Alvarion Ltd. BreezeCOM and Floware unite
21a HaBarzel St. Tel Aviv, 69710 Israel Main Line / Fax: 972 3 645 6262 / 6222 www.alvarion.com
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BreezeACCESS
Software Version 4.3
Release Note
Official
July 2003, Revision 2.0
Alvarion Ltd. BreezeCOM and Floware unite
21a HaBarzel St. Tel Aviv, 69710 Israel Main Line / Fax: 972 3 645 6262 / 6222 www.alvarion.com
Page 2 of 5
Introduction
BreezeACCESS software version 4.3 is officially released.
BreezeACCESS software version 4.3 provides enhancements to the existing product line, including:
• Enhanced AU alarms mechanism
• MAC address Deny list
• Per trap control
• Ethernet and Voice ports Enable/Disable
• Roaming SNAP support for SU-M
• AU Out of Synchronization Alarm Trap
• H.323 Overlap Sending Dialing Mode
• New Counter: Total Transmitted Unicast Frames
• A “Support All” authentication mode for improved control and rejection of “non-legitimate” SUs.
• Symmetrical rate control per SU
• Improved mechanism for synchronization of daisy-chained GPS modules
• Release of new hardware (announced separately):
o BreezeACCESS V – a new radio head at frequencies of 5150 - 5350MHz
o AU-2.4 HP with improved ACR
• Bug Fixes
Software version 4.3 supports the following products:
• BreezeACCESS II – All currently released product variants.
• BreezeACCESS XL – All product variants.
o Band 3.5a, 3.5a1, 3.5b, 3.5e
o SU-R, Band 3.5ab
o Band 3.8
o Band 2.6b
o Band 3.3a
o Band 3.6b
• BreezeACCESS MMDS – All currently released product variants.
• BreezeACCESS V
• AlvariBASE AU
• GU-A-BS (GPS synchronizer unit)
New Software Features
Software version 4.3 incorporates new features and improvements:
• Enhanced AU alarms mechanism
In order to detect AU HW failures, which result in performance degradation of wireless links or denial of
service the AU will periodically analyze its counters and will search for various indicators that can
indicate a problem. The indicators are:
o Number of successfully transmitted unicast packets.
o Number of retransmissions.
o Number of drops.
o Rx, Tx power degradation
o Number of successfully received packets. (CRC OK)
o Number of packets received with CRC error.
o Number of duplicated received packets.
o Number of associated SUs
Upon threshold crossing and analysis of the indicators, an SNMP Trap notification is sent by the
device to the trap destination IP address which is defined in the AU.
The feature is relevant to AU-IF architecture only. See limitations.
Alvarion Ltd. BreezeCOM and Floware unite
21a HaBarzel St. Tel Aviv, 69710 Israel Main Line / Fax: 972 3 645 6262 / 6222 www.alvarion.com
Page 3 of 5
• Per trap filtering
This feature provides the ability to determine which alarms notifications are sent to the NMS of the
Wireless Access network. By doing so, the service provider is able to determine which traps are sent
and thus better manage the alarms that are being handled by the NMS system and the network
administrators. The operator is able to enable or disable the sending of each individual trap by the
BreezeACCESS Access Units and Subscriber Units.
• Ethernet and Voice ports Enable/Disable - enable operators to block the Ethernet port and/or the Voice
port of the BreezeACCESS Subscriber Unit in order to avoid unauthorized use of either or both of these
ports:
• The Subscriber Unit provides the ability to enable or disable the reception and
transmission of all traffic through the Ethernet port, except for management traffic
addressed for the SU or originated from it, which will continue to be received and
transmitted.
• The Subscriber Unit provides the ability to enable or disable all the telephony
functioning of the unit. When disabled, no dialing tone can be heard and no telephone
connection can be established.
• MAC address Deny list
The MAC address Deny list enables the operator to block a specific SU from getting service from the
system. SU that its MAC address appears in the Deny list in the AU will not get service from the AU.
• Roaming snap support
Upon roaming to another AU, the SU sends a SNAP packet to the wireless in order to update the
network about the new location of its clients. This feature is relevant for the SU-M.
• A Support All authentication mode
When configuring existing networks to use “Shared Key”, it is needed that the AU will support both SUs
with “Open system” and SUs with “Shared Key”, including SUs with no or wrong WEP Keys, until all SUs
are configured to “Shared Key” mode with the proper key. Therefore, a new option, named “Support All”,
was added in the AU to enable connectivity of SUs with both algorithms regardless of their configured
WEP Keys.
• Symmetrical rate control per SU
Asymmetrical rate enables the AU to transmit traffic to SU in a higher rate than the maximum transmit
rate that is set in the SU. However, in links that the operator identifies that there is no use to enable the
asymmetrical rate support it is possible to force the AU to transmit to specific SUs in the maximum rate
that is set for the uplink transmission in the SU. This option is set in the SU only.
• AU “Out of synchronization” trap
When AUs in a shelf are synchronized from an external source, upon loss of synchronization signals, the
AUs will start using their internal clock and an “Out of synchronization on” trap will be sent. When the
synchronization signals resume, the AUs will start u sing them again and an “Out of synchronization off”
trap will be sent.
• Overlap sending
When this option is enabled, digits are transferred once they are dialed with no need to push the #
button at the end of the dialed number. Applicable to SU with voice port only.
• Total Transmitted Unicast Frames Counter
Displays the number of unicast frames successfully transmitted to the wireless media, excluding
retransmissions. This count is useful for calculating the rates of retransmissions or dropped frame, since
only unicast frames are retransmitted if not acknowledged.
Alvarion Ltd. BreezeCOM and Floware unite
21a HaBarzel St. Tel Aviv, 69710 Israel Main Line / Fax: 972 3 645 6262 / 6222 www.alvarion.com
Page 4 of 5
New Hardware support
• Support of BreezeACCESS V at the 5.2 GHz band
The new radio head supports frequencies of 5150 - 5350 MHz, TDD
• Power output of 26 dBm
• 2 MHz channel spacing
• Flexible hopping
• The same features of the BreezeACCESS V at the 5.7 GHz band
• New AU-2.4 units with better ACR - provides a better performance in co -located AUs due to a better
ACR mechanism. Applicable for High Power units only. New units will have different P/Ns that will be
distributed separately.
Default Value Changes
• The Radius shared secret parameter length was extended to 20 bytes (previous size: 16bytes)
• The range of Number of Hopping Frequencies in GU was changed to 2-151.
• The watchdog that resets the AU after a detection of “Too many beacon lost” was increased to 60
seconds.
Fixed Bugs
• Version 4.3 fixes the bug of daisy-chaining GPS cards to one antenna. In case the GPS antenna fails,
the master GU-BS card provides clock signals to all other GU-BS cards. A recovery mode, in which the
master GU-BS card tries to detect if a signal from the antenna is restored, is defined through the monitor
as automatically or manually. It is now possible to chain 2 or more GPS cards without using an external
antenna (please refer to Known limitation section).
• The search process of a MAC address in the MACAD database was changed to avoid the situation in
which AU couldn’t find the MAC address although it was in the MACAD database.
• The CIR/MIR algorithm was fixed in order to avoid a decrease in the Subscriber Unit throughput after a
long period of proper operation. The decrease was a result of an improper behavior of two counters in
the algorithm.
Known limitations
• In networks with large number of frequencies, if passive scanning is used with Best AU and/or Preferred
AU enabled, it may happen that the SU will receive only few AUs or will not receive the preferred AU. It
is recommended to increase the number of Maximum scanning attempts in order to increase the
chances of the SU to receive more AUs.
• When upgrading units to version 4.3.28, the Noise Floor parameter value returns to default value.
• AU alarms feature remains active after switching off the power to the outdoor unit.
• Tx power degradation indication as part of the AU Alarm algorithm is applicable only if SUs are with
version 4.3 as well.
• In networks where VLAN is configured in conjunction with broadcast filtering, AU alarms mechanism can
operate only if both AU and SUs operate with version 4.3.
• AU wireless Quality TRAP is triggered by 'Bad Fragments Received' and not by Retransmissions as
appears in the MMI.
• AU that is configured to operate with both “Shared Key” and “Open System” algorithms and is
downgraded to a lower version will operate with “Open System” algorithm and all SUs that are
configured to operate with “Shared Key” algorithm will lose synchronization.
Alvarion Ltd. BreezeCOM and Floware unite
21a HaBarzel St. Tel Aviv, 69710 Israel Main Line / Fax: 972 3 645 6262 / 6222 www.alvarion.com
Page 5 of 5
• AU that is configured to operate with both “Shared Key” and “Open System”
algorithms will also accept a wrong WEP key of SU in Shared Key mode. In
this case the AU does not send a reject message to the SU.
• When daisy-chaining GPS cards, the GPS card in slave mode will not switch automatically to master
mode in case of a failure/switching off of the master GPS card.
• When working with management Vlan ID, the AU alarms will analyze data only from SU with the same
management Vlan ID.
Previous limitations
• In case VLAN forwarding is used, it is needed to enter the VLAN management ID to the forwarding list of
the AU before the upgrade. Otherwise, it will be impossible to manage the SUs until configured.
• In case SU voice unit was upgraded from version prior to 3.0 and now is upgraded to version 4.3, the
G.729 Frames per packet value needs to be manually configured to “6”. Failing to do so may cause
decreased performance in ACSE mode.
•
Downgrade from 4.3 to version 3.x (except of special version 3.052.3) will have the following restrictions:
If VLAN ID - Management (or VLAN ID Voice & Management) is equal to 65535, after the downgrade it
will be automatically reverted to value of "1" and Management capabilities to the unit might be lost.
• Using version 4.3 MIB file, ring frequency should be set to the frequency value (17, 20, 25, 50) and not
to the menu index.
• GU-BS parameters return to default setting in case of software version downgrade.
• Voice configured with G.723 codec + VAD on + Fast start mode cannot operate with Cisco gateway, as
this feature is not supported by the gateway.
• The ACSE protocol does not support the use of VAD.
• When the CIR/MIR algorithm is used, it effects the prioritization of packets more than other priority
mechanisms such as ToS and/or VLAN priority.
• Uplink rate for AlvariBASE is practically limited to 2 Mbps.
• The configuration of frequency parameters using 1.75MHz channel spacing can only be done using
the flexible hopping mechanism (fixed sub-bands selection cannot be used).
• Fatal error messages are not displayed on the monitor through Telnet but only sent to the event
log.
• In cases where "DHCP only" is defined the SU doesn’t send the correct IP address to the gatekeeper.
Compatibility and Interoperability
Version 4.3 is compatible with all BreezeACCESS II, XL, V and MMDS hardware platforms.
When ACSE mode is disabled, the version is compatible with all previous BreezeACCESS software
versions, allowing interoperability between Access Units and Subscriber Units with mixed software
versions.
• When using the ACSE, this software is compatible with version 4.0 only. However, units in ACSE mode
enabled are not interoperable with units that do not operate in ACSE mode.
• When using the enhanced flexible mechanism, it is not interoperable with other flexible hopping
mechanism. Therefore, all units should use the same hopping mechanism.
• The current implementation of Flexible Hopping is not compatible with Fixed Sub Bands mechanism or
Site Proprietary mechanism. All units should be configured to the same hopping mechanism.
Monitor Changes
• The monitor has been adopted to support the new features detailed above.
• Software version 4.3 is indicated on the main menu.
Alvarion Ltd. BreezeCOM and Floware unite
21a HaBarzel St. Tel Aviv, 69710 Israel Main Line / Fax: 972 3 645 6262 / 6222 www.alvarion.com
Page 6 of 5
Documentation update
• Manuals were updated to reflect the new features.
Upgrading Notes
It is possible to upgrade all BreezeACCESS units, running software version 2.x or higher, to version 4.3.
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