Elevate licenses not viewable in certain "modes"

Just got done trying to elevate a 5ghz sector whith a mix of Cambium and UBNT radios in Wifi mode.

It started out with a support chat to find out why the licenses I paid for where not viewable on the AP. I was instructed to upgrade to 3.5. Ok, I did that while I was in my maintenence window that I had prescheduled with my customers for this elevate task.

After the update, I still couldn't see that I was allowed to elevate on the radio. Come to find out, I have to already be in TDD mode to see this information. Why, in Gods name do I need to be in a certain "mode" to see information about a licence I paid for?? I realize that elevate sm's only work in TDD, but WTH. I spend an hour with support trying to figure this out. So one I'm not happy it wasn't known right off the bat that you have to be in that mode to see it, and two, I have to be in that mode to actually see it. Total fail IMO.

Second, While doing all of this, the cambium tech changed me from tdd to wifi and back again. Why did my channel width, frequency, and later the max customers allowed on the ap change??  I'm glad I knew what those settings where in the first place, or I would have been scratching my head all danged day about it.

Cambium sure could use a little help in figuring out how to set up their gui so that it functions correctly, and doesn't change when not instructed to do so. End of rant. 

Total waste of an hour and half today because of these things.


@Tristan wrote:

Just got done trying to elevate a 5ghz sector whith a mix of Cambium and UBNT radios in Wifi mode.

It started out with a support chat to find out why the licenses I paid for where not viewable on the AP. I was instructed to upgrade to 3.5. Ok, I did that while I was in my maintenence window that I had prescheduled with my customers for this elevate task.

After the update, I still couldn't see that I was allowed to elevate on the radio. Come to find out, I have to already be in TDD mode to see this information. Why, in Gods name do I need to be in a certain "mode" to see information about a licence I paid for?? I realize that elevate sm's only work in TDD, but WTH. I spend an hour with support trying to figure this out. So one I'm not happy it wasn't known right off the bat that you have to be in that mode to see it, and two, I have to be in that mode to actually see it. Total fail IMO.

Second, While doing all of this, the cambium tech changed me from tdd to wifi and back again. Why did my channel width, frequency, and later the max customers allowed on the ap change??  I'm glad I knew what those settings where in the first place, or I would have been scratching my head all danged day about it.

Cambium sure could use a little help in figuring out how to set up their gui so that it functions correctly, and doesn't change when not instructed to do so. End of rant. 

Total waste of an hour and half today because of these things.


Hi Tristan,

Thank you for your feedback.

We will discuss this issue internally.

Today you cannot see Elevate Licenses in Standard Wi-Fi mode because it was supposed that it can mislead customers, because Standard Wi-Fi mode doesn't support Elevate devices.

But your use cases makes sense and we will check what can be done.

Regarding your second issue, we also aware of this behavior and will try to improve usability for scenarios like yours. But we have some technical limitations on configurations for different driver modes.

Thank you.

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I can undertsand the reasoning behind not putting it in wifi mode. But, to be fair, a LOT of people are going to be using elevate just like I am. One ap in wifi mode, change clients to elevate, switch ap to TDD, done.

I paid for a licnese that should be clearly shown in the license area of the radio at all times. If you are worried about customers not knowing about wifi mode not working, put a red disclaimer in there about it in the web gui.

Switching from lite to full I believe didn't change the "max associations" setting either. I don't even know why this is a setting in an AP. But it's there. So, I sat and waited for my last client to associate, which never came. Until I figured out that in the course of all of thse changes it reverted back to 10, even with a full license. Dumb.

Radio settings should be persistant across all modes.

Finally, I'm a pretty simple fella. Things should just work as a normal person would assume them to. We use a dozen different manufacuterers. For some reason all of you manufacturers think we are supposed to magically know all of each of your caveats because there is a forum, or a release note 10 versions ago about some kind of change. We don't. We can't possibly keep up with all of that, try as we might. Keep that in mind when you guys are sitting in a room and not outdoors working on a network, on a laptop, hanging from a tower. None of what I dealt with was OK in a normal setting. More or less had I been trying to do something in an outdoor environment. It was extremly frustrating to watch a small AP essentially be down for an hour while a support tech did all of the things I did already, only to find out we were in a wrong wireless mode to verify a license I paid for. Not aprreciative of the situation at all, nor impressed by it. But, at least I know now I suppose.

Hi Tristan,

I can understand your disappointment on configuration stuff and your input is very important for us to improve product's usability.

Some flaws will be fixed in the next releases and some of them will be scheduled for further releases.

Beside this you can always find answers on questions related to ePMP functional here in Cambium Community.

You can see that today we are focused on new major functional like Flexible Licensing and 802.11ac products, so some minor functional can be a bit delayed.

Thank you.

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Sure, and FYI. Not being in TDD mode prevents flexible license from showing up as well. So there is no way to "test" these things, or have them ready, prior to an elevate proceedure. Wasting time.

Thanks