Wireless Access

Hello All,

I have a question about a topic that seems to generate some debate when I discuss it with colleagues.  It can be summed up with a simple question:

"Does the use of both Ethernet ports (LAG or LACP) on a Wave 2 access point make any difference in performance over using a single port?"

I've had people tell me that the AP can't provide more than 900Mbps of throughput to client devices anyway, so the extra cost of APs with two ports, additional cabling, and additional switch port are a "huge waste of money".  

What are your thoughts and gurus, please please chime in.

This is my first post and I thank everyone in advance for your input.  

BG

Practically, in normal use, you will never really see more than 1G can supply. 

Jerrod,

Thanks for your response.  Why then does Aruba and its contemporaries disucss dual homing Wave 2 APs?  Why is the second port there if it is of no benefit aside from redundancy?  And in some cases where PoE on the second port is not supported, the second port is essentially useless, no?

Because in *very* limited and specific lab instances, you *might* exceed 1G. Customers and partners lock in on that possibility and require a means to carry the max theoretical bandwidth. In the case of POE, if the 2nd interface doesn't support POE, and if they don't need to hang another device off the second interface, then that second interface is not required. 

The AP-335 has two interfaces, both will take POE, one is 2.5/5G and the other is 1G. 

Alright then - do you have any data whatsoever as to how often folks are dual-porting APs because they "might" exceed 1Gbps?

MOST people are dual porting for redundancy, some are doing it for a perceived need to have dual Cat6 for +1Gbps. There are no numbers for that, but you can peruse the threads here to see if you notice a trend at all. That said, dual Cat5/6 to the AP, when the other ends are terminated in different switches in a stack, THAT is a different matter altogether and is good for HA reasons. 

With the new NBASE-T Alliance and MGBASE-T Alliance is still rqured to use both ethernet ports on the APs to acrhive get the 5Ghz rate the Wave 2 is suppose to provide?

Assuming your AP configuration, environment, client devices and traffic profile could result in a wired traffic load in excess of 1Gbps, you can indeed use NBase-T or IEEE802.3bz compatible ethernet ports to sustain that on a single interface.

The Aruba 330 and 340 Series access points support this.

Isn't it true that you can set one of the ethernet ports for the 2.4 Ghz radio and the other for the 5 Ghz? 

That's just an implementation to split the load. I don't see any inherent added value of doing it this way..

My point was that when using the APs that have a SmartRate port, there's no need to LAG for capacity.

Do we need a "switch stack" to leverage dual ports on the AP? or Can we terminate it to different standalone switches?

We dual port for redundant POE and data in heavy use comon areas at our college.  Mainly on AP335/345 APs....that way the AP can switch over without interruption in services.  The newer AP5xx series works the same.