Hardware

New Aruba AP Brings Wi-Fi 6 Express Lanes to Busy Environments

The Aruba AP22 maximizes device bandwidth in the office.

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John Breeden II is an award-winning reviewer and public speaker with 20 years of experience covering technology.

Most federal agencies with extensive Wi-Fi networks, whether for their employees internally or for use in public areas where guests can connect, built up and configured these networks long before wireless-capable devices flooded the market.

Today, even areas where Wi-Fi coverage had been adequate are starting to feel the strain. This manifests in slow connections, dropped signals, poor connectivity during busy times and even dead zones that make it impossible to work wirelessly.

The HPE Aruba Instant On AP22 was designed specifically for busy locations where older or less advanced access points are struggling. The AP itself is physically unassuming, just a little white disk that could pass as a smoke detector at first glance.

It comes with a small mounting kit so it can easily be attached to a wall or ceiling. And it supports Power over Ethernet, so you don’t even need to run power to it, just a network cable that is PoE-capable.

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Too Many Devices on the Network? No Problem

Within the unassuming enclosure are dual radios and the intelligence to enable multiple devices to connect simultaneously using either the 2.4-gigahertz band for older gear or 5GHz for cutting-edge devices. All of that together makes up the Wi-Fi 6 standard, or 802.11ax.

Wi-Fi 6 is not really a new wireless technology, but an improvement on how APs and other devices handle wireless signals. In my testing, connecting 20 different devices wirelessly through an older AP resulted in some of them experiencing slowdowns when trying to transfer large files or serve up bandwidth-intensive content such as streaming videos.

Because those streams were not managed well by the older AP, almost everything else connected at the time experienced performance problems due to new devices joining the network.

By contrast, when using the HPE Aruba Instant On AP22, all of the test devices had their bandwidth maximized to the best extent possible. Older devices still had slower connections than modern ones, but the great traffic control and increased bandwidth on the AP minimized the effect of too many devices on the network.

Administrators Can Easily Adjust Performance and Security Levels

While the AP22 handles most everything automatically, the inclusion of the free Aruba Instant On App also lets administrators tweak performance and even security levels with an easy-to-use graphical interface.

With the app, administrators can prioritize bandwidth usage, restrict certain applications from running or even create a home page that users will see when connecting — perfect for explaining the rules and security requirements pertaining to the network.

The AP22 is designed for a modern and complex Wi-Fi network. It can manage the wireless chaos that has crept up in recent years by augmenting and working with existing APs or replacing them altogether. It’s also incredibly easy to set up and maintain, something overworked IT professionals will certainly appreciate.

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SPECIFICATIONS

Device Type: 802.11ax wireless access point
Radios: Dual-band 5GHz and 2.4GHz
Other Connectivity: Bluetooth signal for use with Internet of Things devices
Security: Supports WPA2 and WPA3 encryption
Dimensions: 1.5x6.3x6.3 inches
Rack Size: 1.1 pounds

Logging In to the New Wi-Fi 6 Standard

When logging in to the HPE Aruba Instant On AP22, it might seem like you are experiencing new and faster Wi-Fi technology, particularly if you’re doing things such as streaming movies and other high-intensity content in a crowded environment where lots of other people are connected to a network.

However, Wi-Fi 6 is not a new type of wireless signal. Instead, it’s a collection of technologies that work together to better optimize existing standards, especially in environments where a lot of devices are trying to connect to a wireless network. It’s also sometimes referred to as 802.11ax to distinguish it from 802.11ac, which is the Wi-Fi 5 standard.

Wi-Fi 6 was invented in 2019 but has only recently started to be used more extensively as more devices with the technology are released. While it’s true that individual devices using the Wi-Fi 6 standard will probably see small bumps in speed when using a Wi-Fi 6 access point, the real advantage of the standard is its ability to effectively manage multiple connections at their best possible speed.

The first big advantage to Wi-Fi 6 is that it uses multi-user multiple input, multiple output transmissions, which makes more effective use of radio antennas and data streams.

When combined with the replacement of the 256 quadrature amplitude modulation found in 802.11ac APs with the much larger 1024 QAM standard, you get even more advantages. The new 1024 QAM standard can broadcast through eight spatial data streams, effectively quadrupling available bandwidth.

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But it’s more than just having greater bandwidth available with Wi-Fi 6. The APs that use it are also a lot smarter about managing signals, devices, applications and users. They do this by leveraging orthogonal frequency-division multiple access technology to pull every little bit of the available spectrum and give it to users.

It can do that because it divides up the radio spectrum into much smaller units than the older standard could, providing users with exactly the bandwidth they need with nothing wasted. The extra bandwidth that one user does not need can then be instantly configured for another who does.

APs with Wi-Fi 6, such as the HPE Aruba Instant On AP22, are constantly evaluating their connections and optimizing them so that everyone gets what they need as long as some sliver of bandwidth is still available.

In terms of performance, Wi-Fi 6 APs can offer users more stable wireless connections and reduced latency with almost no dropped signals. Should too many users overload the AP, which would require a very crowded environment, APs such as the Aruba AP22 are smart enough to follow whatever content rules administrators set up for them.

For example, they can be configured to reduce the bandwidth for certain applications, or to prioritize certain users or groups. That way, any slowdown will be minimized or perhaps even go unnoticed by whoever or whatever is designated as a priority.

While Wi-Fi 6 is not a new standard, it’s finally starting to see mainstream use. And given all of the optimizations bundled within it, it will seem like a new kind of wireless signal to most users, even if it’s only optimizing existing technology.