Cisco 9124

The Cisco 9124 is a highly capable access point, built for external and industrial environments.

With a range of options to power the AP, and six antenna ports, this is an AP that has something to offer!

Cisco 9124: Use Cases

The use cases for the Cisco 9124 are probably pretty obvious. This is an industrial grade AP and a highly capable one at that too.

The use of 6 antenna ports makes this ideal for Mesh, where you can have two ports supporting 5GHz Mesh backhaul at the same time as supporting local client serving 2.4GHz and 5GHz on different radios - no contention.

The 9124 comes in two variants, with the internal antenna option being more cost effective in most applications, but the external 9124 supports a range of antennas - for those harder to design for spaces and longer range requirements.

There's a range of options to power the AP too - more on that just below. 

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Cisco 9124: Recommended Antenna

Note that if you use the AIR-ANT2588P3M-N (non SIA) antenna with the 9124 AP, then you’ll only be able to use two of the three available ports, unless you’re happy to deploy a 2x2 (with two of the ports) and a 1x1 (with the single remaining port).

The AIR-ANT2588P4M-NS on the other hand has four ports – allowing you to deploy 2x2 on 2.4GHz and 2x2 on 5GHz at the same time.

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9124: Six Antenna Ports

The 9124 has six antenna ports in total – the bottom two will support your 2.4GHz and the top outer two ports the 5GHz. There are also two middle ports which are 5GHz only (not dual band like the other four) and you can add more antennas if you want to make use of these ports.

Question: What is the point of the 9124 having 3 radios, with two 5GHz radios?

The major use case here is mesh: you can use one 5GHz radio for backhaul and the other for local client serving on the 5GHz band – no need to compromise the operation of the AP in any way.

The newer SIA patch antennas provide four antennas with two horizontal and two vertical – which ensures that you can take advantage of mixing the polarity, achieving better send and receive.

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All the Other 9124 Ports

There's a range of other ports to consider of course. The images below show these, including the DC power and POE power options:

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Powering the Cisco 9124

Here’s a quick ready reckoner for the devices you’ll need in order to power the 9124:

DC Power:

• AIR-PWRADPT-RGD2=

AC Power:

• AIR-PWRINJ-60RGD1=
• AIR-PWRINJ-60RGD2=
• AIR-PWRINJ7=
• AIR-PWRINJ6=

The "RGD" variants above are the ruggedised ones, built in a metal case for industrial environments.

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Cisco 9124: Summary

This is a great choice for external coverage, with the wide variety of external antennas offering a lot of choice for any industrial sites that have some complex requirements.

The addition of the new Self Identifying  Cisco SIA antennas makes life just a little easier, especially when they're installed at height - handy to let that take care of itself (it's the recommended option from Cisco too).

You'll get a lot of throughput on this AP too, which can't be a bad thing :-)