UNII-3 in the UK

[cmr]

I cannot seem to select any of the UNII-3 channels for an MR56 access point in the UK despite them being legal to use since 2017 before the model was designed, let alone sold:

Decision to make Wireless Telegraphy Exemption Regulations 2017 (ofcom.org.uk)

Are these channels able to be used elsewhere, or does anyone else in the UK have the ability to use them?

[KarstenI]

First I wanted to write "Hey, you guys are not even in the EU and you also drive on the wrong side. It's supposed to be different". But then I remembered that I also can't enable them:

(But at least we drive on the correct side of the street😀)

[rhbirkelund]

It wouldn't be the first time that Meraki had blocked use of certain channels eventhough they are allowed for use.

I'd open a case with Meraki and ask why they are not available. And perhaps CC my local SE/Sales Rep..

[GiacomoS]

Hey team,

Thank you for flagging this up. I poked our compliance team to ask for clarification, but I do endorse @rhbirkelund , a case may help us track this better 😁

I do wonder if there is a matter of conformity to take into consideration, and maybe additional certifications, but I'm not super aware of the various legal implications; the compliance team will be able to dispel the fog, I'm sure. 

Will keep you posted once I get an answer, or if anyone has a case open and gets it before me, please do share! 😁

Giac

[GiacomoS]

@KarstenI , if you are accustomed to driving on the right, driving on the left is not that bad... until you take a roundabout. 😜

[KarstenI]

Just looked at some other installations for UNII-3:

Australia: available

Singapore: available

a couple of other EU: not available

@GiacomoS In UK I always took a cab in the past. I was driving by myself in Australia. But I don't remember if they had any roundabouts ...

And I don't even want to think about driving myself in the famous Swinden roundabout. 🙂

[GiacomoS]

Hey team,

I wanted to close the loop on this one, as I managed to get some feedback. 

With regards to the UNII-3 band in the EU, while some EU countries allow UNII-3 (mainly the UK at this time), the entire EU does not behave as a "harmonized domain". Some countries will allow for UNII-3 usage but at such a low power that it is effectively useless for wireless communication. Therefore, at this time, we do not certify for UNII-3 on the EU(CE) profile.

To add some more context, the EU has always been treated as a single regulatory domain (CE), which means that the APs have been certified to operate in the entire regulatory domain in the same way regardless of the country. Historically, UNII-3 has not been part of the bands that APs could leverage, due to the low power requirements imposed by the European community when using the band. We are in early stages of adoption here, so it may take some time before we start seeing this make its way into the regulatory domain itself. 

In this case, I'd say provide the feedback through a feature request on Dashboard (Give your feedback button on the bottom right); it's good to highlight the use cases, so that our product management team can better understand if/how/when to implement this in the future.

Thank you all!

Giac

[cmr]

Thank you for the explanation @GiacomoS   I'm guessing that Cisco hasn't realised that the UK left the EU almost two years ago, but I'll let them know via the feedback button 😉

[GiacomoS]

Wait, when did that happen?! I need to watch the news more! 😜

I hear you @cmr , I'm not an expert on the certification procedures, but I think there's a lot of admin and bureaucracy required thanks to the UK not being part of the EU anymore. To my awareness, the regulatory domain has not yet been "split" and I'm unsure of how this is being/going to be tackled at a political level. 

Let's hope that we'll have some better clarity soon, so we can watch the blossoming of UK Telecoms 😄

Giac

[Joe360]

The regulatory domain now shows as UK instead of CE. Comparing a UK site to a German one

Does this mean UNII-3 may become available soon to the MR36 / Z3 and other units?

I did try raising this a support ticket back in June and was asked to submit it as a feature request, which didn't get a response. Below are the Ofcom articles stating when the regulations changed.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0032/98159/5p8-Regs.pdf from 2017 where 5725-5850 MHz are permitted

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0036/198927/6ghz-statement.pdf from January 2020 where 5725-5850 have DFS requirements removed.

Joe

[GiacomoS]

Hey @Joe360 ,

As I mentioned previously there needs to be a certification process before anything actually changes. These can take some time to happen, especially since the UNII-3 band is not widely available in Europe yet (or to be precise, it is still dedicated to just SRDs). 

The feature requests would not normally get a response, as it is a way for our product development team to collect your feedback and prioritise new features and products accordingly. I'd recommend to keep on leveraging it, including the context of why you think this would be beneficial for your company and/or customers, so a strong case can be built.

Hope this helps!

Giac

[matt-ca · Accepted solution]

UNII-3 is in the UK now isn't it as of the past few days?

[matt-ca]

UNII-3 (UK) Support for Meraki APs November 15, 2022

Wireless networks

Meraki access points now support UNII-3 channels in the UK/ETSI regulatory domain. This feature is available today for dashboard configuration.

[Squuiid]

No it isn't. Just checked and still greyed out.

[matt-ca]

yes it is being running it since last week on MR56, MR57

[matt-ca]

One of my AP's in UK that has been on UNII-3 since November 4th - the post above is the announcement in the dashboard I got yesterday when logging in.

[cmr]

I have access to two organisations and in one the banner is at the top regarding UNI3 and I can select the channels, in the other it is no and I cannot select them.  I'd guess this feature is being rolled out in stages.

[Joe360]

It looks like its being rolled out still as some Orgs show it as available and others its greyed out.

Does it make a difference if the Org / Site has MR33 vs MR36 APs?

[cmr]

The Org I can see it in has MR55/56, the one I cannot has MR32 through to 9166 so it could be older models are going to be added later? 

[pjc]

General question about the UNII-3 channels...If everything is working fine, and I'm using 20MHz channels, will enabling UNII-3 channels cause issues in that are all clients able to use these higher channels?  If not I could creating dead spots for some clients in the building where AP's switch to these higher channels.  I appreciate that these channels have a lower maximum power transmit rating (23dBm)

Thanks

[KarstenI]

Nowadays it is quite unlikely that you'll find a relevant client that doesn't support these channels. But if you need to have legacy clients. it definitely could be. The first Apple Retina iPad2 is one of the devices that I remember not to have UNII-3 support.

[Joe360]

Has anyone actually seen an access point use these channels?

Across multiple organisations I haven't seen an MR36, MR44 or MR33 actually use one of these UNII-3 channels.

I've tried creating a new RF profile for an MR36 with only those channels enabled and it seems to ignore the request and uses a different channel anyway when you try and do this with an MR33 it comes back with an error message that the selected channels aren't supported.

[matt-ca]

yes been using them on MR56 & MR57 AP's since November.

[Joe360]

Did you have to manually set them on the AP itself or via an RF profile?

I've just seen manually setting on the AP directly seems to work but the profiles for auto channel don't seem to get used.

[matt-ca]

We use fixed channels so setting them manually on each AP.

[Joe360]

Just had an email from Meraki that the UNII-3 channels are now going to be disabled for the UK region on the 25th.

It doesn't explain why in detail only that it is to meet regulations. Anyone else get this email? I don't understand why they are taking the channels away when there are documents from Ofcom stating that it is permitted.

[Dave_Lewis]

We got this too, I'm hoping it's a bad joke as that would leave UK sites with a grand total of 4 non-DFS 5ghz channels. Ironically Meraki only managed to get unii-3 channels working in the UK in 29.1 via an undocumented driver update so to now take it away again would make them seem a bit cowboy.

[pjc]

Just received the same email, the 2nd line ' AP's with manually assigned channels will revert to the default indoor RF profile ' is worrying, in that the default indoor profile will have 'auto channel assignment', so does that mean any ap's I have previously set to manual (to avoid neighbours I have no control over) will now be changed to auto, even if they are not using or have the capability to use UNII-3 channels ?

[GiacomoS]

Hey @Joe360 and team,

A small clarification first: UNII-3 is not going away and will not be disabled in the UK. 

My current understanding is that UNII-3 compatibility is still subject to certification for use in radio transmitters. Not all APs are certified to leverage UNII-3, and selecting the channels in that range on APs that are not certified was not intended as it would put you (and the device) out of regulatory compliance. 

I would recommend to have a chat with your Sales rep, as they should have a little bit more insight on which models of the MR range can actually be used with UNII-3. 

Hope this helps!

Giac

[Joe360]

Just had an update from Meraki support and it's rather short list of supported APs

• MR28-HW
• GR12-HW
• MR57-HW
• CW9162I
• MR36H-HW
• CW9166I
• CW9164I

Which means all the MR44s that we have been deploying recently are now useless at one of our sites, hopefully this will be added back in soon.

[GreenMan]

I wonder why you use the word 'useless' ?   If you are particularly susceptible to DFS events, leaving you with maybe just UNII-1 - which is likely to be extremely busy - I sympathise, but it's worth re-iterating that, in the UK, UNII-3 is also still covered by DFS (not true for the US, I think), therefore no guarantees you can use it anyway.

Remember too that each AP model has to be certified for use in those channels.   I believe Meraki is planning to initiate this for WiFi6 models, that are not already certified (this would included MR44).  The process can take some time, apparently - and there's no absolute gurantee of certification, of course, either.

[Paccers]

Maybe I'm misreading the docs but the indoor DFS requirement for UNII-3 in the UK was removed in April 2021 by OFCOM was it not? (IR 2030, Page 111, summary of version history 1.14). April 2021 announcement advising changes came in to effect 12 May 2021 (page 21, 4.20 and page 21/22, 4.23).

'Useless' is probably a harsh term but... really? It could just be the choice of wording, but that reads to me like you're just telling a customer to suck it up, ignoring the fact they have just lost functionality in a production environment for something that is out of their control. Anyone with static channel plan including UNII-3 channels will have to go and re-do those designs to account for the loss of those channels in the interim period before 'certification' takes place.

[Joe360]

@GreenMan We have two customers that are in an area where using DFS channels is near impossible without receiving the dreaded DFS event detected and all the APs start switching channels and eventually land on the already busy UNII-1 channels.
Maybe useless was a bit strong but it currently feels like the MR44 is getting a bad deal here as it leaves the higher performing APs with only two channels at 40MHz or one usable channel at 80MHz without those UNII-3 channels.

We have been alternating the MR44 APs with channels 42 and 155 at 80Mhz for great performance in denser office space, with the rest of the office using 40MHz channels on the MR36 APs.

I agree with @Paccers that the DFS requirement was removed for the UK market for 5725-5850MHz with a maximum mean e.i.r.p of 200mW as per IR2030/8/3, which is mentioned in the links Paccers has linked to from our regulator Ofcom.

The access points currently seem to be working to these rules as no DFS events are observed when using these channels and the AP will use these channels straight away rather than the usual delay when selecting a DFS channel.

[GreenMan]

Double-checking some aspects around this - appears I misunderstood some internal comms;    DFS not required indoor in the UK is known and engineered.  Some model certification (including MR44) is still required.   @Paccers    DM me...?