"Verify/configure your current network’s Network Mode.
If your current network is operating in Router mode, the network must be configured to operate in Bridge mode prior to ePMP Elevate transition."
what does this refer to, router mode at the CPE / SM or the whole delivery network, (i.e will it only work for PPoE or Radius systems with effectively bridged network), and if so, is this purely for the transition or could one do the upgrade and config at the consumer end via the LAN port?
"Verify/configure your current network’s Network Mode.
If your current network is operating in Router mode, the network must be configured to operate in Bridge mode prior to ePMP Elevate transition."
what does this refer to, router mode at the CPE / SM or the whole delivery network, (i.e will it only work for PPoE or Radius systems with effectively bridged network), and if so, is this purely for the transition or could one do the upgrade and config at the consumer end via the LAN port?
This is specfic to the router mode at the AP which UBNT supports and ePMP does not. So if your current network is running router mode at the AP then it needs to be switched to bridge mode. Not an issue from a CPE perspective.
It's also a very critical point that Cambium ePMP AP requires the Ubiquiti device (running AirOS) have WDS enabled. It appears to me you can still do router network mode, but the wireless definitely requires you to have WDS running.
With WDS off, you'll see signal but no modulation and the AirOS interface will show the wlan0 interface down.
That's good to know. Last time I tried using wifi mode to converty a sector to ePMP, all of the XM radios (mostly nanobridges) connected fine, but none of the XW radios would work. I suspect I didn't have WDS enabled on any of the Ubiquiti radios. I'll have to try again and make sure WDS is enabled on everything. I'd rather not have to put up a second AP just for switching everything over, and swapping the AP for an ePMP and letting the clients run in WiFi mode until we can get them upgraded seems to be the only other realistic way to go. The only other option would be to do the software upgrade on all the clients and then swap APs, but that would mean a lot more down time, and mean it'd need to be done during the day.
Back when we were testing WiFi I remember seeing things associate pretty easily with Ubnt to ePMP WiFi, but the big issue we ran into is they do NOT pass traffic unless in WDS mode!
Swapped an AP only to find out every customer we NAT'ed (this is our default configuration) wouldn't pass any traffic at all.