Difference between Clean Air 3.0 and Clean Air Expres

[Patrick Werner]

Hi Community.

There are some papers which show the difference, but these aren't very clear.

As i know Clean Air 3.0 will automatically adjust power level, etc. and Clean Air Express doesn't. Is that right, or what should be the main fifference? The CAP1702 (whit Clean Air express) is much cheaper than a CAP2702 (with Clean Air 3.0).

thanks in advance and kind regards patrick

[Leo Laohoo]

The main difference between CleanAir Express and CleanAir is WHAT COMPONENT does CleanAir.

With CleanAir, it is a dedicated chip.  With CleanAir Express, it's the CPU that does the CleanAir stuff.  So all AP1K (1602, 1702) are CleanAir Express and AP 2K/3K are CleanAir.

[Freerk Terpstra]

I totally agree with you that documentation on this subject has never been clear on what is supported and what is not. The primary reason for this (which I can think of) is that CleanAir Express has been implemented since software 8.0, which is still fairly new and the marking people needed something to show earlier than the release of that code.

A nice example is this document that states that "Air Qualty Index" is not supported with CleanAir Express, but from my own experience I can tell you that this just does work on 1600 and 1700 AP's with 8.0.110 code. Those access-points do report this information to the WLC.

CleanAir does not make changes to your power levels nor the channels, that is the RRM part of the WLC. However, RRM can use CleanAir information in his calculation (this is called event driven RRM).

[Abhishek Abhishek]

It's best to compare the data sheets for each access point, but I would probably lean towards the 2700e, 3600e or 3700e for what you are trying to accomplish. Of course, this will depend upon the size of the organization and budget.

Clean Air White Paper

http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/solutions/collateral/enterprise-networks/cleanair-technology/aag_c22-594304.pdf

Data Sheets for 1600 & 2700

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/wireless/aironet-1600-series/data_sheet_c78-715702.html

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/wireless/aironet-2700-series-access-point/index.html

From an 11n perspective, there are a couple of differences that make the 2700 more suitable for this environment, but that's not to say that the 1600 won't work. The 2700 also supports 11ac.

For more details please refer to the post-

https://supportforums.cisco.com/discussion/12219071/1602-cleanair-coverage-mse

[jiflorwi]

CleanAir and CleanAir express differ in one way only - CleanAir has dedicated memory for the sage chipset to work with.  CleanAir Express does not - and as such is limited to running realtime accross the PCI buss.  The only impact to this is the number of concurrent interference devices it will report.  I believe that number is 4, in CleanAir express.  And, 10 in CleanAir.