WBSn Family

FW Upgrade

WBSn-2400 and WBSn-2450

Software Version: 1.3.2
Doc version: v1
Jan 2013

WBSn Family FW Upgrade Procedure

Copyright 2013 Alvarion All rights reserved.

FCC Statement
Federal Communication Commission Interference Statement
This equipment has been tested and found to comply with the limits for a Class B digital device,
pursuant to Part 15 of the FCC Rules. These limits are designed to provide reasonable protection
against harmful interference in a residential installation. This equipment generates uses and can
radiate radio frequency energy and, if not installed and used in accordance with the instructions, may
cause harmful interference to radio communications. However, there is no guarantee that interference
will not occur in a particular installation. If this equipment does cause harmful interference to radio or
television reception, which can be determined by turning the equipment off and on, the user is
encouraged to try to correct the interference by one of the following measures:

Reorient or relocate the receiving antenna.

Increase the separation between the equipment and receiver.

Connect the equipment into an outlet on a circuit different from that to which the receiver is connected.

Consult the dealer or an experienced radio/TV technician for help.

FCC Caution: Any changes or modifications not expressly approved by the party responsible for
compliance could void the users authority to operate this equipment.
This device complies with Part 15 of the FCC Rules. Operation is subject to the following two
conditions: (1) This device may not cause harmful interference, and (2) this device must accept any
interference received, including interference that may cause undesired operation.
For product available in the USA/Canada market, only channel 1~11 can be operated. Selection of
other channels is not possible.
This device and its antenna(s) must not be co-located or operated in conjunction with any other
antenna or transmitter.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
FCC Radiation Exposure Statement:
This equipment complies with FCC radiation exposure limits set forth for an uncontrolled environment.
This equipment should be installed and operated with minimum distance 20cm between the radiator &
your body.
Copyright Alvarion Ltd. All rights reserved.
The material contained herein is proprietary, privileged, and confidential and owned by Alvarion or its
third party licensors. No disclosure thereof shall be made to third parties without the express written
permission of Alvarion Ltd.
Alvarion Ltd. reserves the right to alter the equipment specifications and descriptions in this
publication without prior notice. No part of this publication shall be deemed to be part of any contract
or warranty unless specifically incorporated by reference into such contract or warranty.
Limitation of Liability:
(a) Alvarion shall not be liable to the purchaser or to any third party, for any loss of profits, loss of use,
interruption of business or for any indirect, special, incidental, punitive or consequential damages of
any kind, whether arising under breach of contract, tort (including negligence), strict liability or
otherwise and whether based on this agreement or otherwise, even if advised of the possibility of such
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(b) To the extent permitted by applicable law, in no event shall the liability for damages hereunder of
Alvarion or its employees or agents exceed the purchase price paid for the product by purchaser, nor
shall the aggregate liability for damages to all parties regarding any product exceed the purchase
price paid for that product by that party (except in the case of a breach of a partys confidentiality
obligations).

WBSn Family FW Upgrade Procedure

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WBSn Family FW Upgrade Procedure

Contents
1

Scope ........................................................................................................... - 4 -

Prerequisites ............................................................................................... - 4 -

Firmware Upgrade Procedure .................................................................... - 4 3.1

Step 1 Uploading Firmware File (DLV)................................................................ - 5 3.1.1

Uploading firmware file using FTP ................................................................ - 5 -

3.1.2

Uploading firmware file using HTTP.............................................................. - 6 -

3.2

Step 2 - Switching to the Upgraded Firmware Version ......................................... - 6 -

3.3

Step 3 - Validation of Current Firmware Version................................................... - 7 -

3.4

Using the Rollback Procedure ............................................................................... - 7 -

Best Firmware Upgrade Practices ............................................................. - 8 -

Firmware Upgrade Troubleshooting ......................................................... - 8 -

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Scope
This document describes firmware upgrade procedure for Alvarions WBSn family of WiFi base-stations,
using the internal web management tool (EMS).
Prior to upgrading, it is recommended to backup your base station configuration (refer to the relevant
section in the User Manual document).
Note: In order to perform a successful upgrade session it is recommended to perform the upgrade at a
time when the system is not fully utilized (e.g. at late night hours when traffic is low). This will ensure
minimal interference with customer traffic and flawless firmware download performance.

Prerequisites
It is immanent that the user performing the upgrade/downgrade procedure is familiar with Alvarions
WBSn-2400/2450 family of base stations prior to reading and implementing the instructions in this
document.
Information of the system and its operation is found in the updated manuals of the version.
As this document refers to these manuals it is highly recommended that the installer shall have the
mentioned manuals at hand when performing the upgrade/downgrade procedure.
Tools and data required for upgrade:

Portable PC with an Ethernet port or wireless port.

Administrator password of the unit that is to be upgraded.

Default administrator credentials are admin/admin

Default IP address is 192.168.1.1/24 (or mask 255.255.255.0).

Firmware DLV file

WBSn unit to be upgraded

Firmware Upgrade Procedure

The firmware upgrade procedure described in this section enables you to upgrade the firmware of
your WBSn device, or to rollback to a previous firmware version. Upgrading can be performed using
either HTTP or FTP servers, according to your requirements.

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3.1

Step 1 Uploading Firmware File (DLV)

3.1.1

Uploading firmware file using FTP

1. Navigate to Administration => Firmware.

2. In the Upgrade Protocol field, select FTP from the drop-down list. The FTP Server IP field is
automatically populated by the information specified in Configuring an FTP Client.
3. In the Upgrade File Path (FTP) field, specify the path to the firmware file provided to you
separately by Alvarion.
Note: The Upgrade File (HTTP) field is disabled.
4. Click Upgrade. A notification message is displayed, informing you of the expected time that it will
take for the upgrade to be performed.
5. A progress bar will be displayed to show the advancement of the upgrade process
6. When the firmware upgrade is finished, a red Status: Success indication will be displayed and a
pop-up saying FW upgrade process finished successfully will come up. Without getting these
indications one should not proceed to the next step (switching FW banks).
After this, proceed to Switching to the Upgraded Firmware Version.

To configure the FTP Client

7. Navigate to Administration => Management => FTP Client.
8. Specify the parameters as described in the following table.
Parameter

Description and values

Server IP

The FTP Server IP address

Anonymous Login

Specify whether anonymous login is enabled or disabled

FTP User

Specify the FTP user to be used during login

FTP Password

Specify the password for the FTP user

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Note: When performing a firmware upgrade using FTP protocol, the FTP Server address is
displayed in the Firmware screen. Any change made to the server address in that screen, is
automatically reflected in the FTP Client screen, and vice versa. For more information, see the
section entitled Firmware.

3.1.2

Uploading firmware file using HTTP

1. Navigate to Administration => Firmware.

2. In the Upgrade Protocol field, select HTTP from the drop-down list. The FTP Server IP field is
automatically disabled.
3. In the Upgrade File (HTTP) field, click Browse, and navigate to the path where the firmware
file, provided to you separately by Alvarion, was saved.
Note: The Upgrade File Path (FTP) field is disabled.
4. Click Upgrade. A progress bar is displayed, showing you the percentage of upgrade progress in
real time.
5. A progress bar will be displayed to show the advancement of the upgrade process
6. When the firmware upgrade is finished, a red Status: Success indication will be displayed and a
pop-up saying FW upgrade process finished successfully will come up. Without getting these
indications one should not proceed to the next step (switching FW banks).
Proceed directly to Switching to the Upgraded Firmware Version.

3.2

Step 2 - Switching to the Upgraded Firmware Version

Once you have uploaded the upgraded firmware version, you must then officially implement it into
your system. The Alvarion EMS has two software storage areas (banks), both displayed in Status =>
System => Software versions, and described in the below table.
Field

Description and Values

Main Firmware

Indicates the name of the current loaded version of the administration

firmware (i.e. the version currently running)

Shadow Firmware

Indicates the name of the new or the previously loaded version of the
firmware

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1. Once the new upgrade version of the firmware has been uploaded to the Shadow Firmware
bank, click Switch. This enables you to switch over to the newly uploaded version.
2. The system performs a reboot, and when it powers up, does so using the new version of the
firmware.
Note: while the system reboots to switch to another FW bank, its recommended to check
connectivity with the system by running a constant ping (-t option) to systems IP address, in
order to know when the switching process is finished. In any case, switching operation should not
exceed 2 minutes.
3. If at this stage you wish to revert back to the previous version of the software, its highly
recommended to do it by pressing Rollback button, and not by clicking Switch again in any case.
For proper rolling-back to previous FW version please refer to Using the Rollback Procedure
section.

3.3

Step 3 - Validation of Current Firmware Version

Its a good practice to validate the actually loaded firmware version at the end of an upgrade process.
To see the currently loaded FW version please navigate to Status => System => Software
Versions.
You should see the newly upgraded FW version string inside the Main Firmware field; the previous
FW version string should appear in the Shadow Firmware field:

3.4

Using the Rollback Procedure

Running firmware has its own running configuration file. After a firmware upgrade procedure is
performed, a new configuration file is included in the upgrade, which will adopt the current
configuration settings, once the newly upgraded firmware is run.

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This configuration file may contain new features that could modify current configurations. Also, even
if no new features were included in the upgrade, but new configurations were specified by the user, a
newer version of the configuration file is created.
If you wish to revert back to the previous firmware and the previous configuration file, you need to
perform a Rollback procedure.

To Rollback the Firmware

1. Navigate to Administration => Firmware.
2. Click Rollback. The following message is displayed:

3. Click Yes to reboot your system, and rollback to the previous firmware and configuration file.

Best Firmware Upgrade Practices

Two recommended actions to perform when upgrading WBSn devices:
Prior to performing FW upgrade (especially from version older than 1.3.2.x), its
recommended to reboot the WBSn device. WBSn device can be rebooted by pressing reboot
button in EMS (Administration => reboot) or through a scheduled task in NMS (for multiple
device at once).
Once the firmware upgrade process is successfully finished (WBSn device is up with the new
FW version in Main Firmware bank), it is recommended to clear all the browsing history in
the Internet Options, as well as to clear java temporary files in Control Panel => java menu.

Firmware Upgrade Troubleshooting

As its been stated above, a normal firmware upgrade operation (before switch command) should
take around 3-4 minutes and should be followed by a Status: success indication and a pop-up with
upgrade success message.
Here we list a few known issues related to firmware upgrade process:
Issue 1: Error Writing to Server message during FW upgrade operation
Solution: reboot the WBSn unit and try to initiate the upgrade process again

Issue 2: FW Upgrade progress bar reaches 100% almost immediately

Solution: this is expected to happen when upgrading from versions older than 1.3.1.x; one should
ignore the fast advancement of the progress bar and wait for proper indication of successful finish
of upgrade process, as described in Step 1 above.
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Issue 3: FW Upgrade success indication appears too quickly (when progress bar only reaches
6-7%)
Solution: this issue is expected to happen when upgrading to some specific revisions of version
1.3.1.x. The recommendation here is to use a newer version to upgrade to (1.3.2.x).

Issue 4: Switch process fails

Solution: when FW switch process fails, one of two of the following happens: there is a pop-up
with switch failure notice, or the new FW version string still appears in the Shadow Firmware bank
(see Step 3 above). This is a rear case and the solution here is to perform upgrade to an
intermediate version 1.3.2.rev10. Once successfully upgraded to the intermediate version, one can
upgrade further to the latest available version.

Issue 5: FTP/HTTP Upgrade from an older version to version 1.3.2.rev14 may result in failure
(Status: Fail indication in EMS), although upgrade actually succeeded
Solution: Despite the failure indication, the new firmware version is supposed to appear in the
Shadow Firmware EMS field (Status => System => Software Versions page). If so, one should
ignore the failure message and proceed to the firmware switch operation.

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