Wi-Fi array leader Xirrus offers products with a modular architecture – one that pays off big with their announcement of new 802.11ac modules.
The Wi-Fi array, which I once described as either a super multi-radio AP or a collapsed-backbone WLAN switch (or both), is a great way to provision a lot of capacity in a given location, and Xirrus, who pioneered and lead in this space, have in recent years been offering arrays with modular radios. It’s possible, then, to mix and match and even field-upgrade the radios in an array as new technologies appear. And that’s exactly what Xirrus announced today, a new pre-order upgrade plan for adding three-stream .11ac modules to their current product line. Xirrus arrays enable the colocation of 4, 8, or 16 radios in single package, and modularity is the key to investment protection as new technologies, like .11ac come along.
The only cautionary note here is that multiple .11ac radios could swamp the inherent backhaul capacity of certain models, so this will need to be taken into account when configuring a solution. Not all radios in a given array have to be .11ac, and it would be hard to recommend such anytime soon regardless, so Xirrus presumably has users covered.
While I’m not expecting a whole bunch of enterprise-class 802.11ac before the middle of next year, momentum is clearly building, and I will of course have much more on this technology over the next few months. In the meantime, it’s also worth noting that Xirrus is the Official Supplier of Wi-Fi for the Interop New York conference, where I am all this week. They’re also supporting a clever certificate-based WPA2-Enterprise mechanism that’s very simple for attendees to take advantage of, and which I’m personally using. And they’re covering the entire event with only 20 arrays, vastly simplifying installation for such a large conference (15,000+ attendees across a good deal of the Javits Center) – and an ideal venue to demo of the power and value of the Wi-Fi array strategy.
