RE: [smartBridges] Peeling the Onion

[Jeremy Oswalt]

Very impressive.  I don’t know of ANY company that would send out their latest RMA issues.  I feel better about committing to Smartbridges products. J   Jeremy   -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Nish Park Sent: Monday, June 23, 2003 5:38 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [smartBridges] Peeling the Onion     We are trying to understand and resolve the issues being reported with our products. In order to make this an interactive process, we are sharing with you an analysis of a recent batch of RMA units. This is done with the hope that we will be able to close the gaps by informing you on how we are resolving the issues. As you may note from the below narrative, I think we all have come a long way on peeling this onion and make the issues smaller and smaller.   The attached RMA report is for 24 units returned from various distributors and also the ones that customers sent to us directly to try to better understand the “Ethernet Burnout” issue. In order to provide the perspective, this RMA report is quite similar to what we see for the overall 3% return rate that we had reported before. From these 24 units - 10 are confirmed DEFECTIVE, 11 units are confirmed OK and 3 units are in the Other category.   1)       OK units – We have not been able to find any defects with these 11 devices. A simple reset to factory default or the F/W upgrade brought them back to life. Also note that 6 devices were loaded with the wrong type of firmware. Perhaps inadvertently people ended up loading wrong firmware in their devices. A few weeks ago the F/W upgrade utility has already been enhanced to prevent this in the future. These units were returned to us because the customers were having some problems. So we have to close the loop. We will return some units back to the sender and see if they continue to have problem with their installation.   2)       Defective Units -   Of the 10 defective units, 5 have problems with the power supply. Another 4 units have defective Ethernet port. You may also note that all of these are Outdoor devices. These two issues make up almost all the returns.   We think these issues are related. Our hypothesis is that for outdoor units, atmospheric EMP and noisy power supplies are causing the stress/failures. As part of our normal quality enhancement activities, this hypothesis was developed a few weeks ago and we have already made some changes to further increase the noise immunity of the input section of the devices. For past 2-3 weeks, we are now shipping these products. We believe these changes will go a long way to reduce/eliminate this issue. In addition, we are developing an enhanced version of powerShot for outdoor devices (more details to come).   In the mean time we recommend use of surge protectors on the RJ45 cable (required by National Electrical Code), shielded RJ45 cable and high quality 18V power supply with low ripple current.       Let me also take this opportunity to comment on the other most frequently discussed issues.   a)      Frequent Reset or Power Cycle of airBridge After solving this problem in airBridge firmware version 09.08 and above, we have not been able to reproduce this problem in the lab. But we know that few users are reporting this issue. This kind of makes it difficult because we do not know what to fix. Nevertheless, in next 2-3 weeks we will release a software utility simpleWatch that will reset the airBridge units under certain error conditions. This utility will run on the PC. This temporary solution will reduce the customer inconvenience while we continue to follow the issue and identify the root cause.   Many users are reporting that by changing the pre-amble setting to Long, their devices are more stable. Some users are also reporting that by increasing the Fade margin of the link also helps with this issue. Both are reasonable things and provide logical explanation. Some people report that power cycling of the Router or the PC also clears up the issue.   b)      Password Lockout There appears to be some incompatibility of the enhanced security features with some of the older radios. We were not able to reproduce this problem in the lab. However, based on the field reports we have enhanced the simpleMonitor recovery algorithm. Since this affected only some of the older radios, problem is now occurring less and less often.   c)       Mikrotik Compatibility with airBridge It has been verified by Mikrotik that v2.7 is ok with airBridge F/W 01.04 (with Multi Mac and Remote Management). Users of v2.6 are advised to stay with airBridge F/W 09.10.   d)      PPPoE support by airBridge airBridge F/W 01.04 has been verified to work with RASPPPoE client. There are some problems with WinXP’s native PPPoE client and investigation is under way.   e)      Various Networking related issues DHCP and Gateway settings had created a lot of confusion resulting in people reporting strange networking behaviors (e.g. sub netting, Ping). We have provided additional documentation, suggested IP numbering schemes and enhanced the simpleMonitor ToolTip to properly guide the users.   f)        Repeater Mode for airPoint Pro This issue has been fixed with aPP F/W version 1.4j.6   g)      Mounting Brackets for TOTAL Metal thickness will be increased and better quality washers will be provided. Additional powder coating will be applied to the brackets to improve the aesthetics.   h)      Device Search Failures SNMP queries can be lost on busy networks. We have increased the Retry count of certain SNMP queries by simpleMonitor to increase the consistency of the device search function and the Site Survey results.   i)        Enhanced FAQs Our support staff now maintains the FAQs in real time. We will put increased emphasis on this to get the user community to check this resource. There should be no reason why a user has to re-discover the known issues.   j)        Slow Web site and Downloads A new server web is in the process of configured. This server will be located in USA and connected to a Fiber backbone.   k)       Web based Forums We will implement Advanced Search function to this forum’s archives to facilitate web based access to this rich knowledge base.   I know it can be frustrating at times to spend a lot of time debugging the installation. But I think we all have come a long way in peeling this onion and quickly leaving the issues behind. We will continue to work with our customers to enhance the product and service offerings.   Thanks for your support.   With best regards,        Nish