Huawei has announced what it says are the first enterprise-grade draft 802.11ac access points.
The AP7030DN-AC and AP7130DN-AC Indoor Dual-band APs are simultaneous dual-band access points supporting 802.11abgn and draft ac standards. The AP7030DN-AC has built-in dual-band antennas while the AP7130DN-AC connects to external antennas via three RP-SMA connectors.
Both APs are spec’d to support up to 128 concurrent users with 802.11n link rates up to 450 Mbps on both bands and a maximum 1.3 Gbps link rate in 5 GHz for draft 802.11ac compliant clients.
Huawei AP7130DN-AC
Both products can be powered via an external 12 VDC adapter or 802.3at Power over Ethernet. Other features include two Gigabit Ethernet ports, console port, WDS support, 4093 VLAN IDs, SSID-based VLAN assignment, 16 virtual APs, STA isolation (within VLAN), user-based bandwidth control and adaptive bandwidth allocation.
The APs can be managed via Telnet, serial console and centralized management software.
Huawei’s announcement is intriguing because it seems premature given that 802.11ac is still in draft form, with all products to date using Broadcom’s first-generation chipset. Today’s press release could just be an attempt to win mind-share, since neither pricing nor availability were announced and neither product appears in the FCC or Wi-Fi Certification databases.
There are product pages up, however, for both the AP7030DN-AC and AP7130DN-AC.