We started our network with 5.2 and 5.7 AP’s and SM’s and BH’s. Ever since 900 was released 90% of the growth in our network has been on the 900Mhz. So we have basically not bought any new 5.2 or 5.7 equipment in 2 years.
Last month when I received my first batch of P10 900 SM’s, they had 8.x on it and Motorola told me that I could/should NOT roll it back to 7.3.6 and that these required Hardware Scheduling, so I had to upgrade my AP to 8.x to be able to use the new SM’s. I was forced to take our 900 segment from 7.3.6 to 8.x, and I have had nothing but problems ever since!
Is what Moto told me true in terms of not wanting to roll back a P10 radio to 7.3.6?
This issue is being brought up because we are about to light up a new neighborhood, and we are wanting to do it with 5.2 or 5.7 since we have some old (Non Advantage) AP’s sitting around. My question is are the new 5.2 and 5.7 radios requiring 8.x and Hardware Scheduling? Which would mean we could not use these old AP’s?
I am also curious about our existing 5.2 segment? If I were to add a new customer, are we going to get new SM’s that will require 8.x?
Moto always seems to push to upgrade to latest software and I am never sure if they are just pushing the company line there or if there are technical reasons for it.
If you are using 5.7 then you should find for atleast a P9 SM since it can use Soft Sched.
If your company is sourcing for Slightly Used P9, you can contact me.
The Canopy upgrade path was laid out in 2005. The path was that Software Scheduling would be obsoleted on 2007. P8 and earlier AP’s would all need to be upgraded in order to run Hardware Scheduling as future hardware revisions would not support software scheduling.
Moto allowed for a window starting on 2005 to purchase new P9 AP’s (“Upgrade to Advantage”) that could run SW or HW scheduling. The idea was that you would buy a P9 AP, replace the P8 or earlier AP and then use the Scheduling Tool in CNUT to convert the SM’s to HW scheduling mode before switching the AP to HW scheduling.
Now it appears that the window may be closed as P10 only supports HW scheduling and only ships with 8.x. You might be able to use the tool with a P8 AP to switch the SM’s to HW Scheduling. The SM’s would be stranded until you replaced the P8AP with a P10 AP with the same color code.
In summary:
P8AP - SW only
P9AP - SW/HW, use Scheduling Tool to convert SM’s to HW Scheduling
P10AP- HW only - probably can’t use the tool to convert SM’s
If you can hold off until the first of the year I think that 8.2.2 will come out and may prove to be stable enough to actually use.
Moto, I love ya but you really screwed the pooch with forcing everyone onto a platform that was clearly not ready for prime time.
Thanks Jerry,
So if I understand you correctly, at this point I am better off buying a P10 AP, since that is the current and future platform, and any NEW SM’s I buy will be P10’s.
Then, is the issue (challenge) whether or not I could [u:3sw39lrq]automatically[/u:3sw39lrq] upgrade my SM’s to HW Scheduling. Or whether or not it is even possible to do this even manually (truck roll)?
Will my old SM’s work with a P10 AP? Or wouldn’t they have to be on 8.x as well? My understanding is that 7.3.6 is the end of the line for those SM’s. Or are you saying that supposedly they could stay on 7.3.6 and somehow be HW Scheduling enabled using CNUT?
I am a little confused…
P8 SMs will work with hardware scheduling. You will have to have P9 AP and use the CNUT ‘Configure Advantage Platform Scheduler’ tool to automaticly upgrade them. P9 - because it’s the only platform that will do both HW and SW scheduling.
The procedure for that is: Upgrade to 7.3.6 all the APs and SMs. Run the tool when all the subscribers are associated to the AP.
If you buy P10 APs you will have to visit all the sites with P8 SMs and upgrade them with the tool, one by one.
You can use the old P8 APs as SMs.
I can’t say you would be “better off” with P10 hardware. So far it seems that there are a number of issues and I can’t seem to pin down if it’s P10 hardware, 8.x software or both. Unfortunately I don’t think there is a choice at this point.
The upgrade path called for no SM’s to be left behind. Any SM can be converted to run HW Scheduling and will operate with P10AP’s. P9 SM’s have a toggle in the software to switch from SW to HW, P8 and earlier require the CNUT Scheduling Tool.
I think that P10 SM’s running 8.x software have issues with AP’s running 7.x but I can’t confirm that. I need to do some further testing, but initially we had some problems with P10 8.x SM’s connecting to our P9 7.3.9 AP’s. I don’t know if these units were bad out of the box or if there is in fact a software incompatibility.
Now that I think about it, you can absolutely automatically convert the SM’s to Hardware using CNUT even if the AP is P8. Just enter the IP address of each SM directly into CNUT, i.e:
10.0.1.2
10.0.1.3
10.0.1.4
etc
You will want to have the new P10 AP configured and ready to go so that after you convert all the child SM’s you can quickly swap the AP and get those users back online.