In case you haven't heard, 802.11ac Wave 2 is here. We've been shipping our first 802.11ac Wave 2 access points, the Aironet 1850 and 1830 since the the middle of 2015 and the list of 802.11ac Wave 2 client devices is growing almost daily. The most important enhancement to 802.11ac Wave 2 is multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO). MU-MIMO gives access points the ability to transmit to multiple clients at the same time, instead of one after another.  For a more in-depth look at MU-MIMO, check out our 802.11ac White Paper.

At Cisco we pride ourselves on high-performing hardware, as well as an unparalleled software feature set. So to back this up, we asked Miercom, a leading independent testing company, to help us verify the performance of our 802.11ac Wave 2 access points against the competition. For Cisco, the contenders were:

• Cisco Aironet 1852i, a 4