Jupiter99 asked:
>What are some real world examples of it's use?
>I've heard of older UBNT CPE's being used but why?
Hi Jupiter
The short answer to your question is that Ubiquiti M series of AirMax products had significant ongoing problems with performance. In most cases, it really couldn't scale past about 15-20 clients per AP, it didn't have GPS Sync, didn't have frequency reuse, and generally speaking - it didn't really have any ''airtime fairness'', so having low signal clients could ruin performance for everyone else on the sector. In short - it's ''scheduler'' just didn't hold up under heavy use. There was years and years of people asking UBNT to solve this issue, and UBNT seemed to just kick the problem down the road.
Along came ePMP into the same segment, and it DID have GPS Sync, it did have 'Airtime Fairness', it did have frequency reuse, it did have a scheduler which could handle 30 - 40 - 50 clients under the same situation where UBNT was falling apart at 15-20... and it did deliver predicable latency.
We UBNT users went back to UBNT and asked / begged / pleaded for a similar solution, but were told there was no way to accomplish it on existing UBNT hardware, that we'd all have to 'forklift' the AP and all CPE's to the new generation, which may have still been years down the road. Forklift upgrades are daunting!
Meanwhile, for the UBNT users who coveted ePMP... how do you upgrade to ePMP, with all our UBNT stuff in the field? Again - daunting...
SO - along comes ELEVATE firmware from Cambium. We were able to add an ePMP AP, and then simply install Elevate firmware on the existing UBNT installation - and immediately reap the benefits of GPS Sync, Frequency Reuse, Air Fairness, and an efficient scheduler. Basically - for us - in round about terms, we immediately doubled our throughput, doubled our sector client capacity, started finally having dependable latency, and we also halved our spectrum usage in the process. Cambium was able to deliver what UBNT said was impossible - and (with the exception of having to buy an ePMP GPS AP of course) they were able to do it on the existing UBNT hardware (which UBNT said was impossible to accomplish).
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