Last August I had a terrible experience upgrading my 5.7 system to a new firmware. After three hours, I managed to get 46 SMs upgraded, but 4 SMs were rendered useless.
Consequently, I have not done an upgrade in over a year. I am on:
Device type 5.7GHz - Multipoint - Access Point -
Software Version CANOPY4.2.3 Jul 23 2004 11:13:49 AP-DES
Software Boot Version CANOPYBOOT 3.0
FPGA Version 062403 (DES)
Things seem to work well, most of the time. Every now and then (months apart) I have to reboot an AP or two. However, I have a standard 25ms latency regardless of proximity to my router, and I hear the latest firmware series lowers this. I also have read that I may see an increase in broadcast power or range? Further, someone suggested to me my VOIP problems COULD be firmware related, and will improve with the update.
My questions:
1) In my interest of improving my network am I risking another costly upgrade fiasco, or have you all had good experiences?
2) what are the MAIN benefits of upgrading?
3) I do not have “Advantage” nor do I clearly understand what that is. Will the latest firms work on 2-3yr old 5700SMs?
4) Is the CNUT a requirement, and is it worth a pot of beans?
5) is there a recommended version, or can I assume “the latest” is the best
kind regards
Ron
First let me say Hi fellow NM I am in ruidoso. We have a pretty large system covering southeast nm in 13 diffarent towns. I would recommend upgrading cnut is a whole lot easier than doing the old telnet thing. You can have it schedule to do upgrades during off peak hrs, or even have it do it auto once you have all your units listed in the cnut you can come in every morning and refresh the network and it will basically poll averyone. if you dont get a response you know their is a problem. the latest firms will work but you are goung to have to go in a couple of steps like 6.1 first 7.0 then 7.2. advantage models have more threwput more then double and they have more features. you will get reduced latency better capability for vlans and voip. look at the release notes for each version and see if you would like those upgrades.
I hav e been using CNUT for the last 4 upgrades and have not lost a radio yet. Had problems when the radios had public IP addresses - had to telent to each radio and reset it prior to upgrading.
Now that we are using private IP addresses on all the radios it goes much more smoothly.
We have noticed network performance improvements with each upgrade, but the most noticable was from 4.2.2 to 6.1.
Go for it. It won;t be completely painless, but CNU really does a great job.
We are going to attempt a system-wide upgrade this weekend. Any last minute warnings? Also, what about the backhauls. Do I assume that all devices should be on the same FW version, or should the BHs be something different.
Ron
Software, Boot, and FPGA versions are only an issue between RF-linked units: AP to SM and BH-master to BH-slave. Upgrading SMs and APs before upgrading BHs doesn’t create a problem.
What can, potentially, cause a problem is when one end of a link is upgraded, the link could be disabled until the other end is also upgraded. You must use caution when manually upgrading units from older versions so you don’t “strand” a unit and have to travel to upgrade the unit via its Ethernet port. I’m not aware of this being a problem with CNUT and the newer versions of software.