Best - Most reliable Firmware by AP ?

[systemscsn]

Hi,

I have about 140 AP650’s and around 12 external AP1130’s.

The AP650’s are all running 10.0.5.0 (10.0r5)  Firmware.

The AP1130’s are running 8.2.4.0 (8.2r4) firmware.

In reading and posting a bunch of things on this community forum, I have read may a post complaining about things getting worse (Macbooks losing connections, not getting IP addresses, etc.) after a certain firmware update.

So, the question is, what is the best (doesn't have to be the newest) most staple and compatible firmware that is offered, for the above models of AP’s.  Especially when you have about 3000 devices on your network (more on wifi than ethernet)?

Thanks,

J.

[systemscsn · Accepted solution]

Thanks for sharing that document, ill certainly read it.  But, after THREE months, looks (i don't want to jinx it) like we found the culprit…. our router.  that bloody thing.  it was damaged, but not enough to fail, just to intermittently time out, as well as kill any kind of network performance, and then when people showed up, it would do the same thing.  Really odd!  

dont you just hate it when a piece of equipment doesnt die, it just lingers, looks like its fine, but in reality its flaky!?  Even its tech-all logs didnt show any issue with the router!  I wish they would design these things, so they “know” what normal is, and if its not normal, send out an alert, so you could at least eliminate it from troubleshooting!  this has been going on for three months.   We have swapped about a dozen GBIC’s as it looked like that was an issue, and coincidently, the network was good for the rest of that day (going back to crap the next day).  Just lots of coincidental things happening while troubleshooting.  Plus we had added about 95 of those terrible FB Portal+ devices to our network, and had to bring them into our troubleshooting processes!

Thanks again for that document, ill be sure to check it out.  Plus, next year we may be moving to a bit of a newer firmware.

J.

[daniel1]

Your network issue sounds bad, but nothing we have experienced.

https://docs.aerohive.com/330000/docs/help/english/ng/Content/learning-whats-new.htm

Check out the release notes since your current 10.0r5, maybe you find something fixed.

[systemscsn]

Thanks Daniel, I appreciate your reply.  We may have a wider network issue going on, but it does not help having buggy firmware on your AP’s (we have around 158 in total).  I wonder if our configuration is the same to yours, hence our issues (almost like an internal DOS, very intermittent and random - making it a **** to track down the cause).  We have ours in the cloud BTW.

Good idea about that roll out, although we have (counting students, faculty, staff and visitors) around 1200 people, and some have three devices.  Of course, not all are on wifi, but still, its a lot.  For instance, according to our firewall, we can keep 17,500 connections.

thanks,

J.

[daniel1]

Absolutely not, even the latest firmware for AP650 is buggy as hell and I’m waiting for upcoming 10.0r10.

But we had to move away from 10.0r5, since it has a blocker bug with our configuration.

Current latest versions are 10.0r8 for On Premise (which is we are on) and 10.0r9b for Cloud, in your case I would do a two step rollout with a small testing area first to check if issues got fixed or new ones arising, which block a further rollout.