Performance Comparison of varios APs

[shanemoss]

Hi all,

We're planning an upgrade of our wireless solution from 7.0 Wism based controllers to standalone 5760 controllers, this will allow removal of old 1131 APs, continued use of 1142 APs and installation of newer 1602, 2702 and 3702 APs.  Just wondering if anyone has side by side comparison relating to performance (expected real world performance) of all of these APs - required for business case justification purposes.

Thanks, S.

[Leo Laohoo]

continued use of 1142 APs

Not for long.  In future releases of the soon-to-be-announced 8.X, non-CleanAir capable APs (except 1260) will no longer be supported.  

installation of newer 1602, 2702 and 3702 APs.

If you're running WLC, then I really don't see any place for the 1600.  

In regards to the 2700 and the 3700, be aware of the PoE power requirement of 20.0w.  You can power these models up with 15.4w PoE but at a lower speed/MCS settings.  

Right, now I've mentioned the easy part.  Now here comes the hard part ... 

Exactly what are your motives for deploying 2700 and/or 3700.  The reason why I'm asking is because both models support 802.11ac Wave 1 natively.  And 802.11ac Wave 1 has a theoretical speed of 1.3 Gbps.   And in the case of the 3700, how do you shove 1.3 Gbps of data down a 1 Gbps copper link.  I am not sure how the second port for the 2700 is going to behave since you can't form an etherchannel with it (for the time being).

[Mathieu Sturm]

Will the etherchannel be available in a future release in the 7.6.x line or in the not yet release 8.x line? How can they claim the 1.3 Gbps when there is no etherchannel?

[Leo Laohoo]

How can they claim the 1.3 Gbps when there is no etherchannel?

This is where you use Cisco's very expensive solution called Converged Access.  You directly-connect your 802.11ac-capable APs to the 3650/3850 or Sup8E switch.

Will the etherchannel be available in a future release in the 7.6.x line or in the not yet release 8.x line?

In future release, the 2nd port of the AP2700 (and future dual-port APs) will support etherchannel.

[Leo Laohoo]

Thank you for taking the time to rate our posts.  

[Mathieu Sturm]

The least I can do for the help. I wish I had a test cluster so I could try out the new things myself

[Leo Laohoo]

But you have a test cluster.  It's your newly purchased 5760.  Y'see, the 5760 runs on a totally different IOS as the 4400.  There is no chance you could copy run the WLC 4400 configuration file on the 5760:  You will need to configure the 5760 from scratch. 

So there you go, your own "test cluster".  :)

[Abhishek Abhishek]

Please refer to the link for the differenece between differenet access-points and their deployment-

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/wireless/buyers-guide.html#outdoor

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/technology/apdeploy/Cisco_Aironet.html