Hello folks, today I had the opportunity to play around with Cambium’s new XV2-2 dual radio/dual band indoor Wi-Fi 6 (aka 802.11ax) access point. I had an E600 on hand that I compared it with, along with two high end WiFi cards, the Intel Wireless-AC 1550 Wireless Network Adapter (9260NGW), and the Wi-Fi 6 AX1650x 160MHz Wireless Network Adapter (200NGW). The newest firmware was used for both the Cambium AP’s and the Intel network cards.
So let’s get started, first check out the unboxing video:
I do have to mention again, I am really impressed with the build quality of this unit. It’s SOLID, looks good, is unobtrusive, and can be placed to blend in anywhere. While it doesn’t come with a PoE, I think most operators that will be deploying this will be using it in concert with an enterprise PoE switch.
Next up, I ran some simple tests using iperf. To make things as even as possible, I used the same locations for both the AP and client. I used the same channel and settings on the AP’s and on the client. Each test was performed one at a time (both AP’s were NOT on at the same time).
First up we have Cambuim’s E600, which is a 4x4 802.11ac wave2 AP, tested with an Intel AC 1550 network adapter.
As you can see we have an OTA rate of 866.7mbps and a net data rate of 366mbps.
Next up we have Cambium’s XV2-2 being tested with an Intel AC 1550 network adapter.
Even though testing is with an AC adapter, there’s an approx. 15% increase in performance by just upgrading to the XV2-2 WiFi 6 AP.
Now let see what happens when we upgrade our client WiFi adapter to an WiFi 6/AX model. The Intel AX1650x. Let’s put the E600 back in place and see if we have any performance gains.
As you can see, the E600 paired with the Intel WiFi 6/AX card shows a very small, but still noticeable and reproducible increase in performance.
Lastly, lets take a look at the ideal combo… the XV2-2 WiFI 6/AX AP paired with the Intel WiFi 6/AX network card.
First off, we notice that unlike the other 3 prior tests, the OTA data rate is higher, fluctuating between 1 and 1.2gbps. This shows us that this combo is achieving higher spectral efficiency using the same 80MHz channel as the prior tests. We also notice that the net throughput is higher, and for the first time regularly hitting over 500mbps. This shows an approx. 22% increase in performance over the strictly AC AP/client combo.
This concludes my basic testing but a few things are clear:
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Operators that upgrade legacy AP’s to WiFi 6/AX will see appreciable gains in performance, even with legacy clients.
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The highest gains are to be found when using both WiFi 6/AX AP’s and clients.
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In my basic tests I barely touched on the full potential that the XV2-2 has to offer.
Now that I am using the XV2-2 full time and I have upgraded 1 of my clients, I’m eager to work towards upgrading more clients and also testing mobile performance to really push the dual radio design.
The spec sheet located 
