Hello,
I've got a question about a PTP650 radio I have. I was under the impression this was a fully licensed radio, however the Web Interface is giving me a conflicting/confusing information.
I've attached two images from the Installation Wizard of the radio. Can someone tell me with any level of certainty, what exactly I have, whether it be a Full License or a Trial License...?
One page says it's License Capacity is Full, but below that it lists "License Full Capability Trial Status" as Inactive, yet still shows a "Trial Period Remaining" at 60 Days...
All that is very confusing. To me, it seems as though it's indicating the Radio is fully licensed, and the Trial countdown of 60 Days is Inactive, but I don't know for sure...
Hi Niel
The PTP 650 by default does not come with full capacity key. This is seperate license key which needs to be purchased. There are other software feature such as Encryption etc which need additional license key which also need to be purchased. However, sometimes customer who try the license for some time before planning to buy them. For such cases trial version is available. Customer can access full capabilty of the radio for 60 days. After 60 days the full capacity license key is automatically disabled and can be activated only after purchase of full capacity key.
Hope this clears the confusion
Thanks
Sagar
Yes, I was already aware that the PTP650 does not come fully licensed out of the box, and that a trial is available. In that case, the radio is normally listed as "Lite" under the License Capacity, and there is an option to select Yes or No to begin the trial. As you can see from my screenshot, the license capacity is listed as Full, not Lite, and I do not have the option to begin the trial, and the Trial is listed as "Inactive".
This was the cause for my confusion. Your explaination, while helpful, did not clarify the confusion for this case and I'm still unsure the status of this particular radio.
This is a screenshot from a new-ish PTP650 that lists as Lite and has the option to begin the 60 Day Trial, as I mentioned in my above post.
So if the two images are compared, it feels like the first radio IS in-fact a fully licensed radio, but I'm not too sure.
Hello, that is a Lite capacity radio. The capabilities summary is based off of the license key entered on the field above. If you had a 'Full' capacity radio (or even a medium, if it is old enough) it would display on that screen.
Have you inputted a license key into the unit? If you were expecting a Full license key, it is possible that the license just hasn't been entered. You would do that from this page: https://support.cambiumnetworks.com/licensekeys/ptp650
Activating the trial license will just make the 'Lite' capacity 'Full' for the trial period.
Here is the difference between Lite and Full, because it is confusing:
The Lite capacity license provides a fixed percentage of the Full capacity, considering the bandwidth and modulation mode in each case. A ‘Full’ license is necessary in order to get the maximum capacity in the narrower channel. The PTP650 is about 10bits/Hz efficient. This is where the capacity comes from. So, in a 45MHz wide channel, we can do a maximum of 450Mbps; a 20MHz wide channel is 200Mbps maximum. The ‘Lite’ license allows for about 27.5% of the channel capacity to be used. So, in a 20MHz wide channel the ‘Lite’ capacity maximum is about 55Mbps. In order to get closer to 200Mbps (interference and environment dependent), the full capacity key is needed. The ‘Full’ key also unlocks the ability to do adaptive modulation, which automatically adjusts the bandwidth based on traffic direction.
Looking at our database, I see that Neil's unit 00:04:56:50:45:A5 was manufactured as a Lite capacity variant in 2014, and upgraded to Full capacity in November 2015.
In the License Key, capacity is indicated by the "T" field, with values 0 = Full and 2 = Lite. Full is the default, and we see that the "T" field is omitted in the key in the screen shot. This capability is correctly decoded in the Software License Key web page. There is no option to start the full capacity trial because that would be pointless.
Also, it should be possible to see the actual capacity variant (not the licensed capacity) on the System Status page, where it looks like this:
The other part of the screenshot provided in the OP is from the Current Installation Summary page. Here we see that the trial is not active, which is reasonable, and that all 60 days remain. Presumably the unit was upgraded from Lite to Full without first exercising the trial and using up any of the trial period. Once it was upgraded to Full, the possibility of starting the trial was removed.
Thanks for the help in clearing things up guys, and for checking the database Mark.
I've attached the screenshot from my System Status, and it does show the Link Capacity Variant as Full, so I guess I do indeed have a fully licenced radio. I appreciate the clarification very much.
