Firmware 8.1.0 RC 2

We’re happy to announce that the Firmware 8.1.0 RC 2 is now available.

Supported models:
X Series, Balance, MAX, UBR, SpeedFusion Engine, FusionHub, Surf SOHO

Download Release Notes

Download the Firmware

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FYI, I did a text-based diff on the RC1 and RC2 release note PDF files, and found the following two changes:

22851
[Cellular]​ Fixed an issue of cellular connection unable to connect after cellular reset
Balance:​ 30 LTE/Pro
MAX:​ BR1/2, HD2/4, Transit UBR:​ UBR LTE
MediaFast:​ HD2/HD4
X Series​: EPX, SDX, MBX, 310X, 20X

23085
[SNMP]​ Fixed an issue of SNMP may cause Event Log stop working
All Models

Sure wish you would enable the NTP server functionality using the GPS clock on the MAX BR1 Mk2

Hello Peplink Team,
We have been unable to get a clients Pepwave MAX Transit Duo to update its Cellular Firmware Modules from Chipset FW 02.24.05.06 to Chipset FW 02.30.03.00.

The site has only the two Cellular connections (no other options). We have been working through the new versions of 8.1.0 at the site in an attempt to improve the reliability of the network for the customer as they have been regularly losing their network & internet and had stability issues.

Attached is a screenshot of the support page with the Cellular Firmware module shown.

We note that a previously reported issue has also not been fixed where if you select to only update one of the cellular chipsets in a multicellular system, the update process takes all cellular chipsets offline during the process.

We have added additional details into support ticket #20070310.
Happy to Help,
Marcus :slight_smile:

Hello Peplink Team,
Another bug to report.
The cellular modem option of “Failback to Preferred SIM when” “Non-preferred SIM is connected for” is not working with the custom values entered.


In this example you can see it is set for 55 Minutes yet according to the data captured within InControl2 it is attempting to switch SIMs every 10 minutes


Device is a Pepwave MAX Transit Duo LTEA (different unit from the previous post above).
Happy to Help,
Marcus :slight_smile:

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@mldowling, the new handling method on cellular module firmware upgrade is targeted to be available on firmware 8.1.1.

Noted, we are following up on the support ticket #20070310.

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One thing we notice is that on Status → Client List the Network Name and Signal columns appear not to be populated. The following example is from a B210.

. (The 210 is controlling two APs.)

Incidentally – thanks for adding the “Ban Client” option. Nice! :+1:

I’ve been running 8.1.0 build 4928 for 26 hours and counting. I would normally have a number of disconnect/reconnect messages in my event log over that period of time on 8.0.2 build 1480.

As of this moment, I have two System: Time synchronization messages. I’m watching the log closely, but this build seems to be very stable.

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Hello Peplink Engineering Team,
We would like to report a bug with the GPS logging within the new firmware.
We were testing on Friday with a BR1 and PDX, we saw inconsistencies and when service was lost, the GPS locations during that time were not passed back to InControl2

From Pepwave MAX BR1 LTE

From Pepwave PDX

The PDX having some location errors would be understandable as it was sitting inside the cabin of the vehicle.
The BR1 though has a roof mount antenna and normally works very well.

We have captured diagnostic files and the GPX records out of the two units and can upload these into a ticket for Peplink support if requested.
Happy to Help,
Marcus :slight_smile:

We are testing RC2 on a MAX Transit Duo (Cat-12) with an AP One AC Mini connected to host our local LAN. We use MacOS and Safari to interact with the control panels.

Overall 8.1 has a lot to like - here are the most significant issues and negatives we have run across…

SpeedFusion Status Display - The new SpeedFusion status display is essentially unusable on laptop-sized screens, and the way the graph display slides left/right in response to scrolling up/down is frustratingly non-intuitive. The information available on the new display is a major improvement, but overall it is in practice a big step down from the old graphs. Having an option to still view the old style would be great.

SpeedFusion Cloud > Link Wi-Fi to Cloud — The AP created by this does not seem to propagate to attached access points, which means that this feature does not work at all if the internal AP is disabled.

Dynamic Weighted Bonding - This sounds like a very interesting feature to explore. Is there any information available about the Dynamic Weighted Bonding algorithm? I was not able to change the Traffic Distribution model for PepVPN to our existing SpeedFusion servers (why not?), but was able to try enabling this for Speedfusion Cloud.

WiFi-as-WAN Use Leads to Router Lockup - The entire router eventually locks up and crashes when using WiFi-as-WAN for an upstream connection. This happened to us in 8.0 too, and made the option unreliable to use or recommend. When we experience the lockup the Wi-Fi network remains up, but you can not ping the router or reach the control panel. The only way to recover is to power-cycle. Afterwards, there is nothing left in the logs indicating a problem. We had 4 lockups yesterday after installing 8.1 - once I disabled WiFi-as-WAN connections the lockups seem to have ceased.

Bonding / Streaming Issues - There still does not seem to be an easy way to route streaming traffic automatically outside of the bonded connection. In particular - Netflix and Hulu will not work over SpeedFusion, and it is a support nightmare to explain to people that they need to switch to a different SSID or reconfigure the router to disable SpeedFusion to stream. This has been a long-standing problem - I was hoping 8.1 and/or SpeedFusion Cloud would have improved things.

Cheers,

  • Chris

Chris,
Regarding the WiFi-as-WAN issue, I’m guessing you’re running WPA2/PSK correct? I am also seeing this problem on 8.0.2. I’m testing it right now on 8.1.0 and while I’m still seeing the problem, it appears to be at a much lesser occurrance. However, I’m NOT seeing it when running OPEN (unencrypted). I’m till testing to see if this is where the fault lies.

Not an acceptable answer I know, but might be a datapoint to solving this problem.

@Rick-DC

Suppose you should see this info :
image

May i know the firmware version running for the APs ?
Would you please open a ticket for us to check further ?

@mldowling

For the GPS issue, please open a support ticket for support team to check. Please provide the time-stamp where you see the lost and support team need to compare the GPS missing info whether is related to lost of GPS signal.

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Thank you for the feedback, Engineering team will review this and consider the possible improvement.

You are right, as for now it’s only for the integrated AP. Definitely Engineering team will consider for the improvement.

The option is available in support.cgi page.

@Technomadia @tcpip95
Please open a sipport ticket for support team to check.

May i know the deployment detail ? Netflix and Hulu should be added as SpeedFusion Cloud Application now.

Hello @Sit,
Please see ticket #20070361
Happy to Help,
Marcus :slight_smile:

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Thank you very much

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Hi @sitloongs. Yes, that’s the screen we’d expect to see. My original report (above) was on a B210. We’ve duplicated the issue on a B305 and have entered ticket 20070361 for that device and marked it to your attention.

Your assistance is very valuable and always appreciated.

Rick

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@sitloongs I’ll open a ticket as requested.

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I found the option there - and was able to turn it on for SpeedFusion Cloud. But attempting to turn it on for our SpeedFusion Solo instances did not work.

And more importantly - I would love a description of just what this new bonding mode does. How are the dynamic weights calculated?

Ticket #20070382 has been created with this issue.

We are experimenting with SpeedFusion Cloud and SpeedFusion Solo - and have never had any luck managing streaming sites like Netflix or Hulu to bypass the bond. If there is a way to do this now, is it documented?

Thanks,
Chris