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Cisco plays catch-up, gets directional

Cisco has got into shaping Wi-Fi connections with the Aironet 1140, which uses directional Wi-Fi connections to speed up legacy equipment as well as supporting the still-unratified 802.11n standard. Cisco dubs the directional technology ClientLink, and reckons that it can increase throughput for 802.11a/g devices by 65 per cent …

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Anonymous Coward
Stop

Hold on....

"in an eco-pack that enables customers to order ten of the access points with the packaging of one".

So does that means that one device is completely over packaged and comes in a 1mx1mx1m box? Or have they found the keys to the T.A.R.D.I.S.?

Not a directional technology

As the Cisco description makes clear, this is not about them "getting directional" - it is about using the combined signals to/from multiple antennas to produce a more consistent signal that is less affected by multipath fading. The antennas used at the access point will have spatial separation, but in most implementations would be omnidirectional (just as in 802.11n MIMO deployments). In fact Cisco emphasise the benefits of this approach over a directional/beamforming solution.

Nevertheless this does not overcome three other fundamental issues associated with poor throughput in microcellular Wi-Fi, which in my experience generally have a greater impact on enterprise wireless performance - non-optimal AP selection by clients, co-channel interference and packet loss during roaming. All these issues are solved in Meru Networks' architecture.

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