Hi all, will someone let me know whether this product’s current firmware is backwards compatible with forece 300’s already?.
Thank you
Not yet,
Last I heard it was in the works but no promises yet.
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They’re getting closer… they just released a 5.7 private alpha build to allow AC SM’s to connect to an AX AP… so it’s being tested by a small group of brave souls. Depending on how well this goes, we could see a public beta in Q1 2024.
On the TDD-side of things, there should be a public beta 5.6 by the end of the year I’m being told.
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Thank you @Eric_Ozrelic and @Douglas_Generous uglas for your reply. Really looking forward to being able to reuse my 3000k deployment.
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How are you seeing mitigation from interference from nearby devices on the SM side? We been fighting neighboring routers and other 5Ghz devices with the 3k at customer premises.
e4k employs a WiFi6 AX chipset, along with specialized firmware which leverages OFDMA to help deal with things like interference, multipathing, nNLOS issues, etc. much more effectively then prior WiFi versions. You can use a combination of 5.9GHz STA, or the 6GHz version to help avoid consumer 5GHz devices. We’ve had very few issues with customer connections that we’ve pegged to being in-home WiFi interference.
We have a few 4500’s that we want to hang, but holding out on the backwards compatibility for the 3k so we are not going around to dozens of homes with upgrades. Hopefully they can stay true to their release time-frame from WISPA.
Does anyone have any updates on how the backward compatibility testing is going on the 4500APs? We are hoping to get some 4500APs deployed asap, but we are upgrading 3000APs and so we need backward compatibility to work before we can begin these AP upgrade deployments. Thanks for any feedback/updates you all can provide.
We are also anxiously awaiting the backward compatibility. Any updates on timeline would be very helpful.
Also, any details on expected performance when using AC CPEs connected to AX APs would be greatly appreciated. Will interference improvements be evident on AC CPEs? Will we still have 8x8 functionality ? As I recall, the Force200 CPEs were not able to participate in MUMIMO so they limited overall AP performance. Any reasons not to use AC CPEs that we might need to consider?
Does anyone have any updates on when the backward compatibility is going to be released for the 4500APs?
Backwards compatibility for at least legacy AC SM’s is coming in the 5.7 release train. A public beta of 5.7 should be available very soon… hopefully in the next week or two.
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That’s good news. I have 4500 APs in the shop I’m itching to deploy… just need it to be NOT -30 degree temperatures (which is happening 
) and need to have tested backwards compatibility - so I’m looking forward to a beta I can test & put thru it’s paces! 
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