Proxim claims new 802.11n solution is faster and cheaper

Broadband network vendor Proxim announced an 802.11n solution it says is the first to achieve 320mbps of throughput on a dual-radio design, which results in an 802.11n network that costs roughly half the price of competitors.

"When we were engineering this 802.11n product, Proxim definitely considered whether or not we should adopt the centralized WLAN model employed by most of our competitors," said a company spokesman.  "In the end, though, we determined that, with the increased throughput of 802.11n, having a centralized controller in the WLAN becomes a huge bottleneck and introduces a lot of incremental costs to the end user."

This centralized architecture combined with the ability to use existing power over Ethernet (PoE) infrastructure to power its dual-radio 802.11n access points, results in significant cost savings, Proxim said. Moreover, the company claims it offers nearly double the transmit power of its competitors, which doubles the range of competitors' solutions.  

Other enterprise WiFi vendors have said two 802.11n radios require 15W, which is a higher power requirement than what can be delivered over PoE. Others have come up with various solutions to deal with the power problem, including using fewer antennas or proprietary PoE. Earlier this year, Siemens said it was able to deliver dual-radio, 3x3 MIMO 802.11n functionality while remaining compliant with the wattage limitations of PoE.

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