Cisco Aironet Access Point Deployment Guide
Figure 6: LED Appearance in the AP 3600i and the AP 3500
From a side view, the AP 3600i is slightly thicker (2.11”) than the AP 3500 (1.84”), as shown in Figure 7. The thicker size allows for additional radio support and printed circuit board area, as well as feature modules for future capabilities. While the AP 3600i has a little more depth, it is completely backward compatible with the mounting brackets for the existing Cisco Aironet 1040 Series Access Point (AP 1040), 1140 Series Access Point (AP 1140), 1260 Series Access Point (AP 1260), and the AP 3500.
Figure 7: Side View of the AP 3600i and the AP 3500
The external antenna models (the AP 3600e and the AP 3500e) differ in appearance because the AP 3600e has fewer antenna connector ports, primarily due to the dual‐band antenna system.
The AP 3600e has combined all the antenna ports (dual‐band) so that each antenna port can transmit simultaneously on each band; if the antenna ports were not combined, this would have required eight antennas. The AP 3600 has four transceivers (transmitter/receiver) radio ports per band for a total of eight transceivers, four in each band. This additional radio per band permits beamforming to 3SS clients using ClientLink 2.0 to improve the overall performance of all 802.11n clients with one, two, and three spatial streams.
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