ePMP Release 3.4.1 is now available

We too, do not like the automatic logout.

It is a ;problem for us also.

As a minimum, it needs to be programmable in the software.

Yeah - this is a horrible ''feature''.  That really has to be changed, or programable with a longer time, as well as a ''keep me logged in'' option.

We use the Real-Time Throughput app to monitor an Access Point and to watch how customers are performing, and to be logged out all the time is a deal breaker.


@ninedd wrote:

Yeah - this is a horrible ''feature''.  That really has to be changed, or programable with a longer time, as well as a ''keep me logged in'' option.

We use the Real-Time Throughput app to monitor an Access Point and to watch how customers are performing, and to be logged out all the time is a deal breaker.


Hi,

Thank you for your feedback.

Actually it is basic security mechanism which is spreadly used for Web-interfaces on network devices.

We will review your proposals to make it optional with configurable log-out period.

Thank you.



Hi,

Thank you for your feedback.

Actually it is basic security mechanism which is spreadly used for Web-interfaces on network devices.

We will review your proposals to make it optional with configurable log-out period.

Thank you.


We can change or disable this feature on every other radio and piece of equipment we use.  

It's almost as if Cambium is in some kind of competition to make the ePMP interface the worst interface in the industry. If so then ePMP has that contest in the bag, no one even comes close to the level of frustration the ePMP interface brings to the table.

I'm so tired of listening to installers complain about the ePMP interface and all I can say is "I know, I agree, it sucks. Be happy we don' thave to deal with force110s any more and the interface isn't as slow as it use to be (though it is still slower than any other interface we deal with). This is as good as I expect it will ever get so just suck i t up and deal with it. I don't know what else to tell you."

Hi, 

As stated by Fedor, we will look into making this feature configurable. This feature was implemented on request by many customers and making it configurable did not come up at that time. 

Regarding the interface, can you please describe a scenario or two where you see the interface is slow? We put in a lot of work to make the interface quick and have even compared it to the competition to ensure its on par or better. So it will help for us to know where further improvements are needed. 

Thanks for your support. 

Sriram

Hi,

we just installed a couple of PTP110 ePMP1000, configured as ePTP master/slave.

Slave is rebooting without reason. No logs, no crash dump.

Version: 3.4.1, we just upgraded to 3.5-RC7, but still rebooting:

Master:

CAMBIUM-PMP80211-MIB::sysRebootCounter.0 = INTEGER: 10

Slave:

CAMBIUM-PMP80211-MIB::sysRebootCounter.0 = INTEGER: 169


@Cambium_Sri wrote:

Hi, 

As stated by Fedor, we will look into making this feature configurable. This feature was implemented on request by many customers and making it configurable did not come up at that time. 

Regarding the interface, can you please describe a scenario or two where you see the interface is slow? We put in a lot of work to make the interface quick and have even compared it to the competition to ensure its on par or better. So it will help for us to know where further improvements are needed. 

Thanks for your support. 

Sriram



OK, I'm training an installer. He already has all the physical stuff down, mounting, cabling ect... so now I'm starting to train him on the software side, using the radio interfaces and configuring the customer's routers.

Training for 450i Interface:

Ok, just use the bookmark for the radio or start typing 192. there tap go and BOOM INSTANTLY there's the interface.

Look you don't even have to log in , pretty much everything you need was instantly right there, just swipe down a few times. But if you need more info just log in there, hit PDA on the side and there you go, tabs at top everything an installer would normally  need are right there,easy peasy.

Training for PMP100 - same awesome interface as 450i

Training for Ubiquiti - Ok enter the address or bookmark and BOOM instantly logon , ok in radio and right there at the top right is a drop down, pretty much the only two things you need will be there the align radio  and site survey.

Training for Mimosa -  Enter the IP or bookmark and BOOM instantly on page, log in and BOOM instantly on page, look at that everything you need is right there except for site survey but it's right there on the side, just tap on that BOOM instantly there.. 

Training for ePMP -

Ok enter the address, and well not boom but usually in a second or two logon will pop up. Though more often than I like the blue bar at the top will show up and then... nothing. Swipe swipe swipe down and there is a spinning circle thing .. wait or reload,  your choice.  Ok got the logon box so log in. 


OK this is were it starts to get interesting. First there may or may not be a floaty box on the side, if not look for a little "menu ^" with a little arrow next to it.  Oh and ignore all the data on this screen because for the 10 seconds or so  it's bogus. Yes it shows there wireless interface has an IP and we know it doesn't and it also shows the ethernet Interface is down but we know it can't be or we wouldn't eve n be in the radio.. So really they didn't speed everything up as much as you think they just spread the load time over several steps.

OK so now you found the little floaty menu thing tap on it to open it. Ok yeah, now you need "Tools" and yeah, that's off the screen there so .  First you can try to rotate your phone upright and yeah, phones don't always realize you have rotated them and you're up on a metal roof, it's 98°F you keep sliding a little on the metal and having to reclaim your position, you have dish in one hand, a phone in the other , sweat is getting in your eyes and you're dicking around trying to get your phone to rotate the screen so you can see a menu option.  OR you you can start swiping down, but not on the floaty menu because swiping it doesn't make it move, no swiping that doesn't work you need to swipe the screen behind the menue..

   Ok so when you swipe the screen behind the menu and  the menu may move up the same amount as the screen behind it or it may move like 1 pixal for every 5 swipes. OOPS, did you accidentally select an option on the screen behind the floaty menu while trying to swipe the menu up.. well now you did it. First we need to make sure you don't accidentally change a setting , and you can't even really tell what the setting is or if you have changed anything because it's hidden behind the floaty menu.  You can no longer swipe/scroll because the interface is waiting for you to enter or pick something on whatever you selected behind the floaty menu.  SO.....grrrrrr.... now you have to select something on the floaty menu to get focus off whatever is behind the floaty menu.  Now yeah, the section you selected on the floaty menu is open so select it again to close it and if everything goes all right .. back to swiping the back screen trying to get TOOLs to show up.

OK , got tools visible, now click it and  GRRRRR  now eAlign is off the bottom ... it's hot, sliding on roof, sweat in eyes, WHY IS THIS SO DIFFICULT I JUST WANT E A L I G N !@!!!  You  could have had any other radio aimed by now and I'm still trying to reach the flipping alignment too !  OK swipe Oh JOY! The menu is moving up at the same pace as the screen I'm swiping.  So ok, eAlign... hmm the little floaty is still there covering the eAlign data... so umm swipe up  we need to get to the top so we can tap on "Menue ^" to close it so swipe, swipe, swipe... of NOW FINALLY  got my aiming info and... nothing there.

   Ok we need to go to Monitor / Wireless to see if it is not seeing the AP's or something.... Sigh... here we go again... swipe swipe swipe swipe , Menu ^, oh look at least you can see "Monitor" but , yeah, "Wireless" is off the bottom so swipe swipe swipe swipe.. ok got Wireless ! HAY we got a break the floaty menu went away on its own when we selected "Wireless" wooot woot !   Now ok it sees 2 AP's but ok the RSSI is off the side so we need to scroll this , swipe swipe sw... it's not moving Grrr you have to swipe in exact magical spot to scroll it sideways..swipe swipe grrrrr swipe swipe OK finally! It sees them and the one we want at good RSSI oh we need to swipe over some more to see the connection status  OMFG WHY CAN I NOT SWIPE IT SIDEWAYS WERE IS THE MAGICAL SIDE SCROLL SWIPE SPOT ON THIS FLIPPING THING !!@!#*)(@!#@#280  

Finally got it swiped over, it sees the AP's  now back to aiming... need to get to that floaty menu again... swipe swipe swipe , MENU ^ ,  annnnnd TOOLS is off the bottom again so much GRRRRRRRRRRR... swipe swipe swipe swipe swipe TOOLS swipe swipe swipe eAlign.  WOOOOOT FINALLY ! We have alignment and ok aiming now and .. just a note here the numbers on the colored bar do not always match where the colored bar is.. for example it could say -74 on the color bar but  the color bar has extended all they way to -60 also often you see -60 or -58 or -48 or whatever and yet the Peak RSSI still says -70 or -66 or something way lower than what you are currently seeing on Current RSSI or the color bar. So yet another screen were some of the info has to be bogus and you just have pick one and decide thats the one you are going believe.

@so , we're aiming and oh the RSSI stopped changing so are we getting a really constant signal or did we somehow lose connection to the radio or did the eAlign just freeze ? Ok so this happens on all the other radios, 450i, Mimosa etc.. but you know what you do on all the others when this happen ? You just "Refresh" ! and BOOM Instantly the alignment page (or whatever page you was on) reloads (or doesn't if you had in fact lost connection to the radio for some reason).  But you know what happens on an ePMP when you hit reload ? That's right, it goes back to the home page !!L:KJ%@#!*()u!@#$e SO YOU START THE ENTIRE PROCESS LISTED ABOVE FOR GETTING BACK TO EALIGN @!!!!!!!!@(_#    Oh and guess what, just because you hit refresh doesn't mean the home page you are looking as is real ! You can diconnect from an ePMP and when you refresh instead of getting "page not found" you get a cached page , not on any other radios just ePMP. So to add to your troubles you never really know if an ePMP is showing you current data or if you're looking at cached data.

But it gets better  ! Because once you have reloaded the ePMP interface a couple of times things start to get really wonky !  This is when you start seeing the "Only the blue bar across the top will load" and you refresh again, and the more times you refresh the more wonky things can start to get. Maybe you get the logon screen but when you logon it doesn't do anything... it just acts like it was gong to log on but it doesn't you're setting there at the logon bog and the only thing that happened is the username and password fields are blank..   so you restart the browser and now you're really asking for trouble because now you finally get the radio up and you get logged in and you fight the floaty menu and you're almost were you are trying to get and "SESSION TIMED OUT"    WHAT !   I JUST LOGGED IN !  OFL:IKJ!@#!@#!@#()*UR FD what is up with this thing ! I

It goes on and on and on so many glitches that normally would be a minor annoyance but are magnified by the incredibly poorly designed , overly convoluted and bloated interface.  

For example just something as simple as refreshing the page taking you back to the home page and forcing you to start over makes simple little glitches 100x more annoying. Then having the wonder all over the flipping interface to get the to 2 or 3 things an installer needs is frustrating...

I believe I could log in and have any other radio aimed before I could even get to a point where I could start aiming an ePMP. 

2 Likes

 ePMP 3.4.1 is having issue to login. login browser is slow

Brubble1 - I agree that the native Cambium interface is pretty wonky, although it's clearly better than it was as far as speed goes.  However, it's still very frustrating on a phone, on a roof for sure - and still way too slow, and you're right... on a small screen, it's got those floating menu's covering up everything that you need to get at.  And then it'll log the installer out and he's got to start over....    So Kudo's on how much better it is now from before, but my support and management and installation staff complain about the same thing.  ePMP are the best performing radios we've used, but ePMP are among the worst for installers and for troubleshooting.


However, have you tried the Android App that NewKirk did?
http://community.cambiumnetworks.com/t5/ePMP-2000-and-1000/Mobile-Android-App-to-configure/td-p/42073

Or this alignment tool thingy?
https://youtu.be/6DQK6xPoA4A

brubble1,

Thanks for the detailed explanation with a play-by-play of your installer experience. It’s clear now that we have work to do on the mobile interface. I’ll take this back to the team and figure out what we can do to improve. Just an FYI, we’re also working on a mobile app that can used for most Cambium products. It won’t support all products on day 1 but we’ll be adding support for more and more products as we go along. Look for more news on this later this year.

nlisbey1167, the login issue is a known defect in 3.4.1. Clearing cache and cookies resolves it. The defect has been fixed in 3.5 which is currently in beta. We expect 3.5 to be released next week.

Thanks and appreciate all the feedback.

Sriram

1 Like

@ninedd wrote:


However, have you tried the Android App that NewKirk did?
http://community.cambiumnetworks.com/t5/ePMP-2000-and-1000/Mobile-Android-App-to-configure/td-p/42073


Just wanted to point out that my app is currently unable to log into 3.4.1 radios.  I started looking into it but bigger unrelated issues have sidetracked me.  (also wanted to mention that the app, as-is, DOES work with 3.5-RC7 release)  I'm going to be on the road the next few days, (eclipse viewing in Brevard NC) will probably not get a chance to revisit it until late next week, when hopefully 3.5 final will be available.

j


@Cambium_Sri wrote:
brubble1,

Thanks for the detailed explanation with a play-by-play of your installer experience. It's clear now that we have work to do on the mobile interface. I'll take this back to the team and figure out what we can do to improve. 

Just wanted to offer an observation - I suspect the majority of installers/techs are using cell phone, tablet, or netbook-sized gear - usually far less processing power than the beefy desktop workstations I suspect your developers enjoy.  It might help if you test on a standardized cross-section of 'real-world' devices,  particularly devices with lower processing power and smaller screens...  :)

My most common logins are from a mix of an old desktop system, my android tablet, and a RaspberryPi workstation.  Only the first of those is ever pain-free, and even it usually drags during load and login.

j

Hi newkirk, 

We did test the performance with mobile devices and more importantly netbooks runnning Atom processors. The developers were well aware of what installers are typically dealing with in terms of devices. If you read back on some of the old threads regarding GUI performance, this was made very clear. My understanding of brubble1's issues is not so much speed/performance but usability and stability in mobile view. Simplifying mobile view to quickly get to eAlign and Monitor->Wireless pages are things we can look at. Refreshing the page should not reset back to the home page, forcing the installer to navigate back to the original page he was on. These are some great examples of things we can take a second look at. 

Once again, appreciate all the feedback!

Thanks,

Sriram


@Cambium_Sri wrote:

Hi newkirk, 

My understanding of brubble1's issues is not so much speed/performance but usability and stability in mobile view. Simplifying mobile view to quickly get to eAlign and Monitor->Wireless pages are things we can look at. Refreshing the page should not reset back to the home page, forcing the installer to navigate back to the original page he was on. These are some great examples of things we can take a second look at. 

Once again, appreciate all the feedback!

Thanks,

Sriram


As others have pointed out I also believe the ePMP hardware is the best in its class . Going from the Force110 to the Force200 also proves that cambium can recognize a problem and come out with a first class solution. The ePMP interface though, man it just seems so far out of touch with what a radio interface should be that I don't see anything short of a complete do-over fixing it and I don't see that happening for a lot of reasons.  I think that if you keep plugging away at it though it will become usable, it will never be first in class or even really good but usable is within reach, I think. I really do hope you prove me wrong on that and I have to eat crow and admit it became a really good/great interface.

As far as the Interface speed, you are correct, the speed is... eh good enough.  Also it looks like the going back to the home page when refreshed was fixed sometime after 3.2 (the version we are currently running on everything other than a couple of POPS were we are testing 3.4.1) so as soon as everything is 3.4.1 I will have to take that off the list of things  to complain about.  All though the other day when I was training the installer we were installing a 3.4.1 radio and I could have sworn it was taking me back to the home page... the 3 other installs that day were 3.2 though so maybe I'm just getting them confused.

The floaty menu thing everyone here hates... maybe if you get it working correctlyso that it reliably scrolls when swiped, reliably closes when you have selected a sub-menu item and make it so you can't select/change things on the pages behind the menu while it is open. Maybe it would acceptable then.

The Monitor>Wireless screen... I don't know why the Available AP's list takes spells where it doesn't want to swipe sideways but it is maddening some times  and works just like a charm others...  I would like to suggest making SSID, RSSI and Registration Status the first 3 things on the list, that way the installer can see everything he/she needs 99.9% of the time without any swiping at all.

The session timed out thing is aggravating because it usually starts happening after you have restarted the browser (sometimes several times) which means you are already having problems and now it's kicking you back to the logon (actually I think it says Login or Logon timed out, it doesn't give a warning like the Session Time out does it just tells you it timed out and knocks you back to the logon screen.. usually , sometimes it doesn't and you can just keep doing what you was doing and sometimes you can log in two or three i  only to get timed out within seconds of logging in) . Now that I'm going to be doing installs with a trainee for a while I'll start paying attention to weather or not it is 3.41 and  exactly what is happening and when it is happening.

I can't help but think that a lot of the problems and glitches we run into come from this one thing the ePMP does that no other radio (or any other device I can think of off hand) does.  When I log into a 450, PMP100, Ubiquiti radios if I disconnect the ethernet cable and then try to click on a tab or menu option it won't load (because it can't because you are no longer connected to it). I get page not found or it just spins. But when you log into an ePMP and disconnect the ethernet not only can you browse through all the menus and pages on the radio but they are actually populated with data !?!  The system uptime on the home page is even still incrementing right along...  Something isn't right about that, it seems like a bad programming thing and I don't like not knowing if the data I'm looking at is current or not. When I've lost connection to a device I want to know .  It  doesn't seem like this is how a radio interface , or really any kind of interface, should work.

I'll admit that since you have made it so that refreshing doesn't take you back to the home page, refreshing the browser just to see if you are getting current data will be much less frustrating than before but it's still not right that you can be looking at the data on various pages trying to trouble shoot a problem and the data isn't current because you lost connection to the radio 4 pages and 3 menu clicks back and you just don't know it yet.  Shoot you could have lost and regained connection several times and now of all the information you have to work with you don't know how much of it was current and how much of it was just from before you lost connection.  Just one more thing to make an already frustrating situation more frustrating.

brubble1, 

I am sorry that you are having such a poor experience with ePMP interface on a mobile phone. We'll work on making the mobile interface better. I don't have a target on when we'll get to it but we hear your feedback loud and clear. 

Thanks,

Sriram


@ninedd wrote:

Brubble1 - I agree that the native Cambium interface is pretty wonky, although it's clearly better than it was as far as speed goes.  However, it's still very frustrating on a phone, on a roof for sure - and still way too slow, and you're right... on a small screen, it's got those floating menu's covering up everything that you need to get at.  And then it'll log the installer out and he's got to start over....    So Kudo's on how much better it is now from before, but my support and management and installation staff complain about the same thing.  ePMP are the best performing radios we've used, but ePMP are among the worst for installers and for troubleshooting.


However, have you tried the Android App that NewKirk did?
http://community.cambiumnetworks.com/t5/ePMP-2000-and-1000/Mobile-Android-App-to-configure/td-p/42073

Or this alignment tool thingy?
https://youtu.be/6DQK6xPoA4A



I agree the interface is a lot faster and more usable than it use to be. But really , being better than that is a pretty low bar to clear.  I will someday I will tell installers scary campfire stories about the days of the Force110 and the ePMP frozen molasses interface.  

  Cambium has some of the best RF engineers in the world (I assume the y are  the old Motorola RF guys who were the best of the best). I don't think anyone can make better radios than their rf people.

I wish I had the time, knowledge and skill to do what newkirk has done, that is just awesome and I'm so envious.  But I can't train installers to use his tool because if he decided to stop updating it , or stop sharing it or like now it stops working with a firmware version I need to update to.. or what if like now , it's not working with 3.4.1 and newkirk has to use the ePMP interface on his phone and he is on a roof and it's really making him mad because he's always had his cool app and now he is experiencing the full frustration of the epmp interface with the floaty menu from hell... he's not use to this kind of frustration, he's not prepared for this kind of pain, and he gets so angry he rips the dish off the house and as he throws it off the roof and the cat5 wraps around his legs and... well it doesn't end well and we don't have newkirk to keep his awesome app updated anymore.  Now my installers have to be retrained and go back to the ePMP interface but now they're soft, they aren't hardened ePMP interface users, they are addicted to newkirks app.  In no time customers are calling about installers going on rampages, leaping off roofs and cursing at the sky asking "WHY ? WHY DID YOU TAKE NEKIRK  !?"...

I think that unless a permanent cure can be found for the ePMP interface it's best the installers just build up a resistance to it and learn to deal with it. 

The cambium app is Apple only last I knew and we use Android, Samsung mostly.


@Cambium_Sri wrote:

nlisbey1167, the login issue is a known defect in 3.4.1. Clearing cache and cookies resolves it. The defect has been fixed in 3.5 which is currently in beta. We expect 3.5 to be released next week.

Thanks and appreciate all the feedback.

Sriram

Just wanted to ask for clarification of this - I've update a few radios from 3.2 and 3.2.2 to 3.5 final and they do NOT allow me to login.  I still have to blow out cookies and cache to get logged in.  Am I missing something?  I tried shift-reload to force it to update .js files, etc.  Only thing that worked was wiping cache and cookies.

j

Also, just wanted to mention that the older existing version of my ePMPme app DOES work with 3.5 firmware, it's just 3.4.1 that chokes it.  So something that changed from 3.3 to 3.4 WAS changed back for 3.5, even though cookies/cache still impact ability to login.

So far 3.5 looking good.

j

Had same problem upgrading from 3.3 to 3.5 on 1 ap and 5 SM's. Could not login.


@CWB wrote:

Had same problem upgrading from 3.3 to 3.5 on 1 ap and 5 SM's. Could not login.


Unfortunately the fix for this is to blow out any cookies/cached files in your web browser for that site.  I posted a link earlier in this thread, https://7labs.heypub.com/tips-tricks/clear-site-specific-cookies-cache.html where they tell you how to selectively purge cookies/cache ONLY for selected sites, instead of all, in various browsers.  If you use that and delete cookies/cache for that particular IP you will be able to log in.  A minor headache.

The case where it becomes a major headache is logging into radios via default 169.254.1.1 IP, where every radio might be accessed at the same IP, meaning if you have a mix of software versions you'll have to keep purging cookies every time you connect to a 3.4.1/3.5 radio...  However, you can possibly ease that situation in some browsers - EG Chrome, in the same Settings page as blowing out per-site cookies, allows you to specify single sites for which the cookies/cache will be deleted upon browser exit.  Meaning if you put 169.254.1.1 in there then all you have to do is exit/restart Chrome to connect to a 3.5 radio after an earlier version.

j

1 Like