This particular update may come more from me personally, rather than from Powercode as a whole, as it relates to one of the first things I was thrust into when I started at Powercode in November 2016. In case you don’t know, and for those that may have doubt, there are many major things on the board that Powercode needs to implement, re-implement, fix, or enhance. However, there are two things that truly overshadow just about everything else on that list; BMU and IPv6. So where are we on those?
BMU
The BMU is one of the strongest features Powercode offers. Having a device like this cohesively integrated with your billing system offers automation on delinquency, repayment, and traffic enforcement. In fact, when the BMU was originally designed, it was genuinely novel in this market.
Over time as new features were added and new developers were brought on for different tasks, the Powercode firmware that ships with the BMU has gone through some rich history. Some of this development over the past several years has led to a small percentage of our users having issues.
Having a network device like that positioned where it is in your topology requires rock solid reliability, and the BMU fell short of that for some users.
It became clear after a couple weeks of developing on the BMU that it would probably require the same amount of time to hunt down and fix the issues as it would take to simply start from scratch.
Starting from scratch allows us to utilize new technologies, firmware and drivers, and implement a true development methodology that I feel this product has been missing for years.
Over the past 4 months we have worked with a number of people who specialize in this field to help us develop a new, optimized firmware for this device with the core of Powercode functionality in mind.
We are getting very close to making this release publicly available. You might have noticed a few weeks ago, your Powercode instances reporting the BMU firmware as being “out of date.” That means we’re getting ready to release this soon.
IPv6
So, how does that tie in with IPv6?
Unfortunately, IPv6 management in Powercode requires the BMU to be able to handle the sync process with IPv6 components. When I inherited the project there was progress with IPv6, but unfortunately, it needed to be redone with our larger vision in mind. Once the new BMU firmware is made generally available, we’ll be able to finally complete development on IPv6.
However, the difficulties with IPv6 don’t end with the software development. There are real deployment decisions that need to be taken into account, and we have to be able to support a variety of deployment paths for our customers.
The BMU is close and IPv6 isn’t far behind. Once the new BMU firmware is released, I will update you with our IPv6 implementation milestones and release a hard timeline.
One thing lacking on Powercode’s side is updates on feature development. We are working hard to ramp up this blog as a space for us to show you our progress on future features. There will no longer be silence on these matters. We will develop these larger items in the public eye and shape things using your feedback.