In November 2013 Motorola released the new series of firmware for their WiFi controllers and access points denoted as Wireless New Generation / Wi-NG 5.5.
What are the major news:
- Hierarchical management ONEVIEW: Site RF controllers can be centrally managed by NX9xxx platforms or RFS7000 in the NOC. The RFS7000 can manage any type of RFS series, the NX9000 can manage any RFSxxxx and NX45xx/NX65xx platforms, and the NX9500 can manage all the RFS and NX platforms. The master controller takes one AAP license of any managed RF controller on the lower level.
- VM Management: Virtual machines running on the NX45xx/NX65xx can be managed by a NX95xx controller
- Hosting of Motorola ADSP (version 9.1 and above) on the NX95xx controller
- BYOD Device Fingerprinting support: Administrator may define roles and restrict access of mobile devices to the network sources in respect of the mobile device is the corporate one or BYOD.
- Outdoor mesh enhancments: Dynamic Mesh Selection and Wired Peer Exclusion, Mesh Visualization, Multi-channel VMM
- Wired enhancments: Support for 802.1x Authentication for wired ports. Devices that fail authentication can be optionally placed into a Guest VLAN. Support for MSChapv2 with the built-in RADIUS server and for wired ACLs on the NX 4XX and NX 65xx platforms.
- Smart Caching na NX platforms: Provides content caching of HTML pages and video (Youtube, corporate training server etc.). Caches the entire video at the remote site, so when subsequent users at that site view it again, it is delivered from the local NX controller. This significantly reduces WAN bandwidth and improves latency, thereby providing an optimal application experience. Requires a special license.
- Access Point Wizard simplification. A new wizard that simplifies AP setup and configuration. The existing wizard from prior releases is relabeled “Advanced” in the UI. Available on all independent APs.
- Network Analytics Enhancments + API to query data stored by the analytics application
- Certifications WiFi Certified Passpoint (Hotspot 2.0), 802.11r and 802.11k (Voice Enterprise), and 802.11w (Protected Management Frame support).
The RFS40xx platforms with Wi-NG 5.5 can manage up to 48 access points. Additionally, for the NX9000 controllers Motorola offers new 8-licenses bundle to control other RF/NX controllers or APs.