Wireless Access

I have 300 AP-225's, which state in the specs that they have Software defined radios. How would I convert the 2.4ghz radio of the ap into a 5ghz radio to have 2 5ghz radios as this is what its for. I can't find it in the controller.

You cannot convert both radios to the 5ghz band.

I guess I'm confused then because that is the definition of software
defined radio.

Matt Stover
Network Engineer
Rome City Schools

SDR means many things.

Having two radios in the same AP on 5GHz is poor design and results in poor user experience.

Even for the future as 2.4 fades quickly?

2.4 will be around for a very long time. Most IoT devices are 2.4 only due to battery life + range with lower data rates.

Having two 5G radios enabled on the same AP will wreak havoc in most environments.

Additionally SDR, as a term in WiFi is the ability to regulate the radio in terms of regulatory approvals. COmpanies that don't use SDRs would have to create a chipset for US that conforms to FCC, an ETSI that confirms to EU, JP radio for Japan, etc. With our SDRs, they just take a new DRT (regulatory table) and can be made to work in most any country (for our Campus AP models).

 

Dual-5Ghz APs require both specific hardware designs as well as special software that limits what channels each radio can run at, as well as additional filters to help isolate on-board ACI/CCI from the PCB. And so far in our testing, outside of *very special artificial cases* we are not seeing 2x of 5Ghz performance from a dual-5Ghz AP, and in most real world cases, our single 5Ghz APs are outperforming vendor's dual-5GHz solution (Ruckus and some low end odd vendors, we will be testing Cisco's implementation when they finally start shipping). 

Also, to add another layer of caveat to dual 5ghz is that in every case there will have to be some minimum separation of the two 5Ghz radios. Figure maybe 80-160MHz of separation (better performance will be had with more separation), which means from a channel planning/AP topology perspective, you loose a great deal of flexibility AND available non-interfered channels.

 

So while you may see a peppering of APs where they are single 5Ghz to cover an area and there's 40-80Mhz channel separation between APs, you will start to see issues when both radios are doing 5Ghz because each radio still needs the same separation IN ADDITION to the internal separation. So you move from having ~24 non-overlapping channels to plan with, you automatically *and in best case* drop to 12, and likely more close to 8 (if you factor 160MHz separation for on-AP dual 5Ghz).

 

In short, there are very few use cases where dual-5Ghz will be advantageous, and so far we haven't seen anywhere close to 2x perfrmance gain (even when doing UNI1 and UNI3 on the same AP). 

It's an old thread but still here is my question: what Ruckus AP(s) with dual 5GHz was used in your tests?