Motorola: Novel architecture opens the door to WiMAX

Editor's note: This is a summary of our testing of this product, for a full rundown of how it fared in our testing across 10 UTM categories, please see our full coverage.

Motorola probably wishes we'd tested its AP-7131 just a few weeks later. We hit a few performance issues with the software image Motorola supplied, including one that prevented us from measuring throughput of short frames in some 802.11n and mixed-mode tests. Further, in our WiMix tests, the Motorola devices strayed beyond service-level agreement boundaries at much lower loads than other systems tested. Motorola did extensive debugging and optimization in the weeks after our tests, and presented us with significantly improved results from internal tests; however, we did not verify these results.

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Editor's note: This is a summary of our testing of this product, for a full rundown of how it fared in our testing across 10 UTM categories, please see our full coverage.

Motorola probably wishes we'd tested its AP-7131 just a few weeks later. We hit a few performance issues with the software image Motorola supplied, including one that prevented us from measuring throughput of short frames in some 802.11n and mixed-mode tests. Further, in our WiMix tests, the Motorola devices strayed beyond service-level agreement boundaries at much lower loads than other systems tested. Motorola did extensive debugging and optimization in the weeks after our tests, and presented us with significantly improved results from internal tests; however, we did not verify these results.

Click to see: See how the products rated in our scorecard.

Under the AP-7131's sleek Italian-designed cover is a novel architecture. While most access points in this test have two radios, the AP-7131 has room for a third, most likely a WiMAX module now in development. With both Wi-Fi and WiMAX modules in place, a single access point may be capable of service both wireless LAN and wireless WAN clients.

The AP-7131 exceeded standard PoE requirements in one of our tests, thus requiring the use of a bigger PoE supply. While it's probably possible to use the AP-7131 with standard PoE power supplies in many situations (especially those involving short cable runs), newer PoE-plus power supplies will be needed where maximum performance is a requirement.

Score: 2.85 out of 5

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