Elevate conversions/experiences you are happy with?

Hello all,

I have several Ubnt APs that are the first generation with no GPS. I also have many 2nd gen APs also with no working GPS (supposedly going to be available soon).

The first gens are saturated and need upgraded.

Is there anyone out there has had success with Elevate? I want to hear experiences with it, both good and bad. I am leaning towards trying it out, but want to be sure of it.


@jakkwb wrote:

Hello all,

I have several Ubnt APs that are the first generation with no GPS. I also have many 2nd gen APs also with no working GPS (supposedly going to be available soon).


When you say second gen AP's... do you mean the RocketM-GPS, and RocketTi-GPS? From what I understand, Ubiquiti has abandoned development for GPS on the M-series radios. They're concentrating on providing GPS for their AC products. Once they have working GPS on AC, they'll try to provide mixed-mode GPS sync for M series clients connecting to AC series AP's. I heard that originally they weren't planning on providing GPS sync for mixed-mode environments, but after Cambium released their Elevate bombshell, it became a matter of pride (and also at the behest of angry legacy operators) that they provide GPS sync for legacy clients. I'd wager that the mixed-mode GPS support will never materialize as Ubiquiti will probably move more and more development resources to their new LTU platform (which will NOT be compatible with M or AC or AF product lines).

That being said, I find it pretty amazing that Cambium has brought some long overdue features and breathed some new life into a 7+ year old platform that Ubiquiti has basically abandoned.

No, I skipped the Rocket-M5-GPS and TI-GPS all together. Yes, I am impressed that Cambium made it work (I have not used it yet) on another vendors platform, while they did not...

Have you personally used Elevate on your network?

I have a mix of all of their end-user radios, from Nanobridges to powerbeams to Locos, all in both XM and XW.


@jakkwb wrote:

No, I skipped the Rocket-M5-GPS and TI-GPS all together. Yes, I am impressed that Cambium made it work (I have not used it yet) on another vendors platform, while they did not...

Have you personally used Elevate on your network?

I have a mix of all of their end-user radios, from Nanobridges to powerbeams to Locos, all in both XM and XW.


We've played around with it a bit... but no field deployments... We've already swapped out all of the XM/5GHz radios for PMP450 or ePMP. We're waiting on Elevate support for XM/2.4GHz radios as we still have a number of these sites in the field.

The two biggest caveats that I've seen so far in the forums is that on XM series radios, they have barely enough memory to run the Elevate firmware, and GUI performance can be quite slow at times. Second caveat is that there are a number of before/after configuration hoops to jump through that can be challenging. I believe I've read that Cambium is working on making it easier to carry over configuration information after the transition.

There's a couple of good threads HERE and HERE.

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Since you said you have 2nd gen APs with no working GPS, I'm assuming you're talking about UBNT AC gear - keep in mind that elevate does not work on the UBNT AC radios, so if you have any AC CPE, those would not be able to be elevated (I'm guessing you already know that though).

We have elevate running on several APs, and for the most part it works pretty well. There are still some issues with the XM radios (random disconnects, poor modulation rates... that kind of thing), but it's kind of mixed, some XM radios work perfectly fine, and others are complete junk. I'm beginning to suspect that it's actually hardware problems with some of these old radios, and it's just more apparent with the ePMP firmware.

I haven't really seen any problems with XW radios - for the most part, they work just like a real ePMP SM.

At this point, I pretty much plan for XW radios to work like they should, and XM radios to most likely need to be replaced at some point - but even if you end up having to replace those radios, it still makes transitioning to ePMP a whole lot easier than it used to be.

Yah, I have replaced some of my Rocket M5s with the newer Prism models, but not all. Everythings kind of in limbo with GPS...

My ubnt legacy gear is probably split 50/50 between XM and XW gear.

Are you able to successfully do frequency reuse on them using GPS? A-B-A-B? I know this relies on the Cambium EPMP AP and not the end user radio. Just curious. I have several 4 Rocket towers, each on seperate channel block and running out of spectrum (sharing with competitor).

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@jakkwb wrote:

Are you able to successfully do frequency reuse on them using GPS? A-B-A-B? I know this relies on the Cambium EPMP AP and not the end user radio. Just curious. I have several 4 Rocket towers, each on seperate channel block and running out of spectrum (sharing with competitor).


Assuming you're using 1000 GPS or 2000 model as an AP, and you're using an antenna with the recommended 30+dB front to back ratio... YES... you can do frequency reuse.

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Yes... and of course only GPS APs support Elevate anyway.

That's a good point about antennas - if you're using the standard Ubiquiti sectors, you will want to replace those. I haven't checked the specs recently, but the newer AC sectors, or the Titanium sectors might be usable... the orginal airmax sectors have a terrible front to back ratio though.

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Yes, I have EPMP 1000 APs with GPS. Am using Titanium sectors on all of the Rockets.

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According to the spec sheets, the Titanium sectors have a 30 or 35 db (depending on which model) front to back ratio, so channel re-used should work with those. Also, RF elements makes a cheap little adapter that will let you snap the ePMP 1000 AP right into the radio holder on the ubnt antenna.

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