Compatiblity for CB3 cpe and StarOs V3 AP

[skyclimber]

I everybody,

I have 30 clients using Seano NL3054 CB3 deluxe bridge. My AP is StarOs v2 on WRAP + Atheros SR2 400mW.
What is the compatbility with the new StarOs v3 on WAR ? Will i have to switch all my client to atheros based cpe?

Thanks,

Louis

[lonnie]

You will be fine if they work with Atheros now.

[Skaught]

We actually ended up talking the atheros cards out of all our APs and running v2/prisim in the AP to get our TRanzeo CPE200 and CB3 CPEs to work with star-os.

CB3/2611 and TR-CPE200 are the exact same radio.

[tony]

There was a post in the forums stating that V3 works quite well with CB3 clients. I'll try to track it down.

[lonnie]

Tony, they can use the Search function too. You have more important things than being a research assistant for these guys.

There was a post in the forums stating that V3 works quite well with CB3 clients. I'll try to track it down.

[David L. Vrablic]

We actually ended up talking the atheros cards out of all our APs and running v2/prisim in the AP to get our TRanzeo CPE200 and CB3 CPEs to work with star-os.

CB3/2611 and TR-CPE200 are the exact same radio.

Did you ever try using the 2.11.0 -4759 FW and set the preamble function to short/long in the script ?

I found that after I followed Lonnies instructions the association problems went away.
This especially effected those that were useing WEP.

Just wondering. Looking for confirmation cases

[David L. Vrablic]

Or the case of the missing assocciation.
I am sorry for that mixed up reply Skaught.
skyclimer was asking about any possible problems moving into the V3 world with what he has online.
Tony said everything should be fine and backward compatable.
Lonnie scolded Tony ! and I got all messed up.
See what happens when you become valuable Tony ? ;-)
I see you had the same problem that I had getting CM9 to work with existing units.
I to had to swap back to prism on those sites to get back to where I was.
Using EOL radios is not where I want to be either.
That is what started my journey to find the real problem.
I loaded up a test setup right here at the ofc. (No 65 miles away like the site)
After I changed to the newest 2.11 V2 Fw things started working like they should.
Then I started throwing everything I could find at the test station.
My try for the day was a CB3 2611BB# PLUS (F200)
It had 1.8.0 Bridge FW
WLAN Pri 1.1.0
Sec 1.4.9
I plugged it in and did not see any stations displayed on the site survey at all.
I forced the test ESSID Nothing , No association, Nothing not even the linksys units that are all around me.

I went up on a SANO site that said this UG FW is good if you are over version 1.7
So I downloaded and did the DO.BAT.

I now have a cute little gray brick that I cannot get into with the default PW.
I am beginning to see that a bunch of you guys that are having problems with CB3 gear and STAR-OS "Might just be HAVING problems with CB3 gear in general."

After I get a little sleep I will see what some SANO cards do in my laptop.
This will break down the problem in half. If the cards work then we better take another look at the bridge...YUCHHH!
My main interest is in the radio association only but I will see what I can find for those that can't afford a fork lift upgrade of their system to use V2 ATHEROS.
To be continued. ZZzzzzzzzzz.

[Ick]

I loaded up a test setup right here at the ofc.

David:

We did the same thing, everything we threw at the Atheros worked great in the office. Never had and association problem in any form. We took the WRAP board from the office, replaced the WRAP in service using a Prisim card, and never got any Prisim clients to associate. Put original WRAP in, everything started working again.

I still need to respond to another post of yours in another thread.

[lonnie]

I am betting this is a distance setting issue.
David:

We did the same thing, everything we threw at the Atheros worked great in the office. Never had and association problem in any form. We took the WRAP board from the office, replaced the WRAP in service using a Prisim card, and never got any Prisim clients to associate. Put original WRAP in, everything started working again.

I still need to respond to another post of yours in another thread.

[Ick]

I am betting this is a distance setting issue.

Lonnie,

I am willing to put a pretested WRAP board into production, have you logon to this live AP and play with various setting to see if you can make this work.

[ninedd]

FWIW, we have a WRAP 2.10.0 (4639) Access Point with a Prism 2511 Card that has 25 clients on it. CPE Equipment includes WRAP's (also 2.10.0) CPE-200 (Prism) CPE-80 (?) CPQ (Atheros) CPE-90 (Atheros) and even an old SmartBridge and one WET-11 from a weak/expiramental moment a couple years ago, all with no association or transfer problems.

We also have a WRAP 2.10.0 (4639) Access Point with an Atheros card (AR5213) that has 31 clients on it, which includes WRAP's, CPE-200, CPQ, CPE-80, CPE-90 (Atheros?) and even and one ancient TR-2000 on it, again with no association or transfer problems.

All of our AP's are running 2.10.0, so we've never upgraded to the 2.11betas, and never set any preamble setting of any kind, but I just thought I'd report my results, which are every CPE seems to work fine with 2.10.0 with default preamble.

[ninedd]

I should have added, we also have a WRAP 2.10.0 Hotspot that has had as high as 52 clients on it. The Hotspot is not really active yet, since we have no idea how to get it to bill customers for their use! Also, I don't really know what kinds of cards people have, but at least 52 users with all sorts of various consumer grade chipset's have had no assocition issues.

[David L. Vrablic]

FWIW, we have a WRAP 2.10.0 (4639) Access Point with a Prism 2511 Card that has 25 clients on it. CPE Equipment includes WRAP's (also 2.10.0) CPE-200 (Prism) CPE-80 (?) CPQ (Atheros) CPE-90 (Atheros) and even an old SmartBridge and one WET-11 from a weak/expiramental moment a couple years ago, all with no association or transfer problems.

Thank you so much for the great data and feedback,
The Prism card doesn't count in this case.
We know they work but there is not going to be any further suport for this card and it is going EOL.
They are higher powered than the CM-9.
We are looking for a replacement that will work with the legacy products.
A little side note: The latest Prism 2.5's have some differences from the origionals that we all used sucuessfully.
Prism's don't have many features as the CM-9's:
A/G and turbo mode with enhanced modes.
ACK settings (Prism starts dropping out between 6 and 12 miles)
My beloved site survey tool. (Saves truck rolls)
Also power control.

We also have a WRAP 2.10.0 (4639) Access Point with an Atheros card (AR5213) that has 31 clients on it, which includes WRAP's, CPE-200, CPQ, CPE-80, CPE-90 (Atheros?) and even and one ancient TR-2000 on it, again with no association or transfer problems.

Now this is is what we need to hear.
Would you be willing to do a screen snap of that Atheros sector associations and let us see what the sig and noise levels are ?
If you could give us an idea of the miliage for each one we would have comething to go on here.
Now if we can find someone with a Atheros sector and a bunch of CB3's, WET-11's Smart Bridges, Tranzeo CPE's (anything Prism, Intel, Realtek)
Then we could see what is going on here.

All of our AP's are running 2.10.0, so we've never upgraded to the 2.11betas, and never set any preamble setting of any kind, but I just thought I'd report my results, which are every CPE seems to work fine with 2.10.0 with default preamble.

I switched to the betas with the mandatory preamble settings when I found groups of 4 "Notice of soft miss no beacon" and then a reassociation in my sectors sys log.
These units had no settings for ACK and just would not stay associated and were dropping packets like a mad man.
They are all pulled from the system and on the shelf.
I do a lot of Hot Spots with customer owned gear so this was a real problem. That is why I started the quest for a solution.