I'm pretty sure I read it in the forums here somewhere but I can't find it now. I have a location with a single GPS Sync ePMP 1000 AP on an Omni 50+ N ePMP subscribers that has reached capacity ( running between 80 and 100% frame time used in the evenings). And while I am well aware that sectors are the answer to this problem, and sectors are what I would like to do, and someone is still going to tell me about how sectors are the solution anyway and explain all the ways I could use sectors or horns or whatever instead of an Omni,,, I'm stuck with a single omni (no I can't mount a second Omni either).
So am I understanding correctly that if I replace this ePMP 1000 AP/Omni with a 3000 4x4 AP and a 4x4 Omni it should relieve some stress on this site ? That's assuming the 4.x firmware is stable enough at some point in the near future to do an AC AP with N SMs.
According to Cambium MU-MIMO is only active when using AC clients. In a legacy situation like this I don't know that upgrading the AP would provide huge benefit.
I do have a 3000 4x4 and I'm testing the Mimosa 4x4 OMNI. The MuMIMO stats on the AP do show 'Groupable' stations when using Force300 clients, but I don't really know how efficiently they are able to work together. I do know that Cambium has recommended that (at the very least) the algorithm would have to be tweaked for the exact dimensions of each antenna, so I don't expect the Mimosa Omni to be an ideal situation by any means. KP Performance will have a 4x4 Omni for the 3000 which is Cambium approved.
However... all 802.1n based clients (ePMP 1000, Force 180/190/200) are not going to know how to MuMimo because the radio chipset itself won't have that feature.
So, there may still be some benefit due to lower latency, or due to higher packets per second on a 3000AP - but not due to MuMimo directly, if it's all N clients.
That being said... if you change the AP to a 3000, AND if you also change out your top 6 or 10 use clients to Force300 clients, then the remaining 40 N clients will quite likely see a more substantial benefit with more left over air to go around.
That being said... if you change the AP to a 3000, AND if you also change out your top 6 or 10 use clients to Force300 clients, then the remaining 40 N clients will quite likely see a more substantial benefit with more left over air to go around.
This is our current strategy... take overloaded e1k/e2k AP's, put an e3k in place with 4.4-RC30, and then take the top 10 talkers and swap them to F300-25's. The legacy N clients get a 10% boost from the short GI and other optimizations along with a diversity gain from the 4x4 and the AC clients obviously benefit from MU-MIMO and 256QAM.
No need to upgrade every client to Force 300 though. Our strategy will be the same of some mentioned here which we'll use Preseem to look at the heaviest users during peak times and only upgrade 5-10 of them to Force 300 and leave the lower users on Force 200. This way we don't have to spend tons of $$$ upgrading everyone.