SCIENCE

Xirrus has announced that its XN series of Wi-Fi Arrays provided superior performance compared with Cisco's latest Wi-Fi solution based on tests conducted in association with The Tolly Group, a provider of third party validation of IT products and services. Among the results were demonstrated advantages in user density, data capacity, voice capacity, roaming, and coverage. The results were accomplished using 75% fewer devices in the Xirrus solution compared with Cisco.

Xirrus commissioned The Tolly Group to conduct a series of tests comparing the Xirrus XN8 and XN4 Wi-Fi Arrays with Cisco's 3502e thin AP plus 5508 controller solution. A comprehensive set of performance and functional tests were conducted on the two solutions in an office environment. A single XN8, supporting eight radios (integrated APs) was compared to four Cisco 3502 APs, also supporting eight radios to provide an equal radio count comparison. A single XN4, supporting four radios, was compared to 1 Cisco 3502 AP to provide an equal device count comparison. In all cases, the Cisco APs were connected to a Cisco 5508 controller.

"With the proliferation of Wi-Fi client devices and the subsequent need to deploy wireless infrastructure to handle increased user density, capacity, and flash traffic, performance is a primary concern in the design and roll out of a new enterprise wireless network. This was the focus of the testing we conducted for Xirrus which demonstrated 1 Wi-Fi Array clearly outperforming four APs and a controller from the leading Wi-Fi vendor," said Kevin Tolly, Founder of The Tolly Group. "The fact one device accomplished more than 4 devices from the competition is a testament to the benefits of the integrated and distributed architecture of the Xirrus solution."

Highlights of the test results include:

• User Density: Total time for 100 wireless laptops to log into a Windows domain and download a 23 Mbyte profile, using AES encryption:
  1. Xirrus: 2:30 for 1 XN8
  2. Cisco: 3:36 for 4 APs plus controller
• Data Capacity: Average time for 100 wireless laptops to download a 100 Mbyte file (10 Gbytes total), using AES encryption:
  1. Xirrus: 3:29 for 1 XN8
  2. Cisco: 4:05 for 4 APs plus controller
• Range: Signal strength and throughput at 112.5 feet from device
  1. Xirrus 5GHz: -80dBm signal and 46.2Mbps throughput
  2. Cisco 5GHz: No signal detected, no throughput measured
  3. Xirrus 2.4GHz: -69dBm signal and 13.5Mbps throughput
  4. Cisco 2.4GHz: -92dBm signal and 0.2Mbps throughput
• Roaming: Average roaming time for stations moving between 2 devices, using AES encryption:
  1. Xirrus: 27 milliseconds between 2 XN8's
  2. Cisco: 168 milliseconds between 2 Cisco APs connected to a controller