MR45 vs MR52

[JohnT]

Hi Everyone,

I'm looking to purchase some new access points for one of our locations and I can't decide between the MR45 and the MR52.  Our location has a mixed environment of corporate, retail and restaurant.  I've had great luck with the MR52, but the MR45's seem like a better long term investment with Wi-Fi 6 compatibility and new technology.  However, I have read some forum posts about issues with HP laptops and I don't want to create any headaches for myself.  Does anyone have any feedback they can offer on the MR45's?

[PhilipDAth]

What about jumping to the MR55?

[BrechtSchamp]

The MR45 is the evolution of the MR42. That said, specwise, the MR45 is more similar to MR53 than MR52. But as @PhilipDAth already said, MR55 is the evolution of the MR 5x series.

Up to you if future proofing means sizing up the streams 4x4:4 vs 8x8:8... 😉

Both would be solid investments for the future. Although they are indeed new and may have some creases to iron out still.

[JohnT]

I considered the MR55, but it's significantly more expensive than the MR45.  The MR45 seemed to be on par spec wise (4x4) and price wise with the MR52, so that was my thought process.  We don't push large amounts of data, but we do have a high amount of devices on our network so I'm more interested in the eventual density benefits of Wifi 6.  My biggest concern is the production readiness of the MR45 and the last thing I want to do is introduce problems with our wifi.  Has anyone deployed these and had no issues?

[redsector]

I have got one MR45 to test in a meeting-room connected with one gigabit to an MS225-48 switch. It‘s running well. The new apple iPhone 11 is running with wifi 6.

[redsector]

New accesspoints are having new issues. If you are patient you will get a stable MR45 after a few firmware upgrades.

[MerakiGeoff]

Hi John,

What are your requirements? The main benefit of Wi-Fi 6 is efficiency in high density deployments. Being a 4x4:4 wave 2 AP, the MR52 is more than capable, but it's understandable wanting to future-proof yourself. There are not many Wi-Fi 6 clients out there yet so the benefits won't be realized for probably another year.

There were some issues with certain clients when the MR45/55 first came out because users hadn't updated their NIC drivers to support the new 802.11ax information elements, but the same thing happened when 802.11ac and 802.11n came out. It takes two radios to tango and with any new infrastructure technology, the clients will often times need updates too. At this point, most modern devices have updates available and it's not an issue. If you go for the MR45 and do have clients that have trouble with 802.11ax though, the option does exist to disable it on the Wireless > Configure > Radio settings > RF profiles.

[Priesty]

We still deploy mr42s, they are the best all rounder.

Wifi6 has alot to go yet, including client capability. The biggest gotcha that no body thinks about is the switching backend for the wifi6 aps. If you don't have multigig switching then you will never receive the theoretical full performance of the uplink.

Wifi6 will however reduce airtime for clients trying to communicate rather than waiting in line (essentially APs act like a hub), so we will see improved overall performance from a bandwidth perspective.

[NolanHerring]

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@Priesty wrote:

The biggest gotcha that no body thinks about is the switching backend for the wifi6 aps. If you don't have multigig switching then you will never receive the theoretical full performance of the uplink.

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I've only seen one real-world picture of this actually happening, and it was in lab =P

We still have a loooong way to go for that to be an actual issue. Granted by the time it does, 1Gbps will have been migrated from the standard to legacy (the way 100Mbps was), as I'm sure the new standard will end up being 2.5/5Gbps etc.

http://divdyn.com/wi-fi-throughput/