Choosing AP - MIMO

[nikolami]

Hi,

Does anyone has experience in using wireless AP with MIMO and non-MIMO antennas. Is there a much better signal quality with MIMO AP which justifies higher cost of these APs?

For example, is it a good decision to choose AP93 (2x2 MIMO) or just simple and cheaper AP68 (no MIMO)? I suppose that single radio 802.11b/g/n is enough to have in network (network won't have support for a/n standards)?

Or does higher price of AP125 (3x3 MIMO) comparing to AP105 (2x2 MIMO) is really supported with 50% better signal quality?

Does MIMO technology will produce better signal quality only if on both ends of wireless link are MIMO antennas? This is not a case when we using APs and notebooks.

Regards,
nikolami

[cedric1]

the best is to have dual radio AP a/n and b/g/n

best practice is to use n in a frenquence.
2*2 mimo seems to be enough
and I think on notebook when you have have n you can have mimo too.

For me ap 105 is the best choice price/flexiblity

cheap ap are single radio

[nikolami]

Thank you Cedric for these informations.

Definitley, 802.11n should work on 5GHz (802.11a). On the other side, most wireless devices today work on 2.4GHz.

Wikipedia:

To achieve maximum output a pure 802.11n 5 GHz network is recommended. The 5 GHz band has substantial capacity due to many non-overlapping radio channels and less radio interference as compared to the 2.4 GHz band.[7] An 802.11n-only network may be impractical for many users because they need to support legacy equipment that still is 802.11b/g only. Consequently, it may be more practical in the short term to operate a mixed 802.11b/g/n network until 802.11n hardware becomes more prevalent. In a mixed-mode system, an optimal solution would be to use a dual-radio access point and place the 802.11b/g traffic on the 2.4 GHz radio and the 802.11n traffic on the 5 GHz radio.[8] This setup assumes that all the 802.11n clients are 5 GHz capable, which isn't a requirement of the standard.

One solution will be dual radio APs, which are not cheap. Other is to implement single radio APs in two phases - 802.11b/g in the 1st phase, and later 802.11a/n (when most user devices have support for 802.11n).

Regards,

Nikolami

[cedric1]

thanks for this wiki info, so my thinking was not wrong

Cedric