ePMP Force 200 restarting every few hours

Products ePMP
1

On one site I have two Force 200 in ePMP mode  but only one are restarting few times per day. firmware 3.5.2

2

We have had this happen a few times in the past:

Does Monitor > Performance   show hard or soft reboots ?   If soft reboots maybe a firmware issue. Hard reboots then probably bad hardware, cable, power but could still be a software/firmware issue.

(1) Up/Down grading the firmware fixed it.  But not always an option depending on what version the AP is running (some of the v4.x does not work well unless every single client radio is running the same version of firmware).

(2) Physically unplugging and re-plugging the cat/rj45.  I'm convinced the curled Ethernet pins in the F200/190/300-25 are the cause of a lot of the general Ethernet / Reboot errors we see with these radios. If the radio is easy to get to the first thing we try is just re-seating the RJ45 and sometimes that does the trick.  If the radio is someplace difficult to get to or we already tried re-seating the connector and it didn't work then we replace it.  One more than one occasion I have re-installed these radios elsewhere (someplace very easy to get to the radio) and they have worked without any problem since.

(3) Power issues.  Loose connection aggravated by cat, dog, child, wind. Bad power supply, bad/loose electric plug or just power issues. 

(4) Bad radio, nothing you can do, replace it.

So for us, the first thing I try is up/down grade firmware (assuming that's an option). Then it's a truck roll and we check the cable and ends , look for water/corrosion, cable pulling out of the connector or wires not all the way in. If anything looks questionable , replace/re-terminate it.  Replace the surge suppressor. Inside where the power supply and cables are give it all good jiggle'n around does the radio reboot ? If so, probably something loose there.   If all else fails, if the radio is really difficult to get to then just replace it and test the old unit back at the office. If the radio is really easy to get to then maybe just try re-seating/taping/ziptie the ethernet connection.

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3

Hi,

I would encourage you to go with the 4.4.3 firmware. There is a huge chance that it is one of the known issue that has been resolved. If you will still have an issue please open up a ticket with our friendly support team.

Thanks,

Dmitry

4

I have a Force 200 that hard reboots several times a day. We have changed out cabling and POE. The ePMP 2000 and Force 200 are 3.5.6 Would upgrading the Force 200 to 4.4.3 cause problems on my network? I do not have any ePMP 3000 equipment, so I haven't upgraded anything over 3.5.6

5

We rushed upgrading to 4.4.3 on almost all of our AP's because we wanted to start installing / repairing with the new AC radios and stop buying N radios entirely... not real happy with it.  For us we have seen a huge increase in customers complaining about buffering problems with their streaming services and low speed tests.  I think it broke rate limiting somehow or the air-fairness scheduler or something, something isn't right.

If you do try it I would highly recommend that you do it on only one AP / sector and test it for a month or so before you move it to other APs and keep track of complaints from customers on that AP.  Looks like 4.5 just came out , might give it a try.

Also, are you sure the problem isn't the power flickering at the customer location ? I have had several were, yeah, the radio was hard rebooting because the customer's crappy electric flickered several times a day.

Really I would just swap the 200 out with a new one, bring the old one back to the office and hook it up, good chance it won't reboot anymore and the whole problem was/is one those curled Ethernet pins just wasn't making good contact. If it does continue to reboot, RMA it.

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6

Hi everyone!
I have installed new epmp force 200 device 3days ago. that reboots several times a day. We have changed out cabling but still problem not resolve. The ePMP Force 200 are 3.5.2 software version. i am new about this device.
RSSI is -62 dbm.
Hardware Version
5 GHz Force 200 (ROW)

Software Version
3.5.2

Firmware Version
U-Boot 9342_PX 1.1.4.h (Jul 26 2018 - 17:36:36)

please suggest me for this issue.
Thanks

7

Hi Buddhi. In our experience, the ePMP hardware is VERY stable, and we’ve had no issues with Force200s at all. That being said, nothing has a 0% defect rate, so it’s always possible that your F200 simply has something broken with it.

  1. The forums are user-to-user help, but there are also ‘support tickets’ directly with Cambium, which you’d need to do if you think it’s a hardware issue. Cambium does participate some in these forums somewhat, but mostly the forums are for help from other users - and the official ‘Cambium Support’ is done through their support portal.

  2. If you do want to try a firmware to see if your old 3.5.2 version is causing an issue, then 3.5.6 was considered pretty stable, and 4.6.1 is also considered pretty stable. If you upgrade the SM, you’ll typically want to upgrade it’s AP to the same version for best results… certainly I’d never mix/match major versions (ie V3.x with V4.x)

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8

We found that when a radio is rebooting a lot that there is a very good chance that it is power related. We have found this is more prevalent when there is large power deviations, most likely caused by pumps, compressors or airconditioners.
We solve this by plugging in a true sine wave line interactive UPS.
Still test your cables and poe brick but when swapping these does nothing then the UPS usually fixes it.

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