Applicable Versions: 5.12.0 and later
Applicable Platforms: ePMP4XXX
In previous ePMP AX software versions, PtMP sectors with many connected subscribers could experience reduced peak throughput for a single subscriber when low-rate background traffic was present on other SMs.
This behavior was observed in dense sector deployments where one SM attempted to utilize maximum available sector throughput while multiple additional SMs generated only minor traffic flows. Even though the background traffic consumed relatively little bandwidth, scheduler resource distribution could prevent the active SM from temporarily utilizing most of the available sector capacity. In stressed scenarios, throughput degradation of approximately 20–30% was observed.
The scheduler enhancement introduced in ePMP AX improves airtime allocation behavior for mixed-traffic conditions. The updated logic dynamically prioritizes subscribers with larger transmission demand, allowing a heavily loaded SM to temporarily consume a significantly larger share of available sector resources while still servicing low-rate traffic from other connected SMs.
Testing was performed on E4K and E6K platforms with large-scale sector configurations containing up to 100 connected SMs using UDP, TCP, Wireless Link Test, Single-user Beamforming, and MU-MIMO traffic scenarios. Validation showed substantial throughput improvement for overloaded subscribers in scenarios with simultaneous background traffic, while maintaining stable latency, connectivity, and overall sector operation.
This improvement is especially beneficial in deployments where subscriber traffic patterns are uneven, such as speed tests (Ookla Speed Test, Cloudflare, Fast.com), large file transfers, burst traffic applications, or mixed residential usage patterns. Customers should observe improved peak throughput utilization and more efficient sector capacity usage under real-world traffic conditions.
