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Just in time for mass market adoption of Wi-Fi 6E, Wi-Fi 7 – including standard power 6 GHz operation with AFC – Cisco has released a new generation of wireless (Wi-Fi) controllers. New Catalyst CW9800M and CW9800H1/H2 controllers push the envelope for capacity while driving down costs including the tally on your electrical bill. The new controllers are in every way more efficient, Cisco says.

More connected devices as well as new 6 GHz spectrum is driving up efficiency and capacity requirements for enterprise Wi-Fi networks and now Cisco is meeting the challenge head on by releasing three new Catalyst wireless (Wi-Fi) controllers. Cisco says the new controllers are more powerful and efficient versions of existing Catalyst 9800 controllers running on the Cisco IOS® XE operating system.

“With the new controllers we’re boosting speed and AP handling capacity while network operations and configurations remain unchanged. The goal of these products is to offer much more capability and efficiency on the existing Cisco IOS® XE platform. This also means transitioning or adding new controllers to an existing network is very low risk and fast. A new controller can be installed in less than an hour with minimal network disruption,” says Dave Benham, Senior Product Manager Wireless at Cisco.

Above: The new Cisco Catalyst CW9800M supporting 3,000 APs and 32,000 Wi-Fi clients. The larger CH9800H1 & H2 models look nearly identical except for port configurations.

The CW9800M is up to 53% faster and saves up to 18% in power consumption compared to the previous model while the CW9800H1 and CW9800H2 are up to 36% faster and up to 40% more power efficient, respectively. The only differences between the CW9800H1 & CW9800H2 models are port configurations. The new CW9800H1 & CW9800H2 are both a single rack unit high and hence occupy half the rack space of the previous C9800-80 model.

Dave Benham says the new controllers present an excellent opportunity for network owners with older generation Cisco controllers to transition to a future-proof platform based on Cisco IOS® XE. “We’re now offering a lot of improvements not just in features with IOS® XE but also in hardware processing capacity, which we expect will incite many to make the investment. In short, our new controllers means our customers will get substantially more value for money in terms of capacity and speed per dollar,” Dave Benham says.

The new controllers were released in late April and will be shipping late this month. The formal product launch event will take place in June, Cisco says.