I currently have a setup at one of my towers with 60 PPPoE wireless users on one radio. Also, I am very aware that I need to sectorize this tower because of the amount of users. I have that project planned in the future; but I am considering upgrading it to 3.3. It is a Routerboard 532a. I’ve read a few things about some wireless performance improvement. Can anyone confirm this? I’ve also read of some PPPoE problems. Just trying to find out about any experiences.
We had GREAT success with this upgrade. We are always leary to upgrade more populated sectors that may be located in hard to get areas, but everything went great. Wireless performance improves noticably. Ping times DROPPED. We upgraded two RB 230, 5 532A and 4 RB333 and not one devasting problem. However, I should note that on two of the sectors we had to reconfigure the bridges. These were all on 2.9.50 before., although there are only minor differences between .45 and .50
My recommendation would be: take note of the number of registered clients, and note a few signal strengths and CCQs. Upgrade to 3.3, check logs, check interfaces. Open new terminal and perform a sys rout upg, then run a sys check-disk, reboot, then count registered clients. We actually counted two more clients (problem connections) after the upgrade!
Hopefully all will go as well for you as it did for us.
BTW, we think it is GREAT that we can now add columns such as client CCQ and last IP on the wireless registration list. Well done MT crew! Makes it much easier to locate troubled clients.
Just on my p2p 900MHz bridge, going from 2.9.46 through the RC’s to 3.3, RC10 or 11 showed the best wireless performance for me, better ccq, less retransmits. It is possible that my run in RC10 or 11 was just during a period of less noise, but there was a difference immediately after the upgrade. Still better than I had with 2.9.x.
Thanks guys for the input. I think I’ll upgrade my 532A tonight.