (Valid only when NAT enabled with public addressing) instead of LAN1 Interface IP Address in cnMaestro SM/cnMaestro 169.254.1.1 is shown as the management IP in cnMaestro, which is not helpful for remote management. CN: We will review this. In Maestro 1.5

OP: It seems SMs in NAT mode now report to Maestro their RF Interface IP. Was this addressed
20 RF interface on separate L2 domain than LAN interface SM If internal network is cabled improperly, SM receives DHCP assignment from local internal DHCP server rather than DHCP server over RF interface. CN: Item # 20 is a bug. It would be addressed in a future release.
21 Retry queue for configuration jobs cnMaestro If we need to disable service for a customer for whatever reason, we're left at running a job to disable the SM's ethernet interface.  What happens if the device is offline at that time for whatever reason? The customer can simply get back online at a later date.  It's not feasible to check back daily to see if the SM is online to run a job.  Profiles in item 17 would solve this also. CN: We will add this as well, possibly in 1.7.x.

OP: Could there also be an alert/alarm set in global settings for configuration jobs that fail?

I'm sure there's more, but this is what I've got for now.



Thanks,

Brian

4 Likes

Thank you for your detailed suggestions. I have forwarded this to the development team.

Where is your network located, and how many business and/or residential subscribers do you have?

1 Like

Hi RayS,

We're located in the midwest.  We have about 450 susbscribers at the time, and are actively deploying more PMP 450i sites.  I had an email thread with some Cambium folks on these suggestions probably about 8 months ago now and haven't heard anything back yet. I'll follow up there as well, but I recall them recommending that it be posted to the forums for discussion.

I'd love to hear what others are doing to solve some of these problems, or if they haven't encountered them at all.

Thanks,

Brian

1 Like

Thanks Brian, you should be hearing from them soon.

Ray

I would also like to chime in an thank you for the suggestions... we always need to be hearing about the actual needs from our users.  This is a great list of things to help us prioritize the work.

cnMaestro is continually evolving and will become a truly powerful tool, but there are obviously many opportunities where we can get better, so thanks!

2 Likes

Can you try and make sure the statistical data correlates time wise?  When an SM is onboarded at time  x, the Throughput (Last Week) graph shows a date and time, but the Current Weekly Usage graph starts showing the data on the day before.  If the foundation of the collected statistics is unreliable, the statistics make for nice graphs, but really nothing else.  If one tries to correlate the week (1 Hr Res) and the 24, 12 and 4 Hr (5 mins Res) data, they just don't.  I've reported this time and again and even had it confirmed by one of the engineers, but to no avail. 

I would prefer that the data be accurate (correct time (local)), but if it's not possible, for whatever reason, at least make the data correlate.  Display the same wrong date and time on all graphs and data available for export.

Data displayed as having been collected (throghput) today, should show as usage for today not any other day.

When I look at a 24 Hr graph and then at the same day and hour (according to the time scale) of the week graph, they should correlate.  If the 24hr graph shows a modulation rate of 8x for the entire 24 hr period, the  1 wk graph should likewise reflect a modulation rate of 8x for the same 24 hour period, not anything else.

Maybe this only affects vanilla 450 APs/SMs.

Maybe this has been corrected in the next release, if so, I sincerely thank you all.

1 Like

Hi bsagrillobtw -- thanks for the detailed list. Some of the responses regarding cnMaestro are presented below.

 

Feature

Entity

Notes

1

cnMaestro VM Appliance for Microsoft Hyper-V environment

cnMaestro

We are planning to support a Hyper-V option in cnMaestro 1.8 (towards end-2017).

2

Mute Radio TX

AP/cnMaestro

Please provide more information on the use case for this.

3

Suspend Subscriber

SM/cnMaestro

Is the request to push configuration when the devices come back on-line?

4

Historical MIMO Reporting

AP/cnMaestro

Is this with dashboards or graphical reports (planned release for latter in 1.7.x)? Also, what MIMO statistics are priority?

5

Historical Throughput Reporting

AP/cnMaestro

This is currently present for a week, but we will be extending that soon as part of a Pro package.

6

Historical Frame Utilization Reporting

AP/cnMaestro

This is also present for a week and embedded in the Throughput graph. Over the next couple months we will completely redesign the statistics pages to make the data more accessible.

7

GPS status

CMM/cnMaestro

8

GPS status

AP/cnMaestro

General GPS status is present in the Statistics >Details pages. Is more information needed?

9

More users

cnMaestro

The current count is at 10 users per account. This will be extended in the future as part of a Pro package.

10

Km to Miles change

cnMaestro

We will add an option to configure this in global settings.

11

Historical Bandwidth Reporting (more than 1 wk)

cnMaestro

Extended analytics storage will become part of a future Pro package (which is expected to start rolling out in the 1.8 time frame)

12

Historical MIMO Reporting (more than 1 wk)

SM/cnMaestro

Same answer as with 11.

13

Temperature in Farhenheit

cnMaestro

We will add an option to configure this in global settings.

14

Granular User Permission levels 

cnMaestro

cnMaestro 1.6 (September) supports Super Administrator, Administrator, Operator, and Monitor roles. These are designed around granular permissions, but we will not enable custom Roles (with granular selection) until 1H/2018.

15

Multiple SM Configuration Deployment

SM/cnMaestro

Can you provide more information on this request?

16

Receive Power SM tracking/reporting

SM/cnMaestro

We need to explore the availability of this…

17

cnMaestro SM Profiles

cnMaestro

This is under discussion, but it is a more challenging implementation than Wi-Fi (due to the amount of device- and sector-specific configuration). We don’t have an explicit date on adding a profile concept in addition to templates.

19

In NAT mode, display RF Public Network Interface (Valid only when NAT enabled with public addressing) instead of LAN1 Interface IP Address in cnMaestro

SM/cnMaestro

We will review this.

21

Retry queue for configuration jobs

cnMaestro

We will add this as well, possibly in 1.7.x.

1 Like

Hi Rob,

Thanks for the info! I'll do some checking and get back to you on your questions.  Looks like items 18 & 20 didn't make it in your reply, what happened to those?

Thanks,

Brian

Hi bsagrillobtw -- my response focuses on the cnMaestro-specific items (Matt responded from the PMP-side).

Hi Brian,

Regarding item # 18, Could you please try Release 15.1.1 firmware.

SM, when in NAT mode and VLANs are enabled, webpage should be accessible while it is registered or not, using 169.254.1.1.

Item # 20 is a bug. It would be addressed in a future release.

Best Regards,

Balaji

1 Like

Hi Rob & Balaji,

I've updated my original post with your responses and our comments on those via a new column called Responses/Q&A.  CN is you guys, OP is us.


Thanks,

Brian

1 Like