Recommended Steps for Activating AFC on Your ePMP 6GHz Network

[Fedor]

Step 0:
Verify if all ePMP 6GHz radios are FCC locked with United States Country code displayed on UI. This is relevant both for US and Canada regions.
Only FCC locked devices are allowed to communicate to AFC server.
This can be verified on Monitor → System page & Configuration → Radio.

If any radio is not FCC locked, please submit the ticket with Cambium Support Team.
https://support.cambiumnetworks.com/

Step 1
If radios are already deployed, please make sure that AP and SMs configured with TDD mode and have full scan list configured.
(OPTIONAL) Upgrade radios to 5.7.0-RC59 Beta that has AFC disabled.
Verify the following:

1. AP and SM are able to make HTTPS requests out to the Internet.
2. AP and SMs have DNS server configured.
3. AP and SMs are getting geo-location data in a real time from GPS receiver.

Step 2
Upgrade AP with 5.7.0 firmware. Make sure AP can communicate to AFC server and gets the list of available channels and allowed EIRP.
Find a good AFC channel that allows for maximum EIRP. I’d recommend NOT using a 160MHz channel to start with, be conservative, try 20 or 40MHz first.

NOTE! The synchronisation with AFC server may take up to 5 minutes after AP’s reboot.

Step 3
Update all SM’s to 5.7.0 and let them reconnect. If some SM’s don’t come back, you may need to reduce the channel width and/or change the center channel in order to get the lost SMs back. Some channels may be not allowed for some SMs even it’s allowed for AP. Your best results will be achieved with a 20 or 40 MHz channel width.

Step 4
Assuming all the SM’s come back, login to all SM’s and check to see if you can enable fixed mode.
If you go to enable fixed mode and you get this error, please contact Cambium Support Team
https://support.cambiumnetworks.com/

Fixed Client Mode can be enabled via cnMaestro template:

{
    "device_props": {
        "cambiumAfcStaMode": "1"
    }
}

Step 5
At this point the AP and SM’s should all be on 5.7.0 and AFC should be fully provisioned with all SM’s set for fixed mode. At this point you can start testing different channels and channel widths. If during testing you lose some SM’s, it’s most likely because the AFC has set their TX power too low for it to reconnect. You’ll need to find a different channel or channel width in this case.

[Douglas_Generous]

Why can only country code USA (FCC locked) radios communicate to the AFC server? Canada has different rules and power levels. Will radios set to Canada eventually be able to use the AFC system?

[Fedor]

Yes, AFC recognises devices deployed in Canada by the geo-location sent and provides Canadian list of available channels and EIRP limitations.

Thanks

[TidalWaveChrisF]

That template didn’t work for me. I modified to the below and it worked. A value of 1 is fixed client; a value of 0 is standard.

{
    "template_props": {
        "templateName": "",
        "templateDescription": "",
        "device_type": ""
    },
    "device_props": {
       "cambiumAfcStaMode": "1"
    }
}

[aka (Andrii)]

Hello @TidalWaveChrisF,
thank you for pointing to this! The article was prepared before the feature design finalization.
I have fixed the main text.