Will $500 11n APs kick start deployments?

802.11n prices head toward cliff

Industry analysis by expert Joanie Wexler, plus links to the day's wireless news headlines

Editor's note: The information in this newsletter was revised on March 19, 2010.

You can now get an 802.11n enterprise-class access point for less than $500 MSRP. How likely is that new price point to drive businesses off of 802.11g and onto the next generation of Wi-Fi for good? The answer might depend on your size and budget.

Ruckus Wireless recently announced $499 (single-band) and $599 (dual-band) 802.11n-capable APs aimed at midmarket companies, particularly those with lots of small, distributed sites. One such company that has already bitten is Rock Bottom Restaurants.

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Editor's note: The information in this newsletter was revised on March 19, 2010.

You can now get an 802.11n enterprise-class access point for less than $500 MSRP. How likely is that new price point to drive businesses off of 802.11g and onto the next generation of Wi-Fi for good? The answer might depend on your size and budget.

Ruckus Wireless recently announced $499 (single-band) and $599 (dual-band) 802.11n-capable APs aimed at midmarket companies, particularly those with lots of small, distributed sites. One such company that has already bitten is Rock Bottom Restaurants.

The 105-site chain plans to move off a Linksys 802.11g Wi-Fi platform and onto the new 802.11n Ruckus products. It wanted an enterprise-grade platform primarily out of concern for compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), says Rob Jackoby, vice president of IT.

"Other vendors' [802.11a/b/g/n] products were cost-prohibitive," he explains, adding that the chain is moving to tabletop multimedia applications that require 802.11n's typical 300Mbps-per-radio connect rates. "For prices comparable to other vendors' 802.11g product prices, we can now get 802.11n."

Note, though, that Motorola also broke the $500 price barrier last fall with a $495, single-radio version of its 802.11n-capable AP650 for branch offices.

Paul DeBeasi, vice president and research director at Gartner, says that while narrowing the price gap between 802.11g and 802.11n should help move businesses off of legacy WLANs, "You really need to be able to buy a dual-band 11n product for less than a 20% price premium over 802.11g" in order for enterprises to convert en masse.

Currently, there's a 21% price differential between a Ruckus 802.11g AP ($399) and a new Ruckus single-band ZoneFlex 7343 802.11n AP ($499). But enterprises will likely be more interested in the new ZoneFlex 7363 dual-band version ($599), which carries a 34% premium over the $399 Ruckus 802.11g device.

The dual-band option is more desirable because the single-radio device keeps you stuck in the noisy 2.4GHz band, where you won't get channel-bonding capabilities and where older devices will slow down 11n radios, DeBeasi says.

Performance-wise, according to Ruckus' own tests, its $499, single-radio 7343 AP averages just 90Mbps throughput compared to 156Mbps delivered by the $599, dual-radio 7363 device. Is 70Mbps of extra throughput worth an extra hundred bucks?

Note that the Ruckus dual-radio 7363 AP's $599 price tag closely undercuts several competitors: Motorola has a dual-radio AP650 option that lists for $685. Aruba sells its low-end dual-radio AP-105, which listed for $695 at the time of its launch last fall, and Aerohive also began selling its $689, dual-radio HiveAP-120 in the same time frame. All are 2x2 MIMO APs except for Motorola's, whose 2x3 MIMO configuration adds a little extra receive-antenna diversity that could boost signal strength.

Ruckus didn't test its gear against the Motorola or Aerohive equipment. But the company says that internal performance tests showed the Aruba AP-105 to average 106Mbps of throughput compared to the 156Mbps averaged by the Ruckus ZoneFlex 7363.

Joanie Wexler is an independent networking technology writer/editor in Silicon Valley.