AC AP selection

[yuval_ben_ari_6]

I am trying to choose an AC AP for our new office.
I was looking at the R600 spec and have problem to understand the client limit spec:

Concurrent Stations	Up to 500 clients per AP
Simultaneous VoIP Clients	Up to 30

What does the VoIP Clients limit means? is that WiFi users that are using VoIP application such as Skype or a different type of connection supported by the AP?

Also, is there any spec that mentions the coverage distance of the AP?

[robert_lowe_722]

IMO you would be better served with 2 x R310's than a single R600. Single AP = single transmission per radio at any given moment. 2 AP's doubles the WiFi capacity, throughput (to the likely level office users would demand) & adds a level of redundancy. 

[john_d]

If one is at all cost sensitive, I would definitely recommend the R500 or R310 over the R600, but the R600 is already a great value.... Note that it's worth checking whether your clients are 1x1, 2x2, or 3x3 MIMO. A lot of clients, especially laptops, are only 2x2 MIMO, and at that point the R500 and R600 deliver virtually identical performance.


I agree with Robert that with a large number of clients (e.g. more than 20 per AP), it's advantageous to add a second AP. It won't boost any single client's speeds, but it will provide more capacity and robustness, and IMO you don't want to build a business around a single point of wifi failure, even if a single AP can service all clients.

[yuval_ben_ari_6]

Thanks for the input. Of course the office will have more than one AP. I am talking about a specifc area that I was trying to figure out if one AP is enough for.
Any downside to using "too many AP's" in a specific area?
Also, any downside to R600 over R500 except price? (assuming I'm using same number of AP's of both models). Regarding client MIMO, I'm don't really know which our clients support but obviousely we will want the best future readiness and users upgrade devices often...

[john_d]

Too many AP's: If you are getting to the point where you're putting 5+ AP's into a single open space (which you're not), you will start running into co-channel interference scenarios, where AP's cannot find unique channels for themselves and hence you have more situations where two APs have performance degradation from trying to use the same channel.... I don't think you are getting close to that yet.

But mainly the downside would be cost and disappointment. Load balancing is not 100% bulletproof, and if you are looking at 10 clients in a room, they will almost never balance themselves exactly 5 and 5. As long as you are okay with that and won't feel bothered or misled into thinking that 2 APs have more benefits than realized.... there's no downside 🙂


Same with R600 vs R500. The R600 is superior to the R500, but its benefits may not be realized in all scenarios even with capable clients. But still, if you are okay with the cost of the R600, it's definitely a better option.


The reason I went into the details above is that I've seen from personal experience many situations where people invested a ton of money into a single super-awesome AP and then ended up being disappointed that it didn't deliver the benefits the expected over the less costly options, and in reality they would have been better off getting two AP's. As a concrete example, being told that R710 offers "more range" and buying one R710 mounted in the center of a large open area, but in retrospect 2 R600's at opposite ends of the open area would've provided more consistent coverage and higher data rates because now the AP's are closer to clients...


I don't think it sounds like you are making this mistake, but it's something to keep in mind.

[yuval_ben_ari_6]

Hi all,
I did choose the R600 for that office.
I have another project now and I see that R610 is available.
Can someone point out the difference between them?