Still far behind UBNT?

beeonline · December 1, 2019, 1:37am

Don't wanna offend you, guys, but the facts are:

1) Spectrum analyzer is still more like a speculum. In nearly 2020 we have to completely restart the radio just to switch between modes? I am OK with that, if it would work properly.

Try that yourself:

Switch to spectrum analyzer

Download application

Press Start

Switch the frequency range

Press start

Press start.. any luck? Me not.

Works after reboot, but still, after switch of range it stucks.

And seriously, why it is THAT unresponsive? I still have to wait not less than 10-20 seconds to get any spectrum. What kind of "Current" spectrum is it?

2) Web interface is getting worse every version. Now i can not log in from my Chrome on iOs which seems to be outdated, and AP doesnt like it. OK, it is still accessible with safari, but how to scroll down the wireless stations list? Can you? Me not.

Talking about glitches in web, also "Ethernet down" seems to be fixed many years ago, in 3.3. But not in 4.4.2? (XM, AG-5)

And again, here's the recent UBNTs changelog:

New Features:
-------------
* Instant Frequency Change: airMAX M stations jump to a new non-DFS frequency without disrupting the wireless link when used with airMAX AC access point running >=v8.6.0-RC2

Sorry for arguing style of post, but spending my nights waitings for reboots and reconnections is not what i wanted to get for the triple price compared to UBNT. Thank you

Jacob_Turner · December 1, 2019, 6:33am

I'll be the first to agree that the epmp1k spectrum analyzer leaves a lot to be desired, but I haven't usually had much trouble with it. I just really hate to take a radio offline so long to do what could otherwise often be done with a simple 802.11 site survey. The results tend to be very accurate though, once you wait through it.

Mobile usage has always been more challenging on ePMP. Can't help you there. I'm a laptop in the field sort of person.

The ethernet web ui issue you note is related to "elevated" units and has never been present on Cambium hardware that I've seen.

We are primarily a UBNT shop but have been slowly transitioning over the years (not always smoothly) to Cambium where it makes sense, and not every situation does. The biggest difference I've always valued between the two is that when Cambium gear fails to deliver, that failure is repeatable, explainable, and might actually get fixed down the road. Not always the case with UBNT gear. Add to that UBNT's constant need to re-invent what isn't even stable yet, and you are bound to have some sleepless nights.

I've lost a lot more sleep over the years due to UBNT issues than I have Cambium.

beeonline · December 1, 2019, 7:13am

Well, yeah - elevate is a bit of my extra requirements, never mind.

Believe me, once you use your mobile to set up things, you never want to bring even extra 1 kilo with you.

And this makes me to remember another thing - application. There is no application even close-like ubnt's , which already had profiles in very first versions. More than that - I didn't have any luck using the one which exists. It just disconnects me :D And let me again remind you - we are in nearly 2020. Still, never mind - I swore but I have used the browser successfully, until it just became nearly unusable. And I am still ok with that for some reason.

I did not have too much of ubnt gear to make a good statistics, and the one I have was working decently

Jacob_Turner · December 1, 2019, 7:25am

Don't get me wrong, I use my phone a lot as well, if the radios are pre-configured, and all I have to do with the phone is aim things. Anything beyond that is a fools errand with a phone.

It seems like now you are comparing the phone-only experience between the two brands, which has absolutely nothing to do with how any of this stuff performs once installed. That said, yes, cnArcher takes way too much setup and then is still clunky. Actually, cnArcher sucks. UNMS also sucks though.

Both manufacturers would benefit greatly by sending their software folks out in the field for a few weeks with the products that they already designed and make them use the stuff all day. If that can't solve the problem, the problems are so deep that nothing can.

brubble1 · December 1, 2019, 11:18pm

> 2) Web interface is getting worse every version.

Can you believe v2 use to be even slower ? While v1 looked like it was designed by someone's 3 year old with a box of crayons it was a jet compared to the v2 re-design. Version 2 took so long to load or do anything it was mind boggling how anyone approved it for release. It was so bad that opening two radio GUI's at once would bring even a super computer to its knees. It is a truly horrible GUI but they just keep building on it and making it more and more horrible and frustrating to use.

Amazes me that the old N Ubiquiti radios have a bandwidth graph for every single interface (even the PPPoE interface if you use it) while ePMP can hardly manage one interface and they still managed to make it almost useless. For example try putting your pointer on one of those little dots and seeing the numbers for more than a fraction of a second. I think you would be hard pressed to come up with a more difficult to use graph... could they not just display the numbers there somewhere !?

Even the no frills interface on the old Canopy and the 450 hardware is miles and miles better than ePMP because at least it's fast and accurate. You don't even know if the ePMP data you are seeing is real or cached or just imaginary or from the last radio you was looking at or.... on and on, just a horrible horrible GUI.

When I want to check if if a site is reachable I'll see if I can reach one of the radios at the site. To do that I'll enter the IP of one of the old Canopy or 450i AP's or if it's an all ePMP site I'll go for the switch at the location because #1 they only come up if they are actually reachable while an ePMP GUI may actually load a logon screen but you don't actually know if you are really at the Logon screen or not unless you try to actually logon and #2 the other radios and switches logon screens come up INSTANTLY every time while the ePMP will load the banner and then just set there sometimes for a full minute before loading the logon screen... which again, may or may not be cached... also if anything other than the ePMP doesn't load instantly then it isn't reachable or there is a problem while you just never know with the ePMP GUI.

Eric_Ozrelic · December 2, 2019, 12:36am

I agree, the SA on the e1k/e2k isn't fun to use. To get around this we just use ACS with long hold times and it works almost as well. It's a great quick and dirty way to see what's going on with the spectrum without jumping through a bunch of hoops. To be fair however, you need to compare e1k/e2k with Airmax N... which has a horrible SA... worse IMHO then Cambium's N equipment.

e3k obviously doesn't have these issues as it has a real time background SA you can enable without reboot.

I've heard that there are plans to improve the SA in the e1k/e2k, but it will not support background SA.

When it comes to limited development time and resources, I'd rather have Cambium spend their time making things like interoperability, frame options, sync stuff, stability stuff, performance, etc. a priority over an SA or user interface revamp.

It's all about priorities folks!

ninedd · December 2, 2019, 4:31am

@Jacob Turner wrote:
...what could otherwise often be done with a simple 802.11 site survey.

^^^ THIS ^^^
This is a major pet-peeve of mine with ePMP. I've asked, begged, complained, explained, expletived - and SMH why this hasn't been, and still isn't a feature. IT's INSANE not to have the ability to simply do a site survey. I'm am a huge Cambium fan, and the stablity and performance is outstanding - but there are things missing which they just don't seem to get, no matter how much we ask. Not having a simple site survey is absolutely insane.

To make matters worse - I'm testing the beta 4.5-RC that was posted in the PTP550 Beta forum... and I try loading it on a ePMP3000 and a Force300 to see what it would do. I go to MONITOR -> WIRELESS and BOOM!!!! There are dozens and dozens of stations and routers and everything under the sun shown. HALLELUJAH! "They finally understood what we (WISP's) need to see! Finally, it's like it's 2005 again - PERFECT"

And then I refresh the screen, and it's gone. All I see in Montor -> Wireless is just my Cambium AP's now... with no WiFi devices shown.

So, apparently, not only does ePMP not have a 'Site Survey' feature despite years of asking for it... but it appears that the radios DO actually see the 802.11 site survey, and then they filter it out. Super super sad. :(

Again - I'm a big fan of Cambium's performance, but:
1) The lack of an 802.11 site survey is insane.
2) The lack of eDetect showing devices not on the exact same width/channel is insane.

ninedd · December 2, 2019, 4:47am

@Jacob Turner wrote:
...would benefit greatly by sending their software folks out in the field...

^^^ THIS ^^^

Or even have them in our shops answering the phone with a client calling in for support. We can't do an 802.11 Site Survey from their SM to see if the problem is their DLink router interfering with their SM. With EVERYTHING ELSE we've ever used, we could do that in 60 seconds, and tell them "your router is on 5750 and it's a -32... which is 2,048 times louder than the tower 6 km away. Try changing channels on your router and your intenet will probably be MUCH better". Right now (in nearly 2020) there is still no way to do a site survey.

On top of that - as you mention - if you put these guys on a client's roof, when you've got 20 minutes before that storm get's here (or on a -25 degree day when you've got 20 minutes before the fingers freeze) and you want to fumble through an install?... you very very quickly discover the need for it to go smoothly, and for it to go quickly. Every day out there is too hot, or too cold, or too windy, or rain is impending - or it's getting dark at 4:45PM where we are.

As I said before - I'm a huge Cambium fan, and the performance after it's properly installed is worth the price in gold to me. But it would be great if we could:
1) do a 802.11 Site Survey from the SM...
2) choose to bypass QOS on a throughput test...
3) change channels without dropping link (like UBNT does now and like StarOS could do a decade ago)

ninedd · December 2, 2019, 6:57am

@Eric Ozrelic wrote:
I've heard that there are plans to improve the SA in the e1k/e2k, but it will not support background SA.

Or, they could just give a good ol' 802.11 Site Survey, and that'd show us what we need to see in 95% of the cases.

In most cases, when a client calls in and they have lower performing internet than expected, we need to see what's interfering at their place. With 1000/2000 series, there is essentially ZERO way to accomplish that. With Force300's, the situation is different, and they do have excellent hardware - and the second radio allows a SA remotely in the background, which is awesome. BUT STILL, even on Force300's - having a 802.11 site survey could show us in 2 seconds what we need to see, and would be much quicker and more informative in most cases.

beeonline · December 2, 2019, 9:40am

Wow! Guys, I didn't realize that my angry topic will get any support!

And I agree with you all in every single word!

I believe this is not more like and argument, but a helpful feedback for Cambium developers to make this great piece of hardware even better.

Thank you!

ninedd · December 2, 2019, 5:43pm

Absolutely. The topic is really some of the GUI and Features - not really the ePMP being behind UBNT as a whole. Obviously, the performance and stability of ePMP is spectacular, and we are 100% behind Cambium - for us, the performance is awesome. I have posted NUMEROUS times in these forums about the outstanding performance we get... so that's not the issue. and no one should interpret anything I say as being negative... rather just frustrated that such a great product line has some key missing (and I think misunderstood by Cambium) features.

So, for me, the issue of being behind UBNT is some of the missing firmware features, and is the information provided by the GUI which would help us diagnose client issues.

Dmitry_Moiseev · December 2, 2019, 6:45pm

Hi guys,

It wasn't easy to read through the thread to answer. Let me try to summarize.

Spectrum analyzer is still more like a speculum.

Agreed 100% it is not the most user friendly, but we've spent time to make it user friendly on our new products. You are poking spectrum analyzer that was developed 7 years ago that still does it job.

Obviously the main focus is to bring you better experience and performance with new products

Web interface is getting worse every version

Can you provide any details? Slower on mobile? Slower on desktop? 11n or 11ac? Elevate?

Now i can not log in from my Chrome on iOs which seems to be outdated, and AP doesnt like it.

AP model and version? iOS version? Chrome version? Please help us to make our product better by providing at least some details!

Talking about glitches in web, also "Ethernet down" seems to be fixed many years ago, in 3.3. But not in 4.4.2? (XM, AG-5)

If it is absolutely crucial for you to get it fixed on the 10 years old platform please send device to me at our Rolling Meadows office: 3800 Golf Rd #360, Rolling Meadows, IL 60008

...what could otherwise often be done with a simple 802.11 site survey.

Have you seen our latest discovery tool on the SA page of the 11ac devices? Isn't it even better than just 11n discovery?

In general we in Cambium can feel your every pain being either on the roof or answering customer calls. We spend significant time in the field and we are helping WISPs around the globe to provide best service.

We hear you loud and clear. Cambium is committed to deliver best product and with ePMP3000 we were trying to address issues around spectrum analyzer and missing survey tool. Please help us to fix what we are doing wrong. We are here to help, but not to argue.

Dmitry

ninedd · December 3, 2019, 2:28am

@Dmitry Moiseev wrote:

...what could otherwise often be done with a simple 802.11 site survey.
Have you seen our latest discovery tool on the SA page of the 11ac devices? Isn't it even better than just 11n discovery?
Dmitry

Dmitry - I don't know what to say.... I HAVE BEEN YELLING THIS FOR FIVE YEARS.

Yes, I have seen the ePMP3000 and the Force300's - I've used them extensively, and tested them lots. Yes, the new SA is cool. IT STILL IS NOT A SIMPLE 802.11 SITE SURVEY. Again, I've been yelling and begging for this for 5 years...

IT IS INSANITY NOT TO HAVE A 802.11 SITE SURVEY!
IT IS INSANITY FOR eDETECT TO ONLY SHOW THE EXACT SAME FREQUENCY AND WIDTH!

Again, as I mentioned above - when I first fired up the 4.5 Beta on the ePMP3000 and Force300 - I went into the Monitor -> Wireless screen, and BOOM, there were listed dozens and dozens of stations and routers and everything under the sun shown. HALLELUJAH! I said to myself, "Cambium finally understood what I've been asking for for 5 years! PERFECT!"

But then I refreshed the screen, and it was gone. All I see in Monitor -> Wireless is just my Cambium AP's now... with no WiFi devices shown.

So, apparently, not only does ePMP not have a 'Site Survey' feature despite over 5 years of asking for it... but it appears that the radios DO actually see the 802.11 site survey information, and then you filter all that out and hide it? :(

PS. I also don't want you to misunderstand. I LOVE CAMBIUM. We are switching out all other PTMP Gear and we are switching entirely to Cambium. I'm not trying to argue or to be non-'friendly'. As a matter of fact, I'm afraid about being so forceful in this thread - I don't want to piss anyone off at Cambium, and I don't want to appear to be ''non friendly''. I 100% believe in, and 200% love Cambium. But I think that Cambium also sometimes goes WAY out of their way to make things more complicated than they need to be. I think that the new SA in the ePMP3000/F300's is likely largely due to my requests for a Site Survey.... but if that is your solution.... (spending 30 minutes to do a detailed SA) instead of 2 seconds to do a Site Survey.... then I just don't know what to say to that.

Dmitry_Moiseev · December 3, 2019, 2:41am

It is hard to comment what you've seen filtered out, but the following graph is showing the information about all the wifi devices. Do you want all this information as a table, but not a diagramm?

beeonline · December 3, 2019, 5:53pm

First of all, I appreciate your kind answer!

Spectrum analyzer is still more like a speculum.
Agreed 100% it is not the most user friendly, but we've spent time to make it user friendly on our new products. You are poking spectrum analyzer that was developed 7 years ago that still does it job.
Obviously the main focus is to bring you better experience and performance with new products

Here I would agree with other posters about simple site survey actually, which would see 802.11 aps around. But also, it is a bit unfair to leave legacy customers on their own. We have launched epmp2000s only a year ago, bringing all budget in there (it was quite a challenge because we are a VSWISP (Very small WISP) and to be honest we have relied on cambium as this is the ONLY way we can compete in such dirty environment. On APs the noise reaches -55, and -35 on some clients sites. And to be honest, even 2000s were kind of expensive for us.

And what we get right after we have installed a bunch of hardware? Cambium launches new HW. Not that I want to say it is bad. This is normal, but why throw one great piece of hardware in the bin, just to produce another one.

I believe , there are lots of your customers which have much more towers (not like me), they will have to replace all hardware just because soft is abandoned?

Talking about glitches in web, also "Ethernet down" seems to be fixed many years ago, in 3.3. But not in 4.4.2? (XM, AG-5)

If it is absolutely crucial for you to get it fixed on the 10 years old platform please send device to me at our Rolling Meadows office: 3800 Golf Rd #360, Rolling Meadows, IL 60008

If I could choose, I would prefer developers to concentrate on AP firmware improvement. It was just all-in-one pain. Sorry for that.

Web interface is getting worse every version
Can you provide any details? Slower on mobile? Slower on desktop? 11n or 11ac? Elevate?

Now i can not log in from my Chrome on iOs which seems to be outdated, and AP doesnt like it.
AP model and version? iOS version? Chrome version? Please help us to make our product better by providing at least some details!

-AP: epmp2000 4.4.2, ios 10, chrome it says "crios 68.0.3440". Ok, I know it is outdated, there are a couple of reasons why I don't update, and it is not a jailbreak. BTW, safari is working fine, BUT it wont let me to scroll through the stations list in Monitor -> Wireless. -In Configuration -> Radio when you select a channel the dropdown (Well, any dropdown) becomes very crazy, scrolling itself somewhere, and its became like that from 3.5 and never changed. -Yes, every new version the main menu is taking some time to appear (in 3.3 it was instant). Actually, was more usable on mobile in 3.3, don't know why. I wouldn't mind if we had a good application, so web would only be for desktop. But we don't have alternative yet. Anyways, thank you for connection, at least we still get answers for legacy HW. Some other companies don't care about legacy.

dkeltgen · December 3, 2019, 5:59pm

I think a table of all interferers would be nice. Perhaps by default there should be a summary table listing all interferers below the graph, with the ability to click on any of them to bring up the details, similar to how you can click on the graph. On some channels we can have dozens of devices, making it hard to click/see what's all out there.

CWB · December 3, 2019, 6:38pm

@Dmitry Moiseev wrote:
It is hard to comment what you've seen filtered out, but the following graph is showing the information about all the wifi devices. Do you want all this information as a table, but not a diagramm?
Screen Shot 2019-12-02 at 8.36.20 PM.png1501×554 52.7 KB

Dmitry, the Spec-An is very helpful and easy to use with the AC gear...but... there are a few issues that hopefully can be corrected.

It takes a very long time for spec-an to populate activity. I had customer call a few weeks ago and say his WiFi had went to $h!t, ethernet was fine. I had a feeling his SOHO router had ended up on same channel as his F300 outside. I turned his spec-an on, and I was right, his router was on same frequency. Problem was it took 15-20 minutes for that info to poplulate. I see this alot with scans, taking a long time for all activity to populate.

Also, channel widths are not always correct. Newkirk has a ePMP 1000c or F200 being used as a backhaul that at least 10 of my 3000/300's can see strongly. Most display it as 20Mhz, a few display it as 40Mhz. We have a water tower in the middle of our town that has (4) 3000's, (1) 300c (backhaul), (1) PTP550. While standing at the base of the tower, a wifi analyzer on my tablet shows 40Mhz and 80Mhz channels all over the band, the units listed above do not. They very rarely show the 40Mhz channels, and never the 80Mhz.

Once something is in the spec-an graph/table, it stays there. The school buses in our county have wifi. They show up in the spec-an scans on our AP's and SM's. They stay there until spec-an is cleared. My home router, if I change the frequency, 1) it takes a while for change to to show on my SM's spec-an, 2) old frequency shows until I clear spec-an.

ninedd · December 4, 2019, 11:03pm

@CWB wrote:
It takes a very long time for spec-an to populate activity. I had customer call a few weeks ago and say his WiFi had went to $h!t, ethernet was fine. I had a feeling his SOHO router had ended up on same channel as his F300 outside. I turned his spec-an on, and I was right, his router was on same frequency. Problem was it took 15-20 minutes for that info to poplulate. I see this alot with scans, taking a long time for all activity to populate.

Yes - exactly. We've been asking for a way to see client side interferers for 5 years, and it really get's my gears going. I want to repeat clearly - I AM A CAMBIUM FAN - because the reliability and performance is outstanding, but I HAVE BEEN SCREAMING ABOUT THIS PROBLEM FOR 5 YEARS TOO.

So I don't want anyone at Cambium to feel offended if we are a bit impatient for a basic, essential, required feature which has been missing for the entire history of ePMP. I think that's about 5 years for us, and I've been saying this over and over again.

So, as CBW mentioned, the new SA in the Force300's is better - yes - BUT you still need to turn it on, and turn it off after... and bad things can happen if you leave it running unnecessarily in the background. And, as a method of seeing the most common client side interference problem (which is checking what channel the client's router is on) a normal 802.11n Site Survey would be 10 seconds, not 30 minutes (or 45 minutes, because I'm still not sure if it's slowly slowly found everything or not).

eDetect detects basically nothing - unless it happens to be EXACTLY on the same channel, the same width - so that again is pretty much a non-functional feature, and has been since day one.

brubble1 · December 5, 2019, 2:31pm

Everything being listed here as problems with the SA or the interferers or this new site survey that fails to actually be a site survey... these issues permeate the entire interface. Pretty much every single screen on the ePMP interface has problems with displaying old (Client radio Monitor Wireless) or just plain wrong (Wireless or Ethernet interface saying they are down when they are in fact up or saying they are up when they are in fact down) info. Constant problems just displaying or logging into the interface or constantly having to clear the browser data to get into a radio. Much of the information it does display correctly is "almost useful" instead of "actually useful" (showing you "total data" when you need "bits per second").

ePMP is the best 802.11 based RF gear on the planet. The people building the RF hardware are world class IMHO. But the entire Interface is frustrating and the nicest thing I can say about it is that it's awful and it isn't going to get better because it's built on a foundation of awful... It's like an old rotted house that the owners covered in vinyl siding , it looks good but the insides are just horribly horribly awful and the only way to really fix it is tear it down and build a new one but that's never going to happen.

beeonline · December 5, 2019, 3:38pm

As far as I can understand, the gui is built on luci which is responsive enough, I don't know why epmp is that unresponsive. Anyways, to be happy we need just a couple of features, not all-in-one, especially when they announce that epmp2000 is a bit outdated - we must be happy it is not discontinued actually, like presonus did with them products..