From among more than 250 applicants, CRN staff has recently evaluated and selected products spanning the IT industry that are offering ground-breaking functionalities and value for customers. Extreme AP5050, the industry’s first Wi-Fi 6E access point for high-density outdoor environments, has made it to the finals in the ‘Networking – Wireless’ category!
There are more Wi-Fi devices being brought into outdoor environments with each and every day. However, more often than not, as soon as users step outside of a building and stray further away from connection points like wireless access points, they usually start to see the network performance drop… quite rapidly. This can prove to be a real issue. For instance, let’s consider hospitals using devices for patient monitoring while transporting them between facilities.
Moreover, demand for devices that can operate in the 6 GHz RF spectrum is steadily growing, with major tech powerhouses like Apple or Samsung enabling 6 GHz connectivity in their latest products. And as consumers purchase these new devices and use new, higher bandwidth applications, it is more than likely that we are going to see the adoption of Wi-Fi 6E grow exponentially, spilling out into outdoor environments as the demand for ubiquitous connectivity grows as well.
For now, 6 GHz Wi-Fi has been restricted to indoor use. However, consumers anxiously await the benefits of Wi-Fi 6E in outdoor venues. And that is where AP5050 steps in.
AP5050
AP5050: paving the way for Wi-Fi 6E connectivity!
The goal of the CRN Tech Innovator Awards is to showcase IT vendor offerings that provide significant technology advances for business and organizations across 37 technology categories, including networking. The winners and finalists were chosen by CRN staff from among 254 product applications.
One of them, which ultimately ranked second in the ‘Networking – Wireless’ category, is AP5050 – a new family of purpose-built Wi-Fi 6E access points, designed for delivering enhanced wireless experiences, faster speeds, and reduced interference, enabling large outdoor environments to operate across up to three times as much spectrum as previous generations of Wi-Fi!
Extreme is the first to bring this latest generation of Wi-Fi outdoors (pending FCC ratification). The AP5050 delivers high-speed wireless connectivity optimized for high-density outdoor environments like stadiums, campuses or large hospitals, boosting the performance of both new applications and the legacy equipment that can benefit from the additional bandwidth.
Additionally, as a universal hardware platform, the AP5050 comes with a dual-persona capability, allowing customers to use the OS of their choice and making it easy to deploy by a cloud-managed service or on-premises network management.