I have a RB5009 acting as a CAPsMAN with the wireless drivers. My main APs are cAPs. Is there likely to be much improvement/benefit by switching to wifi-qcom?
Complicated by the fact I also have a CRS109 and HAP ac lite which I’d have to stick with wireless with and (as I understand it) run a 2nd CAPsMAN on the RB5009 - so don’t really want to reconfig the whole network if there’s not likely to be much performance improvement.
Performance-wise there will be an improvement.
But it comes at a potential cost and/or pitfalls you need to be aware of ...
I suppose most of your current APs (except for the two mentioned) are ARM-AC devices which usually means they will only have 16Mb storage.
Those wifi-qcom-ac drivers consume a lot of that precious space ... so don't expect to use those APs for anything else then pure AP, maybe some bridging, when going that road.
A couple of versions ago size of that package was reduced quite a bit but with recent versions it goes up again. Also base package tends to go up and down a bit in size. The point I want to get to: there might come a version in future where it will not be possible anymore to load that driver on ARM-AC devices having 16Mb. Just saying.
It is generally advised when going this road, to netinstall those devices to the required version so you are sure no space is left which might be reserved and not released by ROS during various version upgrades. Netinstall is the only known way to clear house.
When you see unexpected reboots coming with indications of Out Of Memory conditions, it might be needed to repeat that netinstall for such a device.
Other then that, I have some arm-ac devices running wifi-qcom-ac since it first came out and they still run perfectly. Only as AP but it works.
Other point, when you currently use VLAN in your setup, it's done quite a bit differently when wifi-qcom-ac drivers come into the mix (but it's explained clear enough in Help pages what needs to be done).
So ...
performance wise you will see the improvement. Really.
Just be aware of the consequences.
Running both capsman versions on RB5009 (wifi and wireless) is no issue (you only need to add wireless package since as of 7.12 basic hooks are present in base ROS package for wifi) but be aware there will be no seamless roaming between "old" and "new" caps radios. However that's not different from what you have now.
Future wise you will be ready to add AX device into your network later on which will then work nicely together with wifi-qcom-ac devices under wifi-capsman.
Update the APs.
If your cAPs are the ARM-AC models, the move to wifi-qcom does give you better performance and stability, but the storage constraints are real. If everything fits and you’re fine running them as pure APs, the upgrade is worth it; otherwise the mixed CAPsMAN setup might not justify the effort.
Just to be sure: wifi-qcom is AX, wifi-qcom-ac is ARM ac.
Thank you for the replies. Much appreciated!