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3502 AP vs 2802 AP

eagles-nest
Level 1
Level 1

Hi

Could anyone advise the main benefits achievable in replacing 3502's with 2802's?

 

One of the feature differences I read was the 3500 series supports "legacy beamforming" whereas the 2800 supports Clientlink 4.0

 

I also see the 2800i's allow me to assign both internal radios to 5Ghz which could be an advantage.  However, to do this with 2800e's I need to use the smart antenna connector and additional antennae.  I like the sound of that but I'm not sure I could do away with 2.4Ghz completely.  We have some legacy devices that only do 2.4Ghz in some areas of the network.

 

The 2800 also supports 3 spatial streams as opposed to 2 with the 3500's

 

Am I likely to see any significant benefits with these features and any others that are new to the 2800?

 

Disregard the fact that 2800's support Wave 2.  I can't see that being used in my environment at present.

 

Thanks, Stuart.

1 Accepted Solution

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The 2800 can offer beamforming to way more clients simultaneously than the 3500. Then again, this feature only starts to get really useful if the clients have a bad signal reception.

I personally really like the FRA feature for my deployment. I have many rooms where I have 2 APs plus the neighbor room also has one and is only separated by a thin wall. There I often have a lot of 2.4 GHz channel re-use with the old models. I even had to disable the 2.4 radio on some APs, just to get the spectrum less loaded. Now with the 2800 I can simply switch the 2.4 GHz radio to 5 GHz and the WLC even tells me where this is advisable to do :)

If you have many clients with 802.11ac radios (in my University it's > 50% by now), this can quickly double the throughput with an 2800 compared to a 3500, which means the radio is only half as much loaded as before.
Also the 3500 series won't anymore be supported in 8.6 and later software releases.

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9 Replies 9

Ric Beeching
Level 7
Level 7

 The initial primary benefits are that the 2800 supports 802.11ac (Wave 1 and Wave 2) whereas the 3502 does not. So firstly I'd be looking at the types of clients you are supporting on a day-to-day basis and whether you want to start taking advantage of that protocol. It can be very useful in high density environments or if you want really high raw throughput. That said, 802.11n on 5 GHz is also pretty decent and the 3502s support that.

 

Yes the 2802 does do "FRA" where you're support dual 5 GHz but it will still do traditional 2.4 as required so you could even stagger this by having some doing FRA and others not.

 

In terms of support, the 3502s will begin to start dropping off in feature capability soon but I wouldn't count that as a key thing to replace your current hardware.

 

For my customers I'm generally advising them to look into 2802s as they refresh older models such as 1142/3502 but not necessarily to aggressively replace them unless there's a specific requirement such as high density, 30-40 devices all running 802.11ac and the 2802 can meet that need.

 

For ClientLink and Beamforming.. well that just comes in as sales jargon to me but others may disagree :P.

 

Ric

 

 

 

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eagles-nest
Level 1
Level 1

Thanks for the quick reply Ric.

 

"For ClientLink and Beamforming.. well that just comes in as sales jargon to me but others may disagree"

 

That was pretty much my opinion unless someone can describe specific differences between these terms and the tangible benefits of one over the other.

 

Stuart.

 

The 2800 can offer beamforming to way more clients simultaneously than the 3500. Then again, this feature only starts to get really useful if the clients have a bad signal reception.

I personally really like the FRA feature for my deployment. I have many rooms where I have 2 APs plus the neighbor room also has one and is only separated by a thin wall. There I often have a lot of 2.4 GHz channel re-use with the old models. I even had to disable the 2.4 radio on some APs, just to get the spectrum less loaded. Now with the 2800 I can simply switch the 2.4 GHz radio to 5 GHz and the WLC even tells me where this is advisable to do :)

If you have many clients with 802.11ac radios (in my University it's > 50% by now), this can quickly double the throughput with an 2800 compared to a 3500, which means the radio is only half as much loaded as before.
Also the 3500 series won't anymore be supported in 8.6 and later software releases.

Thanks for the replies. 

 

What difference are we talking about when you say the 2800 can offer beamforming to way more clients simultaneously ?  I think I may have read somewhere that the 3500 can only serve 15 clients simultaneously.  Does that sound correct? What can the 2800 do?

 

Regarding the difference in spatial streams is there a definite quantifiable improvement with the 2800?  By that I mean is it measurable and not just sales blurb?

 

Thanks, Stuart.

I also have such a number in mind, somewhere around 25. As far as I remember, for the 2800 it's 128.

You can easily reach 2x - 3x the throughput with an 802.11ac client connected to the 2800 when running 80 MHz channels compared to an 3500 with 40 MHz one.
I wouldn't run 160 MHz channels though.

Then there is MU-MIMO, but the first clients are only slowly appearing, so I don't know if it really brings anything in a busy environment.

Oh and I think the 2800 has slightly better receive sensitivity, which slightly improves the overall speed.

Leo Laohoo
Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame

@eagles-nest wrote:

Could anyone advise the main benefits achievable in replacing 3502's with 2802's?


The biggest benefit of 2800 is the Flexible Radio Assignment.  IF this feature is turned on, the controller can make the decision of turning off the 2.4 Ghz radio and enable a 2nd 5.0 Ghz (micro cell).  This is good when the 2.4 Ghz spectrum is completely flooded.  

The other "benefit" of having a 2nd interface for etherchannel is debatable.  

 

And 802.11ac Wave2! 802.11ac can double or triple the throughput with capable clients.



@patoberli wrote:
And 802.11ac Wave2! 802.11ac can double or triple the throughput with capable clients.

802.11ac is just a hype.  

There is not a lot of clients that can support 802.11ac wave 2.  Plus, there is not a lot of companies that have a fat 10 Gbps internet pipe. 

In my case, even with 802.11ac clients, I have more than double the throughput on the 2800 compared to the 3500. So for me and my environment it's not a hype. I still stay below 1 Gbps, but having netto ~200 Mbit/s wireless compared to ~500 Mbit/s is really a big difference for me. I know, wave2 doesn't really provide much so far, but 802.11ac does.


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