Networking & Wireless | News

Xirrus Launches Dual-Radio 802.11ac AP

• By Leila Meyer
• 10/09/13

Xirrus has debuted its XR-630, an 802.11ac access point that offers dual radios.

According to Xirrus, the advantage of the dual-802.11ac radio design is that it lets mobile users experience WiFi performance comparable to a wired network. The new 802.11ac standard operates in the 5 GHz band only, but some other dual-radio APs supporting 802.11ac limit one of those radios to 2.4 GHz to support legacy 802.11b/g/n devices. The Xirrus XR-630 supports 5 GHz 802.11ac on both radios, so organizations can maximize their wireless network density and capacity.

However, since most current smart phones, tablets, laptops, and other WiFi devices use 802.11n technology, organizations migrating to the newer, faster 802.11ac technology need to be able to support legacy devices. Xirrus offers that capability through software rather than hardware. Xirrus ACExpress enables IT administrators to separate clients by type onto different radios, grouping faster clients together and slower clients together, to maximize performance for both.

Key features of the Xirrus XR-630 include:

• Two radios capable of supporting the 802.11ac standard;
• Speeds up of to 1.3 Gbps, approximately three times the maximum data rate of 802.11n;
• Xirrus ACExpress technology to separate high-speed mobile devices from lower-speed ones in order to maximize performance; and
• Xirrus Application Control technology to help IT administrators identify and manage more than 1,200 application types using Layer 7 deep packet inspection (DPI).

The Xirrus XR-630 AP will be available in December for around $1,100.