Back in late January 2018, Aerohive announced its 802.11ax product line. We have eagerly awaited for the company to ship and today, the company announced its first 802.11ax customer, Wellington College in the UK. The company claims it is first to ship 802.11ax to a European customer; we are not aware of any others who have done so (but not every vendor puts a press release out about this kind of thing). Still, quite an accomplishment. We understand that the company plans to continue shipping more products in the coming weeks and that by “late summer” the 802.11ax product shipment status should be considered “shipping.”
We had a follow up call with the product managers at Aerohive about 802.11ax and got an update:
- Aerohive has had several beta customers already using its 802.11ax APs
- The company expects that the OFDMA features in 802.11ax will be more important than the MU-MIMO features in practical terms
- Target Wake Up Time and 2.4 Ghz support are important features supported in the first Wave of 802.11ax to support Internet of Things (IoT) devices
- Overlapping Basic Service Set (OBSS), 1024 QAM and 160 Mhz Channel width will all improve functionality of 802.11ax compared to its predecessors 802.11ac and 802.11n.