Wi-Fi 6 brings WLAN performance to a new level with aggregate throughput potential measured in Gigabits per second. The advent of Wi-Fi 6 also brings economics to a new level as higher performance and higher density impact price-performance and total cost of ownership (TCO) calculations. This is according to the Tolly Test Report of February 2021.
Cambium Networks commissioned Tolly to benchmark the performance of its tri-radio
XV3-8 (8x8/4x4 MU-MIMO) and the dual-radio XV2-2 (2x2 MU-MIMO) Wi-Fi access points (APs), and comparable APs from other manufacturers.
“The XV2-2 delivered twice the price performance of competitors, had up to 49% lower TCO than competitors and outperformed competitors in bidirectional and downstream throughput,” says Teresa Huysamen, Wireless Business Unit Executive at Duxbury Networking, local distributors of Cambium technology.
The XV2-2 is a dual-radio Wi-Fi 6 access point (AP) designed to deliver next-generation networks with edge services at a value-based price. Wi-Fi 6 technology delivers higher network speeds and enables more connected devices at higher packet quality.
“Wi-Fi 6 brings a deterministic model to the radio frequency (RF) layer where the AP controls the client connections, including when to sleep, when to wake and how to transmit and receive packets. The XV2-2 is fully backward compatible with existing Wi-Fi technology and enables a massive growth of low power, low-bitrate IoT devices to add infrastructure intelligence into any market,” says Huysamen.
XV2-2 continues the enterprise network convergence with edge-intelligent AP managed by application-intelligent Cambium Networks XMS or cnMaestro management system. “Users can choose the management system that best fits their business and use the latest technology from Cambium Networks. cnMaestro Essentials comes at no cost to the customer, and that has a huge impact on the total cost of ownership,” Huysamen points out.
Cambium cnMaestro uses a distributed intelligence architecture with cloud-first management and edge-intelligent APs that self-optimise for the RF environment. cnMaestro delivers a single pane-of-glass management.
“cnMaestro offers elastic scalability and single-pane-of-glass management to deliver secure, end-to-end network and wireless lifecycle management with zero-touch provisioning, monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities. It manages Cambium broadband fixed wireless, cnMatrix Ethernet switches, enterprise-grade Wi-Fi APs and service provider residential routers, and simplifies operations and ongoing maintenance,” says Huysamen.
Cambium XMS leverages intelligent APs with an embedded edge controller to deliver edge services at any network density. XMS management plane is a cloud-first technology with a simple and easy-to-use interface delivering application L7 policy-based control, EasyPass BYOD secure access, and an MSP dashboard with drag-and-drop design. XMS management architecture supports software-defined radios (SDR) to operate the XV2-2 radio in either single 5 GHz 8x8 or dual 5 GHz 4x4.
XV2-2 comes with Limited Lifetime Warranty, providing return and repair service on the access point from date of purchase until end of life of the product.
“When deciding when to consider a network upgrade, network operators need to calculate the cost/benefit of upgrading to 802.11ax. The new Wi-Fi 6 access points improve performance and efficiency beyond 802.11ac networks even without the use of 802.11ax devices. By upgrading now, businesses can deliver more simultaneous video streams, and support more concurrent users and devices than before,” says Huysamen.