Cisco 1040 vs 1140 / Can a/g/n and a/g only AP's co-exist?

[Cooky]

Has anyone done evaluation between Cisco's 1040 and 1140 AP's?
If so, did you notice much better performance on the 1140?
We're trying to determine if the 1140's are worth buying, or if we should get the cheaper 1040's.

For a few remote locations we deployed a few 1130 AP's during the initial wireless rollout, and are looking into installing more AP's to support more mobile devices and users.

Should we stick w/ 1130's (if they can still be purchased), or can we install the newer 1040/1140's w/ 802.11n radio?

How well does having a mixture of a/g/n and a/g only AP's work?
Do we really gain anything by adding a few more 11n AP's?
Where would we add them, in relation to the existing a/g only AP's?

Also how well do the 11n AP's work when connected to 100M switchports?
They're advertised to support up to 300M of throughput, but we all know that's not the case in reality.
So I'm hoping we would be ok by plugging the new 11n AP's to the 100M access switches.

 

[m1ldslide1]

You can use whatever AP's you want to - the cisco controller will handle the radio management and etc so long as you have everything configured correctly. Mixed environments are extremely common.

802.11n is worth it IMO, even with only a 100Mb uplink. 1131 AP's are still available for a while I think, and while the 1142n AP's are a little more expensive you will get much more mileage out of them. Plus there are advances with 802.11n that increase efficiency and go beyond just higher throughput.

5Ghz is also worth it if you can afford it. Especially in environments where the 2.4 spectrum is crowded (ie lots of other wifi networks or interference) - the 5Ghz won't reach as far but will tend to have better performance in those environments.

 

[Cooky]

thanks for the response.

It was also my understanding that the N capable AP's provide superior RF capabilities, so that even a/g only clients would benefit too.

Almost all of our AP's support both 2.4 and 5Ghz due to the crowded 2.4 spectrum you mentioned, so we got that covered.

thx

 

[JackMDS]

It was also my understanding that the N capable AP's provide superior RF capabilities, so that even a/g only clients would benefit too.

RF G and N are using the same puny 2.4GHz 33mW radios.

The pure RF signal of G and N is basically the same.

N uses feeding schemes and antenna concoction to squeeze a little more bandwidth than G from the same technology.

Eventually the industry will have to come with a new design to take Wireless to next step.

Right now (with the N) they just milking few drops more from a "poor" old beaten "cow".



😎

 

[spidey07]

Jack, the power of N comes in the 5 ghz range because of 12 non-overlapping channels available and believe it or not it's better because it doesn't penetrate as well so you can have higher density of APs without interfering with each other.

These days Cisco has a nice feature to "force" the client to use the 5Ghz range over the almost useless these days 2.4.

 

[JackMDS]

Hi John

I am fully aware of it. However, the 5GHZ aspect is a private case, it can help in those circumstances that 5GHz is really adding some benefit. I.e., need for good short distance Wireless in areas of signal congestion.

In addition (Standard, or Not) most of so called 802.11n hardware does not come with dual band hardware.



😎