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Cisco Aironet Series 2700/3700 Access Points Deployment Guide
Cisco Aironet Series 3700 Access Point
While it is not recommended that you use less antennas–the product (in a pinch) supports 802.11a/b/g
clients or single spatial stream N clients using only one or two antennas. However, there is a significant
performance hit and you will lose ClientLink functionality. Should you do this, you might also have to
configure the AP in the software so as not to use the other antennas.
Note
The AP 1600 has three antenna ports (not configurable because it is an entry level AP). The AP
2600/3600 has four configurable antenna ports–one extra transceiver (receiver/transmitter per band).
When using a MIMO (dual-radiating element antennas) such as:
AIR-ANT2524V4C-R – Dual-band Omni-directional – 2/4 dBi Ceiling mount Omni use
AIR-ANT2544V4M-R– Dual-band Omni-directional – 4/4 dBi Wall mount Omni use
AIR-ANT2566P4W-R– Dual band directional – 6 dBi Patch wall mount use
It is not critical which antenna lead goes onto which antenna port on the AP as long as all the antenna
ports on the AP are connected to the antennas. In the case of the Patch antenna AIR-ANT2566P4W-R,
because the elements are spaced physically apart (side by side) in the plastic housing, there will be a
slight improvement if you use the outer two elements on the Patch on ports “A” and “B”. This is only a
small improvement and not a critical one and that is why we do not label them.