On the picture, if you notice, the plastic ring have metal paint on the other side, and some is leaked from the process to the backside..
who cares when the wifi is almost the same…
FCC has some good photos from inside. There you can see the mentioned reflector-foil (or whatever this is). Now I understand.
https://fccid.io/TV7CPGI52XL/Internal-Photos/Internal-Photos-5337573
But I assume cAP XLs size was primarily for the extended range/coverage.
But a decent sized cAP ax with more ventilation holes than a cap ac - but with similar size - would have a fanbase.
Extended range could still be another product later on.
I can understand, why someone likes a compact case. When you see the devices side by side: https://youtu.be/_IGIKthVu4I?t=124
Rextended check this video..there is guy who refers the same…cap AC has better wifi signal than cap XL…
On youtube you will also find videos of professionals who demonstrate that the earth is flat, or engineers who teach how to make electricity for free…
It doesn’t matter, for me it’s better the XL, and seeing that video doesn’t change anything, and neither for @holvoetn I think.
And whatever happens are two other products that have absolutely nothing to do with this, it’s just a waste of time.
I apologise for starting the fire. It is quite an ugly device though, compared to pretty much every competitor device.
Nobody forces you to buy this,
It’s your choice!
what competitor?
if i search on google “ax ap” the first result is:
Just a 16cm x ~3,3cm dish…
2cm less on diameter, same thikness but..
antenna gain on 2.4GHz only 2.8 dBi and on 5GHz only 3.0dBi.. just half dBi less (those are logaritmic numbers and the half mean 1/3 of the Watt)…
The cAP ax has double gain on both 2,4GHz (5.6dBi) and on 5GHz (5.4~6.0dBi based on frequency)
Therefore, compared to the “gain” of 2cm in diameter, the antennas of this competitor product are more “deaf” by 66.6…%
(the competitor device is AX1500, the cAP ax is AX1800)
gain is totally misleading in the context of a soho/enterprise AP.
gain is a factor of directionality and size.
when talking about a small AP like this, the bigging antenna size option isn't there.
so to have a higher gain cAP than UAP/U6 unit, you must have a more directional antenna. ie, more gain in one direction or plane and less gain in another. Placement and orientation becomes more critical.
There are ways to overcome this but not in a 2x2 design. In a 4x4 design you can make each antenna element more focused in a difference direction and use beamforming to get more signal out of the air, so 'artificial gain', but these are 2x2.
I've tested so so so many 'ax radios on the bench over the last year. 4x4 'ax designs are effectively +4dB real world and they are -4dB noise real world. That doesn't mean much when your signals are really good, but when your down in -70 to -90 suddenly that almost 8dB of SNR benefit is a dramatic difference. A U6-lite vs U6-enterprise with the some output levels and the same series radio but 2x2 vs 4x4 and I'm able to get 100Mbps on the U6-Enterprise where I can't get the U6-lite to stay connected. The U6-lite might as well be the cAP ax' direct competitor.
Long winded way of saying I and most people here shouldn't be nearly concerned about gain for a multi-AP system because it's not doing what they probably think it's doing. More cAPs with less gain and lower power output is the way.
I eagerly await some 4x4 designs. I have almost 100 U6-lites out there right now, but I've even replaced some with the U6-Pro and U6-Enterprise, the difference between 2x2 and 4x4 in a busy environment is unbelievable.
Unfortunate that it copied the cAP XL design, I also find it very ugly.
I aggree, I mean I don’t think its ‘bad’ but I have had people comment that they look a bit cheap up close. The square body is a big improvement especially once ceilling mounted.
The hap ax2 case is completely open on one side, you are basically looking at the exposed black heatsink with only some hints of plastic casing around it.
But I agree that cap xl is not the prettiest thing.
I often met the case where I couldn’t cover four rooms in a building in 5GHz band with UAP-AC-Lite as signals dropped bellow -70dB while located 8 to 10 m from AP, with walls in-between.
I was not aware 4x4 MU-MIMO could change things in such situations.
I’ll give 4x4 MU-MIMO.
Thanks for mentioning this.
An other note, I observed some AP are quite sensitive to the way they are mounted. When wall-mounted, I had lower signals in some directions.
Does 4x4 MU-MIMO beamforming changes this ?
In other words, would you mount a 4x4 MU-MIMO AP on a wall or would you prefer to mount it on the ceiling ?
Yes, the mikrotik and ubiquiti ‘saucer’ models have patters that favor the horizontal plane and slightly away from the ceiling. Worse performance for wall mount. Always ceiling mount if possible.
4x4 radios simple have more antennas is a more omnidirectional pattern overall so should do a bit better. don’t expect miracles, walls are walls.
So I should still look for a wall mount accessory, allowing horizontal mount on a wall.
Your words imply that antennae for MIMO are sector antennae each covering a share of space. But they aren’t, all MIMO antennae cover same space (direction and beam width). This is true for beam forming, which is important part of massive MIMO (4x4 or higher order). Beam forming indeed increases signal strength and improves service quality.
No, in the U6 4x4 devices the antennas are pointed in separate directions. They cover more direct/focused area than the 2x2 units do. MUMIMO/MIMO extracts data from reflections and refractions that come in different angles on a mounce. All 4x4+ devices with fixed antennas are positioning those to have slightly different directionality because MUMIMO/MIMO functions on these reflections to identify data from noise. 4x4+ radios (again, with fixed antennas, not rubber ducks flailing around) are looking out in more directions and so have more even coverage as a necessary design feature of getting MIMO to work.
Disclaimer: I’ve worked as senior radio engineer for a major MNO for 15+ years. I was responsible for optimization of network coverage and performance of UMTS and LTE networks, so I believe I know sonething about antennae, MIMO, etc.
Vast majority of simple WiFi devices (such as SOHO APs) have omnidirectional antennae … and their shape doesn’t change this much. What adds to directivity is either addition of a reflective surface or m+having antenna groups. The former (use of reflective elements) is quite oftenly deployed in WiFi APs to create somehow directional radiation pattern which is necessary to get antenna gain anything above 2dBi (which is gain of basic antenna dipole; smaller antennae often included in smaller WiFi APs often have negative gain per-se).
Changing orientation of attached dipole antennae (which are often featured on mean looking famer APs) helps with MIMO performance … not because they would change coverage, but because they can better receive the bouncing signals (and polarized signals).
Example of a two antennae group, which is often used as basis of group antenna is below. It shows two (fancy shaped) antennae, at angle of 90° for polarized 2x2 MIMO. One antenna consists of the two diagonally placed “squares” and if one looks carefully, it’s possible to see how the two halves are connected. This antenna element, without any additional elements, is omnidirectional as much as antenna dipole (which doesn’t radiate along the axis of dipole, hence usual use in vertical orientation).
When such antenna elements are used in panel antenna, antenna radiates in direction of photographer. Whole back of panel antenna is covered by (aluminum) reflective plate which also continues in sides of antenna - this gives basic directionality. Panel antennae often have pretty narrow beam in vertical direction (can be less than 10°), that’s achieved by using several same antenna elements stacked vertically which all transmit at same phase (so feeder connections lengths have to be the same down to a fraction of hundreth of wavelength, at 2GHz that would be around one millimetre).
@mkx:
Would you require yourself to mount 4x4 AP horizontally or rely on 4x4 beamforming and mount them vertically on walls ?
I’d rely on beamforming. “Static” 4x4 MIMO only works if client(s) also support 4x4 MIMO but most of them don’t. Having AP capable of 4x4 MIMO does slightly help with 2x2 clients because AP can use “space diversity” for slight improvement of that 2x2MIMO (in both directions) but improvement us nowhere near what 4x4 can do.
MU-MIMO with beamforming also has to be supported by clients, but chance of supporting that is much higher … because for 4x4 MIMO some real estate is necessary (in form of multiple antennae, whatever shape they might be), while support of MU-MIMO and beamforming on client side is done in software (run by Rx DSP).
Beamforming might seem similar to the “space diversity” thing mentioned in previous paragraph, but it’s actually much better. For two reasons: AP can focus energy better so SINR increase is much higher … and AP can serve more than one client at the same time - that’s the MU part of MU-MIMO (stands for Multi User). Number of concurrently served clients is not unlimited, sum of all streams is limited by MIMO order supported by AP. E.g. 4x4 AP can theoretically support 2 2x2 clients or 4 single chain clients or 2 single chain plus one 2x2 clients.