I am a Ubiquiti shop and have gotten some ePMP 4525 SMs and should have some 4500 APs soon to test as a possible replacement for AirmaxAC. Looking at the SM I see it has two modes. One is a PtP mode which is pretty self-explanatory. The other is WLR mode.
Looking at the ePMP3000 documentation, as there is no 4500 documentation, I do not see WLR as a possible mode. Also looking at other threads it looks like TDD will be coming to the AX PtMP line later in the year.
So is WLR just standard 802.11ax or is it running a Cambium specific protocol with tweaks? What are the limitations or features of WLR driver mode.
I know Mimosa’s recently released AX equipment also does not have TDD yet and just appears to be running 802.11ax wifi mode. Is that what WLR is as well?
WLR is 802.11ax based protocol but it’s optimised to operate in outdoor scenarios on long distances with multiple subscriber modules.
WLR doesn’t support GPS sync.
TDD is coming soon. We are running an Alpha testing in a field right now.
Just like Cambium did with the AC deployment map, the first release for the Force 300’s were PTP only, followed by 3000/300 greenfield, and then followed by full Forward & Backwards compatibility.
So, from what I understand, that’s the deployment plan for 4000 series also. Cambium started PTP with the F400/F425, and now have 4500/4525 shipping for greenfield, and they are working fast & furious on TDD (in alpha testing) and then on to compatibility with Force 300.
WLR is for PMP design, and because of that they disable the eAlign on the newest FW? (5.4.2), but ePMP F425 cannot do PMP link (ive tried using WLR to do PMP link only One SM connected to the AP the other one detect the AP SSID but cannot connect to it).
F425 is not available as PMP in LinkPlanner also.
we push a single image design. Now days there is one image for all AX platform radios. In the nearest future it will be the same image for AX and AC platforms.
Also it is CI/CD so we are constantly changing the FW.
You can see some artifacts in GUI that are not related to particular SKU because of that. Some of them are not removed yet, some of them makes no sense to touch at all.
The current status is that all AX Force radios are limited to 1 SM in AP mode.
Wondering how many clients we can connect when using WLR mode. We are seeing very poor downlink performance with TDD (Beta quality) and want to start deploying using WLR mode then we can switch to TDD once the bugs are worked out. Don’t want to overload the AP so need to get an idea how many CPEs should work well before quality degrades.
We will be offering 400 mbps packages using 160Mhz channel. (Yes, in our area there are multiple slots for 160 Mhz!)
We’ve completely switched from WLR over to TDD mode, as WLR really doesn’t scale well and doesn’t support GPS sync. Right now we have 20 SM’s on our highest density 4600 AP and 40 on our 4500 AP. We’re selling up to 200mbps plans on 4600, and 50mbps plans on 4500. As the ePMP dev’s optimize TDD and add in features like beamforming and MU-MIMO, we expect we can scale up to 400-500mbps on 4600 and 100-200mbps on 4500. Right now I think there are some performance issues with 160MHz channel width on e4k 6GHz that needs to be worked out. I’d say 80MHz right now is the sweet spot for 6GHz and 40MHz is the good for 5GHz.
My advice it to temper your expectations and proceed with caution. Until Cambium optimizes 160MHz channel width and TDD mode further it’s going to be difficult to provide 400mbps to more then a handful of clients.
What kind of distance are we getting? Is 5km a reasonable expectation? Is the lower EIRP before AFC connects causing anyone issues to get long connections?
Pretty much all of our F4625’s are 5km or less due to the lower EIRP. Before the AFC was available, we had very strict distance and signal criteria for installation, so when we converted over to the AFC, we lost only 1 SM… but it was because the AFC nerfed their TX power down to something like 2 or 3dBm. The larger the channel width, the lower the PSD and the higher likelihood of the AP or SM’s having their TX power nerfed by the AFC. While we have plenty of spots where it says the AP has access to 160MHz, we’re running into issues where certain SM’s TX power are being greatly reduced and causing poor performance, so in most cases, we’ve reverted back to 80MHz.
In doing testing here in the shop, we’re seeing much slower download speeds with TDD mode vs. WLR mode. For example, in TDD mode with a 20 Mhz bandwidth, I can only get around 60 Mbps to 70 Mbps download. If I switch to WLR mode, I get up around 130 Mbps download. It doesn’t look like the TDD mode is working very well.
I my test link that is from the roof of our office to the water tower where the AP is located (around 800ft) I get well above that and near to the values the internal link test gives.
I get around 185 on a DL only TCP test and 180/45 on a bidirectional TCP test. This is a 20mhz channel in TDD 75/25 split.
It only has on SM connected as it is a test so I cannot comment on further distance links or how it scales with more SMs.
We’re probably going to be doing the same thing - start out with WLR mode and then switch to TDD mode later.
Now, one thing that I did wonder about. TDD mode is a TDMA mode (Time Division Multiple Access), so timing is very critical of the data between the AP and the CPE. Where we’re testing it in the office/shop, there is likely going to be a lot of reflections (multipath) that will not exist with the AP and CPE outdoors. Maybe that multipath is messing up the timing of the signals enough to cause the poor performance. Just an idea. Could it be?
as of today what would you recommend in SM count to not exceed? I have a few micro pops I would like to deploy 6ghz in, each site is 30-35 max potential SM clients, would like to offer 200-300mbps to them. Thank you!
