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Cisco Ships Quad-Antenna Aironet 3600 Wireless AP

• By Leila Meyer
• 02/02/12

The Cisco Aironet 3600 Series AP

Cisco has launched a new addition to its line of Aironet wireless access points, the Cisco Aironet 3600 Series Access Point, which provides 802.11n connectivity over four antennas and three spatial streams.

According to Cisco, this access point is "designed to enable people to be seamlessly connected from any wireless device, even those with weak wireless signals, at a greater distance from the access point with up to 30 percent faster performance than any other access point.

Two models of the Aironet 3600 Series AP are available. The 3600i model has integrated antennas and is intended for typical office deployments. The 3600e model is intended for radio-frequency-challenging indoor environments and requires external dual-band antennas.

The Aironet 3600 Series AP also supports 802.11r and 802.11u. The 802.11r standard for fast roaming enables clients to move between access points without breaking a session. The 802.11u standard enables the network to communicate available services to mobile devices.

Key features of the Cisco Aironet 3600 Series Access Point include:

• Cisco's CleanAir technology, which is intended to create a self-healing, self-optimizing wireless network;
• Four-by-four MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) and three-spatial-streams;
• ClientLink 2.0, which is intended to optimize performance for tablets, smartphones, laptops, and all 802.11n 1, 2, and 3 spatial-stream devices, as well as legacy 802.11a/g clients; and
• 802.3af Power over Ethernet.

Cisco also said it will offer an optional dedicated RF-monitoring add-on module with Cisco CleanAir technology. The module will provide full visibility into all 23 channels of the WiFi spectrum, rather than just the traffic-serving channel, and will automatically choose the best channel for the access point to use to serve traffic. The RF-monitoring module should be on the market late this year.

The Cisco Aironet 3600 Series AP is available now, worldwide. The list price is $1,595 with external antennas and $1,495 with internal antennas. Further information is available on the Cisco site.