Introducing Cisco’s Catalyst Wi-Fi 6 Access Points – Just the Tech

for those who don't know I'm Fred Niehaus I have been doing Wi-Fi since 1994 we did walkie-talkie barca beep Hertz rent-a-car Walmart said can you make our POS Wireless and we're like piece of what ok register alright wireless Ethernet we needed faster radios went to spread spectrum radio you know going to spend spread spectrum radio you allowed us to get to Wi-Fi one and two and three and four and all all of that this is just the current lineup of products that we have today you know if you look we make more aps by accident that most competitors do you know and and in the line up here the 1815 series is small this 1830 I want to just call your attention a couple things p OE fifteen point four watts and then all of a sudden BAM I needed 30 watts to function right so I've got this coming new 1840 the 1830 1850 series is this this kind of crossed the line between two between fifteen point four watts and needing more than that right so we decided we're doing a revamp of almost all of our product lines now now and this particular a piece this 1830 1850 is kind of big kind of have you've been hearing a lot of noise about that nothing rattles and I've dropped this thing I don't know how many times and I'll bet it still doesn't rattle but we're getting rid of that coming out with this one you haven't seen this before this is the this is the basically the 1840 it's replacing these two still runs on 15.4 watts which is cool we make the very best ApS the 4800 is this one here has hyper location in it does things that nothing else really out on the market can even do the I'm I was a little upset about half a year ago or so all of these are called Cisco Aero net Cisco air on that right the very first one of the very first Cisco air on that ap is with the 4800 that was a b.a.p and then we did a 4800 as our top-end AP used the same number I figure after about 12 or 15 years we can reuse a number right so we get up to 48 hundred and they decided they don't want to call it air on it anymore I'm having a fit and stomping around tells wrong thing or no you know I've been here forever and I like Carol net you know and they're like well let's call it this this catalyst series right and I'm like why catalyst why what's wrong they're on that well Fred I was told what is the very best product in the Cisco line well the very best Cisco has best brand recognition best quality best everything catalyst I go then maybe it's there on that right I mean we're at least the second bad yeah so so the thought was let's take this AP the series of ApS as we go forward with Wi-Fi 6 with 11 a X let's call them catalyst and let's put a little bit more Cisco design into that thing than than what we did in Ohio you know in Ohio when we design an AP like that when I just through it'll pick it up and nothing rattles in this ap after I dropped it on concrete right a lot of aluminum here you know we make this stuff to work in a hot Goodyear Tire plant you know cold Kroger freeze or just about anywhere and it's the same with the 48 leverage you know it's designed to run anywhere there's a lot a lot of aluminum in there because we keep the heat down and we don't want it to fail we make the very best hard work right so we've made ApS and 99 make the APS throughout this whole thing and if you look at the new product now why it's a different design altogether it's a whole lot thinner a whole lot smaller doesn't weigh nearly as much and I'm like what about quality of that thing you know a lot of competitors they think well you know if I'm gonna sell you License Agreement to use this I don't care whether it's a paper cup styrofoam cup or a crystal cup you know if it breaks I'll just give you another one well that doesn't help if you're a Goodyear tire plant in Indiana the robots are running around things 35 feet in the ceiling and you've got to replace it you know and the line is down we want to introduce a peas that are still industrial quality still work well but we wanted to redesign them so the new ax AP is there's there's there's there's three of them here you see this Wi-Fi six compatible I'll tune on that in a minute when I went through this lineup I told you we had basically 18 series then we had 28 38 48 right so eighteen twenty thirty forty eight remember that because as we're going here this is the equivalent of basically the 1800s series for ax it's first out the gate ApS that are standards-based okay so their Wi-Fi six standards now OFDM a OFDM is a is a is really cool handle small packets the difference between OFDM OFDM a is OFDM a if you think of many many sub channels I can put multiple people on one sub channel so it's faster so latency is much much better so in a four by four AP we've done four by four as I mentioned in in AC so this is easy to get certification for four by four it's easy to get certification on the 90-120 so this is like the 1800s series ninety-one 1591 1791 seventeen is a true eight by eight but it were out of the gate early on that we came out early with that product and because it's an early chipset it only does off DMA and the downlink this isn't the only AP we're making right we've got uh several more in the pipe but for an early eight by eight we had to use the chipsets that were available today to get this eight by eight out the door so there's a lot of features in this but it will not be Wi-Fi six certifiable I don't care I've got another 8x8 the pipe that's will be ok but if you've got an RFP that's asking for anybody today and I don't have one then the competition everybody says well I got one they don't put that in their RFP we win so we don't want that so basically this is eight by eight this is four by four this has a 2.5 gig MVA multi gigabit port this one has a five gig and then our new 90-120 that's more like a 2800 remember I said these are standards-based this has Cisco technology in this this thing has got our own custom ASIC our own custom silicon in it it's it's different than what you would find in a standard based a penile tear into that bit but this has basically ZigBee in it it's got a 2.5 big multi gigabit port in it and it's been redesigned so like I said it's now 38% lighter smaller easier to deploy doesn't weigh nearly as much it's very very rugged it's not gonna break not gonna rattle you know and the design on this you know our guys in enrichment Ohio do a lot of the mechanical designs but we had to kind of bend a little bit because cisco wants to put their very best in there so they went and hired this Pina Farina may or her them people yeah I guess they do the alphabet Romero car a bunch oh yeah I don't know who they are you I'm a guy that plays bluegrass music you know on my front porch he I don't don't know about these things but anyway they did this Pina Farina design laid it out really nice and this AP also had a requirement of must use 802 that 3af 15.4 watts I can make every one of our ApS run on 15.4 watts in some mode or another by shutting off radios and stuff but the AP can actually come up in that mode know very few ApS out there can't almost everybody needs 30 watts and give us 30 watts and I got full functionality on all of these ApS as well using dot 380 so I can give you a full functionality with 30 watts but I can also give you functionality with that little old 15.4 well why would I want that there still are people who have small networks that have that older power scheme there's still people who want to be able to power the unit up and at least do a walk around and see what the coverage looks like and all they have is 15.4 and you have question Fred is that on all of the wall 2/3 oh so you're not talking just the 90 120 you can do that with all three that I can do that with all three ApS right now every every one at night the 15 the 17 and the 20 all of them have a 15 point 4 watt mode and moving forward with with other models coming out not that I can imagine that's gonna be a big problem I can't think of custom well remember the first two I said were entry level first to market this the third one the one that starts to become a power hog is is the 90 120 because it's got the RF ASIC and a lot of other things in it when we get into newer AP's future things maybe you know because remember this this is a 48 right so there's two other models we haven't with you know they're higher up on the scale when there's an equivalent with hyper location or anything else I probably won't have a fit right so then what and again I don't I just don't see that as a big problem with switching today but if it was what kind of features would I be missing for the most part what you're doing is when you start to cut down power but the problem is is you have you have a power ask I want 15 point 4 watts well remember I'm gonna lose 2 watts at the end of 100 meters of Ethernet cable right so I'm losing power there also oh gosh this new ap has got a u.s. USB port on it right so if I pull this cap off of here and I've got a USB port are you gonna plug something in that oh yeah I want to plug this into that okay well now you got another 500 milliamps we're gonna get that power from especially if you're a 15 point 4 watt so so that's the problem right I mean as you start to add things you know we do a lot of things with modules you know the 3800 has a modular the 4800 is basically a 3,800 with a module and the module is an RF ASIC that was in the 4800 as a module right you know so so we do modules we do things like that modules suck power USB sucks power multi gigabit ethernet anime net magnetics do one of the things I didn't mention about these ApS is notice most of them are pretty simplistic in the front just basically all you have is is the EM gig port the console port in the reset well where's my local power where's my DC power jack well where's my extra up sport well you start throwing an extra Ethernet port in there you start putting an extra power port in there you're sucking more power again those are things I can't just dynamically turn off and that's the reason why I couldn't get you know the the 1850 to run on on that lower power because of those features and you just can't even if you turn them off they still got power unless you're gonna put a relay in or something and physically shut them off so so what makes best-in-class AP hmm well if you have a dedicated radio like the 4800 had a dedicated radio that radio can do things and leave the serving radios alone certainly just handle the clients but use the extra radio for monitoring things like that better yet put a full spectrum analyzer on that on that monitor radio if you've got a full spectrum analyzer then I can tell the difference between you know a Wi-Fi chipset doing spectrum analysis gonna think I heard something over here it looks like maybe a phone that's a deck phone that's an oven and it's right with there or that's Bluetooth you you know the 3600 ap we made years ago bluetooth didn't exist when that ap came out it wasn't a product at all that anybody was concerned about we were able to put a module in that give it a hyper location get a Bluetooth you know so you know we do things via module so I consider a module on an AP part of something that might be best in class I also consider a full spectrum analyzer understanding the RF is being part of best of class fast location that's a fancy word for saying instead of using the servicing radios to to find AJ over here what I can do is I can fire up for APS use the monitor radios to scan all the channels and the monitor radios go boom boom boom booms by signal strength we figured out your over here you know I can do that without impacting clients serving Rios that's a big deal the other thing is you know we've used Marvell technology for a lot of our chipsets in the past because we really like them we were able to teach them how to do client link properly we're able to get get our spectrum analyzer woven into the silicon of their chipset and have one thing but you know my Cisco badge says no technology religion you you don't want to wrap yourself around only one vendor because then you only you have the limitations of that one vendor and those limitations are DFS so you know if you've got Qualcomm Broadcom Marvell those are all different companies making a decision on DFS on noise I'm another slide on that we'll get to if we have time wouldn't it be nice if you have a spectrum analyzer true one that could sit there and listen to that and go yeah I got a DFS event over here but my analyzer says that's really not radar I've looked at the back I've looked at the analysis on it's not wouldn't you want the RF ASIC to go override that and say ignore their DFS so the point is as different manufacturers have different DFS DFS is critical for understanding interference and you want to be able to get around that right so I mentioned modules we have nothing really I mean with everything we've done we have a large innovation of modules and silicon and special things that we've done with products you know we introduced clean air in dot eleven N and the 3,500 clean air is still been one of our big flagship things because it's important to know what the spectrum looks like same with the woodsy module the the 3600 brought yeah you know we were able to get Wi-Fi AC wave one into the 3700 before there was an AC you know that 11 AC when everybody was an N we're able to do hyper location flexible radio that's that's a big deal being able to use two five I'll touch on that and fast locate and then of course now the RF ASIC so what is the our face it you don't even saying on our basic our face okay well it's a custom chip that we designed there's a lot in that okay there's there's a radio if you if you take a look at is the iMac re net noise but but there's there's a rain a Wi-Fi radio here and an antenna connector two of them actually if you want to do hyper location but some products will support that in the future some products don't but you basically have the Wi-Fi radio going into this baseband processor and I can tell at the low high Q level what that RF looks like in fact it's so low level that we don't even use an oscillator on the radio we use an oscillator externally and inject it in because we don't want this to hear any noise it's not ours you know you don't want it to hear its own noise if you want this thing to really be an awesome receiver right so it's a software-defined radio full DSP and it's completely programmable we can do a lot with this with this that's just a block diagram as I said it the antenna jack comes in here it's Cisco Cisco custom silicon you got your spec analyzer your baseband processing and then it goes off to the AP so the AP says you put this in an AP and I've got a clear one over here but you can actually see this is a 90 120 with the you know that's clear you can see that chip I was waving around is right there so that chip is in there separate all together from any other products so that's not a standards-based ap it's a standards-based ap as far as meeting all the standards but it's above and beyond what you're gonna find in in that and that's the big deal you always harping on this DFS so let's give you a world world example at Mobile World Congress they had a thousand false DF detections DFS detections per day it was horrible you know by using the spectrum analyzer we're able to walk it back determine it and knock all that out of there and the takeaway is is you have really good throughput you have really good analysis of the spectrum that you don't have any other way so that's what it looks like inside the AP I was waving around this is the antenna system it's really cool take a look the antenna system on this these service the client radios dual band you know so it comes up natively 2.4 and 5 gig on these antennas if you decide you want to do dual five this does do a 5 other than ATP's don't even they piece from competitors don't dual 5 means instead of a 2.45 give me two fives that's 2 5 gig radios that can do multi-user MIMO 2 5 gig radios that can now do OFDM a you know this is a big deal even even even with that 11 ax or Wi-Fi 6 and then the RF ASIC has its own antenna and Billy has its own antenna so we've thrown a lot of hardware into this the reason flexible radio makes a difference is just a quick one and I won't dwell on this if you have one cell one channel you have clients close in and far away these these far away clients are going my name is Fred close clients are its Fred you know I set my data well if I'm sending my day and I'm in contention with far away clients that are slower I might have challenges a ssin at 60% but if I turn around say you know what I'm gonna break that up and create a VAP create to five gigs now I've got a cell where they're all in Fast and I've got a faraway cell where they're all more uniformed all the clients get a more uniform throughput whether you're closer you're far away and your utilization went because I used to 50 channels I went from one channel at 60% utilization two channels at 20 and 24 percent that's night and day I mean if you got a channel it's only at 24 percent the clients aren't gonna have contention and problems and retries it's all about making it better so the other thing is is we have this dart connector on the external models now this one is a 91 15 it doesn't support the dart the 90 120 we're coming out with will have a dart connector just like this usb on the side here and you'll be able to plug the dart digital analog radio termination pop it in and get four more antennas by defaulting to four and five on the top plug this in and I can be to four or five out here nobody else has that you realize I can I can put this in a window and put a patch antenna in the window cover parking lot and have an omnidirectional progra freeze or I can put the AP outside the freezer where it's cold pop hole input the antenna inside cover the freezer inside not with one 8p you know I can do many many different things like that with by having that and I can look go ahead the external antennas on the AP and the patch antenna you're running right okay that's it wasn't you know you have the ability if and here's the thing about that you know people like you get competitive pupu batter so yeah well you know they yeah they can do that well here's the thing what if your Lockheed Martin or some military facility I just use them as an example what if you're a military facility and you decide I don't want two four and five on one antenna I want to break it off I want to four out because I want to put it in up converter and I want to do something on the military frequency or somewhere else you could do that with our products you've got the flexibility of doing I mean it's a big deal because we're RF I'm a ham radio operator most of the guys in Richville Ohio love radio we do radio we do hardware you know anybody can make an AP but make one that I throw not rattle make one night put in a jungle with no no we've had people customers put these things in a jungle and duct tape them to a tree and they ran for about a year and then they fail and I'm like what didn't you put in the name a box no why not you know the reason it got a bugs got it into the Ethernet jack and ate up the gap pad material and that's what made the AP fail well then that'd still be running you know but but with these antennas you can go directional omnidirectional mix-match anything you want to do you know and the takeaway here is is this RF ASIC I'm crowing about right better DFS better full spectrum analysis better fast locate all this stuff no impact on the client serving radios that is huge okay tomorrow this radio is limited by software I say I tell people it's like making a cupcake cupcake out of the oven you don't put frosting on it it's got to cool down right the hardware is out of the oven folks the software people just have to write the software to do cool things Sam has a unique voice AJ has a unique voice if I can tell on the RF who it is I can do finger printing I can determine who's there I can do things that no one else will be able to do and to take away with that is basically beyond the Wi-Fi standards cool stuff robust hardware that never fails we're working with Samsung and all those other vendors as well to make sure we have the very best product

Channel: Cisco

Views: 12,519

Keywords: cisco systems, Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi AP

Id: DWNbNtugwLo

Length: 21min 9sec (1269 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 29 2019