VIP 110-24 Firmware Release Notes

• VIP 2.60.02 (pdf) NEW!
• VIP 2.50.09 (pdf)
• VIP 2.28
• VIP 2.24
• VIP 2.22
• VIP 2.16
• VIP 2.15
• VIP 2.06
• VIP 2.02
• VIP 2.01
• VIP 2.00
• VIP 1.24
• VIP 1.13
• VIP 1.12
• VIP 1.10

Version 2.28

Product: VIP 110-24 - Software: VIP 02.28 - Release Date:February 10, 2003

NOTE: This release note describes all changes since version 2.16.

1. Added the option for the root to use both antennas A and B for communications with its children.  This allows the root to be deployed with two antennas covering different sectors, but still using a single radio.  Communications on the two antennas are separated in time, so there is no interference between them. To support this feature we added the “antenna” parameter to the “rf-nnp-2” command.  In order to configure a root to use the second antenna issue the command:

>rf-nnp-2 antenna=A

The transmit channel of the New Node Poll 2 (on antenna A) should also be offset from the New Node Poll 1 to insure that the intended children attach to the right antenna.  A single channel number offset is enough for this purpose.  Children that are supposed to attach to antenna A must be configured to receive on the NNP2 channel.  Children that are supposed to attach to antenna B must be configured to receive on the NNP1 channel.

2. The “show radio-node” command displayed two tables, one listing all the radios in the network and a “Direct Links” table.  For large networks this output could roll off the screen.  Now the two tables can be displayed separately as follows:

>show radio-node    displays the list of all radios in the network
>show direct-link      displays the statistics for the links with the node’s neighbors
>show    displays both tables (as before)

3. Added auditing of payload packets.  Each radio now keeps separate statistics for payload packets received from each of its neighbors.  These statistics are displayed as part of the report in the “show direct-links” and “monitor-link” commands. They show the cumulative number of packets successfully received since the radio powered up, the number of packets that were not received, and corresponding percentage.  For each link these statistics can be cleared with the following command:

>monitor-link  node  clear=1

4. Added priority queueing based on Type of Service field of IP packets.  Any IP payload packets with a Type of Service field set to a non-zero number are placed in a high priority queue.  Packets in this queue are always sent ahead of packets that have the Type of Service field set to zero. When the network is congested and the flow control mechanism limits the number of packets that each radio can offer, non-priority packets will be shed ahead of any priority packets. 

5. Added support for VLAN traffic such that the VINE may be inside the VLAN switch to switch links.  Payload traffic passes through unaltered (packets are just longer than before).  The radios need to understand VLAN only to accept management packets (Econ, SNMP and Telnet) and generate replies that are VLAN tagged with the same tag as the originator.

6. The version banner now includes the RF regime and also the “hardware type” as follows:

2411 – Original VIP in a bigger enclosure
2412 – Current VIP110-24 in a thinner enclosure.

1. If the “network ID” numbered was greater than 2^31 it would be displayed as a negative number in the “Display Configuration” output. Corrected.
2. Management traffic (ECON, SNMP, Telnet) was throttled down by flow control.  When this was very low, management sessions could easily drop off. 
3. Long packet transmission bursts on links running at 1Mbps with high packet loss could cause a radio to reboot.  This has been fixed.
4. Radio sometimes rebooted when a telnet session connected.
5. In a large network, a sudden burst of traffic could cause an error in the flow control algorithm resulting in nodes backing off and not getting the committed bandwidth.

1. If you are upgrading a VINE network from vesion 1.05 or earlier there are some compatibility issues that may prevent nodes from reattaching when a VINE includes radios with mixed versions.  For this reason we recommend to upgrade the complete network to the new version as described in section 5 of the manual.  After downloading the new software to all the radios reboot the root node first.  Any nodes that do not reattacth will timeout and reboot on their own using the new firmware.
2. When a license key is entered to change software options in the field, the radio software validates the key against the hardware code.  Software versions 2.26 and earlier do not accept the keys for radios with hardware code set to 2412 (displayed in the version banner).  If your radio hardware code is 2412 you must upgrade to version 2.27 or later for license keys to be accepted.

Known Problems Remaining

None.

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Version 2.24

Product: VIP 110-24 - Software: VIP 02.24 - Release Date:January 9, 2003

New Features

Problems Fixed

See version 2.28.

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Version 2.22

New Features

See Version 2.28

Problems Fixed

See Version 2.28

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Version 2.16

New Features

Problems Fixed

If you are currently running VIP 02.15 and are experiencing problems, we recommend not moving to VIP 02.16, but to VIP 02.24 which has better solutions to each of these issues.

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Version 2.15

New Features

1. Added "Telnet" functionality. Telnet allows running a VIP command session remotely, from any host on the network. The implementation allows for any host to login (with login name "public") or to set up a restricted list of hosts with authorized access (Manual section 7).
2. Added capability of downloading new firmware using a Telnet session (Manual section 5.4)
3. The Ethernet interface now can run at 10 Mbps full duplex and 100 Mbps half duplex (versions 2.0X and earlier only supported 10 Mbps half duplex). By default the unit auto-negotiates between 10 MBps full and half duplex (Manual section 6.4).
4. Added the capability to turn OFF all traffic on the Ethernet port. This allows a network operator to turn off and back on any subscriber, with commands over RF link. (Manual Section 6.4).

Problems Fixed

1. The New Node Poll messages transmitted by the "root" or "repeater" nodes are now at 5.5 Mbps instead of 2.0 Mbps. Transmissions at 2 Mbps could be received by leafs on channels different than the transmit channel.
2. SNMP transactions were causing a memory leak. After many transactions the VIP could run out of buffers and stop passing normal traffic, even though it would stay attached.
3. In a large VINE network, if a parent with many children is restarted, all the children will try to attach at the same time. In version 2.0x and earlier the backoff algorithm to resolve this contention could cause some nodes to backoff excessively, delaying the attachment to several minutes. The algorithm was greatly improved.
4. The timing analysis function, under certain circumstances might have shown very low (incorrect) values for the RSSI.
5. There was a slow memory leak when executing any of the following commands:

>time-analysis

>spectrum-analysis

>test-rf-link

Repeated execution of these commands, or letting the test-rf-link run for long periods of time, could result in degraded performance due to lack of memory.

Compatibility Issues

1. If you "downgrade" from version 2.1x and above to versions 2.06 and below, the Ethernet LAN may be left in an incompatible setting. When you start running version 2.0x, the VIP changes to 10 MHz half duplex but the Hub or the PC Ethernet port may be left set to a different configuration supported by version 2.1x. If, for example, the PC or Hub is left at 10 Mbps full duplex and the radio is now at 10 Mbps half duplex, the LAN may experience a considerable number of collisions with degraded performance.

The work around is to make sure that you power cycle the Radio or the Hub after downgrading from version 2.1X to 2.0X. In that case the Ethernet settings will be compatible.

2. If you are upgrading a VINE network from vesion 1.05 or earlier there are some compatibility issues that may prevent nodes from reattaching when a VINE includes radios with mixed versions. For this reason we recommend to upgrade the complete network to the new version as described in section 5 of the manual. After downloading the new software to all the radios reboot the root node first. Any nodes that do not reattacth will timeout and reboot on their own using the new firmware.

Known Problems Remaining

None

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Version 2.06

New Features

Problems Fixed

Compatibility Issues

Known Problems Remaining

None

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Version 2.05

New Features

Problems Fixed

Compatibility Issues

Known Problems Remaining

SNMP stops responding after several hours.

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Version 2.04

New Features

Problems Fixed

Compatibility Issues

Known Problems Remaining

None

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Version 2.03

Product: VIP 110-24

Software: VIP 02.03

Release Date:June 17, 2002

New Features

Problems Fixed

Compatibility Issues

Known Problems Remaining

No PSR - Short preamble causes attach problems.

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Version 2.02

Product: VIP 110-24

Software: VIP 02.01

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Version 2.01

Product: VIP 110-24

Software: VIP 02.01

Release Date:May 08, 2002

New Features

Problems Fixed

Compatibility Issues

Known Problems Remaining

None

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Version 2.00

Product: VIP 110-24

Software: VIP 02.00

Release Date: April 30, 2002

New Features

Problems Fixed

Compatibility Issues

Known Problems Remaining

None

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Version 1.24

Product: VIP 110-24

Software: VINE 1.24

Release Date: April 26, 2002

New Features

Features described here are further discussed in the new Operator’s Manual, Rev D. The appropriate section of the manual is indicated in parenthesis below.

1. Introduced the Internet Protocol (IP) stack. The radios can now be assigned an IP address, netmask and gateway. Once the IP configuration has been initalized, the radios can generate and respond to "ping" packets (section 6.6) and be managed through SNMP
2. Implemented SNMP MIB2 (section 6.6 and 7)
3. The "test-rf-link" command now reports packet drops separately for each direction of the path (section 6.8). Previously, packet drops were identified for the complete turnaround trip, without identifying the direction.
4. The link distance in kilometers and miles is now computed and displayed in the ">show" and ">monitor-link" reports.
5. The command syntax to configure channels has changed. Previously, channels were assigned with a two step approach with the "rf-channel-plan" and "rf-receive" commands. Also the "new node poll" channels were tied to the "outbound" channels of the channel plan. Version 1.23 changed the commands to set the channels. Those commands are: "rf-from-parent", "rf-from-children", "rf-nnp-1" and "rf-nnp-2" (section 3 and section 6.3).
6. The ">display-configuration" output format changed. It includes the new IP and SNMP configuration. Also the RF link parameters are now shown in a single table.
7. The command ">orphan-node-timeout" was renamed to ">single-node-reboot-timeout". A root radio with no children now reboots after this timeout expires. Previously only non-root radios would reboot.

Problems Fixed

1. When a radio got detached from the VINE network (due to powering it down for example), it could cause other sibling nodes to be dropped from the parent list. Those nodes would reattach in the next few seconds. Now they are no longer dropped. (PSR int 211).
2. When a new node was attached to a VINE, initial traffic to/from the radio was broadcast through VINE for up to 10 seconds. This could cause noticeable performance degradation (exacerbated by problem 3 below). The attachment of new nodes no longer causes this to happen (PSR ucw069, int184)
3. Broadcast traffic was experiencing long delays due to a scheduling problem. Fixed (PSR int 217)
4. Some flow rate parameters in version 1.1X could revert to the factory defaults rather than the saved configuration. This has been fixed (PSR ucw064).
5. In previous versions, under very heavy traffic, root and repeater nodes might reboot. This has been fixed. (PSR int 199, int210)
6. When a non-root radio was receiving a weak signal from the parent, it might reboot. Fixed (PSR int207)
7. When the node name was changed, it was not being reflected in the "show" command until the configuration was saved and the unit rebooted. Now the change is reflected immediately (PSR int 202).
8. If a node name longer than 11 characters was entered, the name might show with some extraneous characters appended. Now it truncates to 11 characters (PSR ucw077)
9. On power up, if the audio antenna alignment was turned ON (saved in the configuration), the console output was interrupted midstream looking like the radio had crashed. Now the output is allowed to complete and an information message is displayed, before the console is switched to audio (PSR ucw062)
10. In radios with the "Extended Frequency Range" enabled, channel zero could not be saved into the configuration. Fixed (PSR int 213)

Compatibility Issues

1. Version 1.23 is "air-compatible" with version 1.1X. When a radio running version 1.1X is upgraded to 1.23, the radio "main" configuration (which runs after power up) is preserved by translating the old "outbound" and "inbound" channels to the new channel allocation approach. However, the "alternate" configuration is not preserved. It reverts to the factory defaults.
2. A new (slimmer) enclosure was also introduced with version 1.23. The radios with the new enclosure are compatible with version 1.23 or later. If version 1.1X is loaded into these radios, the calibration reported on power up may indicate a "fail" (the software will still run).
3. If you are upgrading a VINE network from vesion 1.05 or earlier there are some compatibility issues that may prevent nodes from reattaching when a VINE includes radios with mixed versions. For this reason we recommend to upgrade the complete network to the new version as described in section 5 of the manual. After downloading the new software to all the radios reboot the root node first. Any nodes that do not reattacth will timeout and reboot on their own using the new firmware.

Known Problems Remaining

None

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Version 1.13

Software: VINE 1.13

Release Date: Feb 6, 2002

New Features

None

Problems Fixed

1. ETSI power limit corrected (increased).

Compatibility Issues

This version is fully compatible with version 1.10 and later.

Known Problems Remaining

None

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Version 1.12

Software: VINE 1.12

Release Date: December 12, 2001

New Features

1. The monitor flow output has been enhanced to show the "peak", "last", and "average" flow rates between the radio and all other nodes in the network. Also only the anchor node now displays the Rx and Tx flow limits for all the nodes in the network.
2. The "max cycle time" and "max bytes per cycle" parameters, used to shape the flow control across the network, are now broadcast from the anchor. In previous versions each node was getting those parameters from their own non-volatile configuration. This insures that all nodes in the network use the same flow backoff algorithm.

Problems Fixed

1. The "test-rf-link" command, in version 1.10, was causing a "buffer leak". If the test was left running for over one or two hours, the radio might run out of buffers and would stop receiving. Non-root nodes would then reboot after an "orphan timeout" (15 minute default). The root node would not recover. This has been corrected (PSR 195).
2. In a network where a parent node has multiple children, and at least one of the children is a repeater, a small percentage of broadcast transmissions by the parent were not being received by all the children. This has been corrected (PSR 197).
3. Under very heavy loads consisting of bursts of very short Ethernet packets (more than 10), the delivery of outbound packets could be unreliable. This has been corrected (PSR198).

Compatibility Issues

This version is fully compatible with version 1.10. Please refer to the release note of version 1.10 for compatibility issues with versions 1.05 and below.

Known Problems Remaining

None

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Version 1.10

Software: VINE 1.10

Release Date: November 21, 2001

New Features

1. Monitor Environment. This is invoked with the ">monitor-environment" command described in the Operators Manual rev C and later. In this mode, the radio dwells sequentially on each of the channels in the RF channel plan and reports all the packets received. The report identifies the source of the packets, RSSI, and which nodes are potential parents (nodes broadcasting "new node polls").
2. Smart attach. A non-root node, after power up, automatically monitors the environment at the selected outbound channel for potentital parents (nodes broadcasting "new node polls"). If it finds more than one, it attempts to attach to the node with the strongest signal. If the attachment fails it attempts to attach to the other potential parents in order of signal strength.
3. Antenna Alignment Aid. Invoked with the ">antenna-alignment-aid" command described in the Operators Manual rev C and later. In this mode, the radio outputs through the console port connector (3 pin circular connector) an audio tone with a pitch proportional to the RSSI of the packets received from a specific node. Wi-LAN provides an adapter cable to convert the VIP110-24 three pin connector to a standard audio jack.
4. Test RF Link. The command ">test-rf-link" has been modified. This command allows a radio to transmit test packets to any other node in a VINE network. The destination node transmits a reply packet back to the source. The source generates a report that includes number of packets sent, missed rate, and turnaround time statistics.
5. Flow Control. The flow control features are now enabled. These allow the network manager to specify a maximum and minimum data rates to and from any node in the network.
6. Licensing Keys. This version supports turning ON or OFF specific radio options by obtaining a license key from the factory. Current options include different RF regimes to adapt to FCC, ETSI and other regulatory agency requirements.
7. Througput improvements. The software was substantially optimized resulting in higher available bandwidth and faster connections.
8. Temperature Monitoring: All radios include a built-in temperature sensor. In this version the sensor is being read and the internal radio temperature is dispalyed in both Centigrades and Farenheit in the "show" command report.

Problems Fixed

1. In previous versions, under very heavy loads, root and repeater nodes might reboot. This has been fixed.
2. In a few commands, changing a parameter did not take effect until the configuration was saved and the radio rebooted. These have all been fixed.
3. When a new station in the local area network started sending data over wireless, its address could take up to ten seconds before it was entered in the remote radio tables. This was causing replies to that station to be broadcast rather than directly addressed, resulting in poorer performance. The address tables are now updated immediately.

Compatibility Issues

There are some compatibility issues when mixing, in a Vine network, version 1.10 with the previously released versions (versions 1.05 and below). For this reason we recommend to upgrade the complete network to the new version as described in section 5 of the manual. After downloading the new software to all the radios reboot the root node first. Any nodes that do not reattacth will timeout and reboot on their own using the new firmware.

Known Problems Remaining

None

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