The last decade has seen Wi-Fi grow to reach shocking milestones, with over $2 trillion of economic value delivered. This new decade is on track to be the era of Wi-Fi dominance, as 59% of all internet traffic will use the technology. The next 10 years will see new device types, and diverse high-density wireless environments, which is why we want to offer an expanded range of Wi-Fi 6 options. The Meraki Wi-Fi 6 portfolio, combined with Wireless Health and our recent security innovations, will help organizations prepare for a reliable and secure wireless future.
The MR56 is our best-in-class 8×8 Wi-Fi 6 access point, designed for ultra high-density, and ultra high-performance.
MR46 is our newest 4×4 Wi-Fi 6 access point, which will serve high-density, high-performance environments.
MR36 is Cisco’s first 2×2 Wi-Fi 6 access point, designed for high-performance requirements, and large scale deployments with an eye on value.
The three Wi-Fi 6 models feature all of the newest 802.11ax capabilities, including OFDMA and MU-MIMO for both downlink and uplink. These features are critical for environments with large amounts of wireless clients and high bandwidth requirements. For example, Meraki access points at the U.S. Open last year saw vast amounts of uplink traffic, as 200,000 attendees uploaded photos and videos to social media and iCloud.
The Meraki cloud will help deliver Wi-Fi 6 at scale across distributed sites and large quantities of mobile devices. Armed with Wi-Fi 6, IT admins can meet performance levels across a broad range of challenging Wi-Fi environments. For example, 4K video or new applications such as VR and AR require extremely low latency wireless. These new access points will provide an immersive wireless experience for those using these emerging technologies. Wi-Fi 6 delivers this performance, even in dense environments such as corporate headquarters, auditoriums, event halls, or retail stores.
We are excited to see what new possibilities await for device mobility across a broad range of use cases and environments. New decade, new possibilities!
To learn more, join us on an upcoming wireless webinar, or try out one of the new Wi-Fi 6 devices via free trial.
Meraki is excited to announce an extension to our growing line of multi-gigabit (mGig) switches with the release of the MS355.
The new switch features a high-count of full, 10G mGig switch ports and is designed to help IT admins of data-intensive networks prepare their organization to meet the demands of next-generation access points. Universities, hospitals, and large public complexes like transportation centers all benefit from the increased bandwidth capabilities of the MS355.
The timing is right for mGig switching. Analysts believe the rise of 802.11ax (AX) access points – also called Wi-Fi 6 – will overtake the current 802.11ac standard by 2020 and by 2022 comprise up to 87% of the wireless access point market.* These next-gen access points require more capable switches to handle the increased traffic.
*Dell’oro Group: Wireless LAN Five Year Forecast Report, 2018-2022
Enter High-Density Multi-Gigabit Switching
Multi-gigabit, or mGig, switches offer the benefit of greater switching capacity while using previously-installed Cat 5e/6/6a cabling infrastructure.
Not all mGig switch ports are the same. Switch device makers may designate a switch as mGig but cap the max bandwidth on the port to 2.5G or 5G. The device is still operable, but the smaller bandwidth size limits the potential of greater data rates in the future.
Notably, we previously dipped our foot into the water of full, 10G mGig with the release of our first multi-gigabit switch, the MS350-24X, which contained just 8 mGig ports for smaller deployments of mGig-capable devices.
For that reason, we developed the MS355, a cloud-managed high mGig port-density switch designed to help organizations prepare for large deployments of AX access points.
The series comes in four models all with 4 x 10G SFP+ ports, 2 x 40G QSFP+ ports, and 400 Gbps of stacking bandwidth. All models use 100 Gbps optical cables to stack up to eight devices for greater network resilience.
The series varies in the number of mGig ports included on the switch:
