Overview Cambium cnPilot e425H

Cambium CnPilot E425H is an enterprise-class indoor wall-mount access point. The device operates in 2.4 and 5 GHz bands and is based on the 802.11ac Wave 2 standard, which makes it an ideal solution for the hotel business, health care, as well as for ordinary households.

Special features of the cnPilot E425H

Rich wireless standards: 802.11a/b/g/n/d/ac/ac Wave2.

Radius support.

SNMP v2c and v3.

Automatic change of radio parameters when interference is detected.

VLAN support.

QBSS - QoS in wireless networks.

Roaming.

HotSpot network support.

Transmitter scheduler.

Rich routing capabilities.

Support for IPv6.

Security features against DoS attacks.

Cambium Networks is a manufacturer of professional carrier-class wireless devices, offering a range of products for building radio bridges and broadband access networks in the 2.4 and 5 GHz frequency bands. On the basis of manufactured links, telecommunication operators and customers can build flexible, interference resistant networks designed for data transmission. All this enables service providers and operators of corporate, industrial and governmental networks to build intelligent edge connections. Thanks to high performance, reliable operation, easy maintenance and reasonable prices Cambium equipment has gained trust and deserved recognition of consumers.

Controllerless Roaming

The E425H supports seamless Roaming across the network for up to 1024 clients. This allows you to create a hotspot network through the access point to further simplify the user experience.

Social Logging

The cnMaestro guest access feature supports welcome screens, social login and payment gateway for wired and wireless clients. Built-in advanced functionality is available directly on the controller. The ability to create real-time restricted traffic profiles and temporary guest access vouchers make the E425H ideal for hotels, coffee shops, or Wi-FI guests in offices.

WLAN Service Networks

The E425H monitors the Gigabit Uplink interface for network failures. If problems are detected, the affected WLAN ports are disabled, allowing client devices to select a neighboring access point.

Wi-Fi mesh

The E425H supports mesh networking, which provides a convenient way to extend Wi-FI coverage without laying down unnecessary cabling.

High transmit power

The E425H has the high transmit power and flexible control needed to control the power of data transmission in high-density systems. Bandwidth management through equitable airtime allocation and enhanced performance with autoRF make the E425H's network adaptable to the dynamics of ever-changing customer profiles.

High density, high availability

The capacity for up to 100 simultaneous client associations and 16 SSIDs, as well as two built-in backup memory banks, ensure that the e425H combines high-density networking with high availability.

Accessories

The e425H is shipped with a single wall bracket. Optional accessories also include a wall bracket and a dual wall bracket.

The goal of our tests is to verify the range of wireless network both in terms of signal coverage and real speeds available in the building. For 2.4 GHz connections, we assumed the maximum channel width of 40 MHz, unfortunately, the described device works only in a 20 MHz range, and for 5 GHz - 80 MHz.

The testing device was a MacBook Pro A1502 equipped with a built-in AirPort Extreme wireless card (Broadcom BCM4360 3x3, 1.3 Gbps PHY) running 802.11a/b/g/n/ac.

Network diagram:

Measurement with a spectrum analyzer

Measurement of transmitter's performance with spectrum analyzer shows exemplary performance of the transmitter. While working with 80MHz channel in 5GHz band, it did not show any noise outside the transmission channel. Definitely a device recommended for networks with a high density of transmitters.

Signal map

To make a signal map we used the AirSurvey software. To read the signal levels correctly please pay attention to the color legend at the bottom of the picture. The location of the access points is marked by an icon. The device on the "ground floor" was connected to the switch via Ethernet 1Gbps port.

Speed test

Before the speed tests, we verified the maximum performance of the LAN and the iperf3 server. The aforementioned laptop was connected with a 10/100/1000Mbps network card to a switch.

We obtained the following maximum speeds for a single TCP stream:

• 894Mbps download.
• 958Mbps sending.
We performed speed tests using WiFiPerf software, and the speed test server was iperf3 software.

Measurement point 3 - Download 88 Mbps / Upload 80 Mbps

Measurement point 5 - Download 32 Mbps / Upload 13 Mbps

Measurement point 6 - Download 72 Mbps / Upload 47 Mbps

The device does not have a quick start-up wizard, and very the large number of configuration options may cause difficulties for novice administrators in configuring the device. On the one hand, it is a disadvantage, but thanks to very detailed and extensive configuration we can set the device for specific purposes, which is important in corporate networks.