Wi-Fi - Jiri Brejcha

Unboxing Cisco Wireless CW9176I Wi-Fi 7 access point

Cisco’s Wi-Fi 7 access points introduced new packaging, replaced plastic bags with paper, and introduced new ordering process. This particular AP is the CW9176I-RTG SKU. The RTG stands for Ready To Go. It is build to stock which means super fast shipping, 1 AP per box packaging, and mounting brackets are included with no option to customise it. This -RTG option is perfect if you just need a single AP urgently to perform an “AP on a stick” site survey for example.

Now, if you want to minimise the cardboard volume and storage space, I highly recommend you use the CW9176I-CFG SKU. It allows you to order a 10-pack (that’s 10 APs per box) and fully customise mounting hardware or even opt out from it and use your existing brackets. The CFG part stands for configurable and it is build to your order.

Where in the SKU is the regulatory domain?

It’s gone, and it’s great! Cisco’s Wi-Fi 7 APs are designed for global use. The SKU is no longer assigned to any particular region or country. Simply order an AP. It will detect its location, and set the right country code.

Is this the cloud-managed or Catalyst controller managed model?

It is whatever you want it to be. After you plug it in, claim in in your Cisco Meraki Dashboard inventory, and it will run in Meraki mode. If you don’t claim it, it will discover your Catalyst 9800 controller, and become a Catalyst lightweight access point. Same SKU, same hardware, you choose how you manage it.

You can even switch between the two modes at any point in time with no TAC support whatsoever.

Each Wi-Fi 7 AP consumes a Unified License. This license is the same for both modes. It gives you rights to either cloud-manage the AP in Cisco Meraki Dashboard, or you can join it to Catalyst 9800 controller, and manage it by Catalyst Center.

What’s in the CW9176I-RTG box?

This is the individually packaged RTG SKU, 1 AP per box.

Note the paper wrap around the AP. No more plastic bags.

Underneath the AP are the instructions, bracket, and ceiling grid clip.

Detail of the low profile AIR-AP-BRACKET-1 mounting bracket and bolts.

Detail of the AIR-AP-T-RAIL-R ceiling grid mounting clip.

Finally, there is the AP.

All Cisco Wi-Fi 7 APs ship with a white Console port cover by default. Its purpose is to prevent installers from plugging the twisted pair cable carrying Ethernet to the Console port. The cover can be removed without any extra tools.

Note: For official Cisco guidance and information, please refer to the Cisco.com data sheet and deployment guide.

Unboxing external GPS antenna CW-ANT-GPS2-S-00 for Cisco CW9163E access point

Cisco CW9163E has an in-built GPS/GNSS antenna, and there is an option to attach an external one if signal strength is too weak. We are talking GPS only in this post. For Wi-Fi to work, this AP requires either omnidirectional dipoles or directional patch antenna.

Let’s peak inside the book.

There is a single hose clamp to attach the antenna to a pole, and the GPS antenna itself with directly attached cable.

Before you ask, the cable is about 3 meters long.

It’s now time to remove the GPS antenna port cap.

Detail for the GPS antenna port.

The rubber seal helps protect it from the weather.

Now, the last thing to deal with is how to mount the antenna. You can either use the 2 holes and screws (screws were not provided). Or run the provided hose clamp through the loop inside the antenna mount, pole mount the antenna, and point it towards the sky.

And here is our final setup before the AP gets mounted.

Note: For official Cisco guidance and information, please refer to the Cisco.com data sheet and deployment guide.

Unboxing Cisco CW9163E outdoor access point

CW9163E is Cisco’s outdoor Wi-Fi 6E access point. It comes in external antenna flavor only, so make sure you order either 4 omnidirectional dipoles (in some cases 2 might do just fine), or one directional patch antenna along with the AP itself.

It has built-in GPS antenna. If you expect poor GPS coverage, you can order an optional external GPS antenna.

Note that there are no plastic bags anymore.

Underneath the AP we find the mounting bracket, hose clamps, and other accessories.

Let’s look closely at the acessories.

Inside the little cardboard box is a cable gland and grounding pad.

6 GHz ports A and B, along with the GPS antenna connector live on the top side of the access point.

The bottom side hosts antenna ports C and D shared by 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radios, reset button, Console RJ-45 port, and up to 2.5 Gbps Ethernet port.

No 6 GHz outdoors in the UK yet

Ofcom, the UK regulator, doesn’t permit 6 GHz use outdoors, at least not yet as of May 2025. The 6 GHz radio of the access point is disabled in software.

Unboxing Cisco CW-ANT-D1-NS-00 directional patch antenna for CW9163E AP

Cisco’s Wi-Fi 6E outdoor CW9163E access point requires an external antenna. It has no built-in Wi-Fi antenna. The antenna is a separate purchase and is not included.

You can choose between either omnidirectional dipoles (make sure you order 4 of them), which we covered here, or an external directional patch antenna CW-ANT-D1-NS-00. That’s what we are going to talk about today.

CW-ANT-D1-NS-00 is a 2×2 self-identifying antenna (SIA). The AP detects its presence, model and gain automatically. No more manual antenna configuration needed on your part anymore, yay!

Here is what’s in the box.

After opening all little paper bags you will find these accessories.

Coaxial cable length is about 60 cm and it uses N-type connectors. On the antenna side, all coax cables are permanently attached and are not removable.

The thickest part of the N-type connector measures about 2 cm.

Don’t judge my cable management, please. Also, colour of the AP and antenna is the usual “Cisco outdoor AP grey”. White balance in these two photos is slightly misleading, my bad.

The cable length allows you to achieve about 20 cm distance between the AP and the antenna.

Ultimately, this is how the final setup looks like.

Note: For official Cisco guidance and information, please refer to the Cisco.com data sheet and deployment guide

Unboxing Cisco CW-ANT-O1-NS-00 omnidirectional dipole antenna for CW9163E AP

Cisco’s Wi-Fi 6E outdoor CW9163E access point is an external antenna only model. It requires either 4 omnidirectional dipole antennas CW-ANT-O1-NS-00, or a directional CW-ANT-D1-NS-00 antenna (note the “D”) which we covered in this post.

The CW-ANT-O1-NS-00 antenna ships in a little recycled paper bag and it includes a single antenna. Please make sure you order this CW-ANT-O1-NS-00 SKU four times and connect antennas to all 4 N-type ports.

Note: If you have no plans to use 6 GHz, or can’t use 6 GHz outdoors in your country, scroll down. You might potentially get away with 2 antennas.

Here is a detail of the label.

If you are wondering what its dimensions are, here is a small UK banana for scale 😊

Joking aside, the antenna is about 23 cm long.

And its thickest point measures 2,8 cm.

Finally, here is the AP with all 4 antennas attached.

The whole set is about 65 cm tall.

These dipoles are self-identifying antennas (SIA) and the AP automatically detects their presence, model, and gain. In my setup I have 4 dipoles connected to the AP and since I am in the UK (where we don’t permit 6 GHz outdoor use yet), my 6 GHz radio has no channel assigned, and it is disabled in software on access points installed in Europe as of April 2025.

No plans for 6 GHz? No problem.

If your country has no plans to enable 6 GHz outdoors, you could only populate the bottom 2 antennas. These are connected to the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radios. The top 2 N-type ports marked 6 GHz technically don’t need an antenna if you don’t plan to use them. But we must protect them from weather by N-type connector caps. Simply order CW-ACC-KIT1-00 accessory kit which includes 4 caps as well as other accessories.

Install the connector caps on 6 GHz ports A and B. Please note I am using compatible caps I already owned. The official Cisco ones might look slightly differently.

Let’s have a quick look from the front.

Just keep in mind that if you change your mind and want to use 6 GHz later, you will have to purchase the missing 2 antennas, remove the caps, and connect the additional antennas. So, expect some extra installation efforts. It might well make your life easier if you attach all 4 antennas from the get-go.

As expected, the AP will detect the bottom 2 antennas serving 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands but not the top two 6 GHz antennas.

From physical footprint perspective, CW9163E equipped with the bottom 2 antennas is nearly as tall as MR76/MR86 with all 4 antennas attached.

Note: For official Cisco guidance and information, please refer to the Cisco.com data sheet and deployment guide.

Does iPhone 16 support the optional 4096-QAM Wi-Fi 7 feature?

Apple has just published a new and very useful Wi-Fi specification document which answers this question.

What is 4096-QAM?

It is the latest modulation technique that allows the access point and Wi-Fi client to send even more data over the air than ever before. Effectively, it adds 2 new MCS indexes 12 and 13 and unlocks faster data rates.

4096-QAM MCS indexes, credit to http://mcsindex.net

Achieving it is challenging as it requires very high Signal to Noise Radio (SNR) – that’s very strong signal and low noise. So in practical terms, it is only used quite rarely.

For context, with another client device using Intel BE200 Wi-Fi 7 adapter, I hit MCS 12 with SNR about 60-62 dB. In other words, if my noise floor was -95 dBm, my signal would have to be about -35 dBm.

Does iPhone 16 support it then?

According to the above spec sheet, the maximum Extremely High Throughput (EHT) the iPhone can achieve is MCS 11. 4096-QAM only uses MCS indexes 12 and 13. Check the mcsindex.net site.

So, the answer is no, it doesn’t.

Is it a dealbreaker?

From data rate perspective, even without 4096-QAM, and using 160 MHz wide channel, we are talking 2000+Mbps! Obviously depending on how far you are from the access point.

So I personally can’t complain. I value access to the clean 6 GHz spectrum, low latency and low retransmissions rate over maximum throughput.

My WAN link speed of 900 Mbps is my personal bottleneck and I usually don’t transfer huge amounts of data from the phone.

High Tx (transmit) and Rx (receive) rates

On a laptop, I can imagine 4096-QAM to deliver much more value when it comes to performing backups for moving very large software image or video files. Having said that, don’t forget that there is 2.5, 5 or 10 Gigabit Ethernet for that.

Does iPhone 16 support Wi-Fi 7 Multi-Link Operation (MLO)?

iPhone 16 supports tri-band Wi-Fi 7 and Multi-Link Operation (MLO). More specifically, the Enhanced Multilink Single‐Radio (EMLSR) mode. The client connects using 2 different Wi-Fi bands, only actively uses 1 of them and listens on both bands simultaneously. Let’s enable it on an access point and verify that it works.

We have a 320 MHz channel configured on the 6 GHz radio. This is for experimental purposes only. Please use narrower channel in production to avoid adjacent channel interference with other 6 GHz access points.

From client perspective, the iPhone connects using 160 MHz channel width as that is the maximum it supports.

The tri-band SSID is announced in 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz and 6 GHz bands. It is up to the client device to choose the preferred band. MLO-capable Wi-Fi 7 clients can also enable the MLO feature.

Although iPhone 16 supports MLO, the phone itself doesn’t indicate if MLO is active or not. So our only option is to monitor it from the access point’s side. This is a consumer access point and it doesn’t provide a huge amount of detail. I am hoping to retest this with a proper enterprise-grade AP when I can.

Single band at a time

From the Association Request sent by the iPhone to the access point, we can see that it advertises support for only one band at a time.

⏬ Feel free to download the Association Request Wi-Fi frame and dig deeper.

6 GHz and 2.4 GHz EMLSR MLO mode

With the default settings of the TP-Link Deco BE85 Wi-Fi 7 access point in place, the iPhone establishes MLO using 2.4 GHz and 6 GHz. It actively uses 6 GHz. 2.4 GHz is there for backup purposes.

TP-Link Deco app shows MLO using 2.4 GHz and 6 GHz

The iPhone uses its 160 MHz wide channel capability and actively pushes all data using the 6 GHz channel 69 as I am trying to demonstrate below using Oscium WiPry Clarity spectrum analyser. Check the “waterfall diagram” that shows the top 160 MHz of the 320 MHz channel being busy processing the data transmission.

MLO in action with iPhone primarily using 6 GHz band

The 2.4 GHz link just sits there in the background, unused. Using the same method, I verified that there is no spectrum utilisation whatsoever on the 2.4 GHz channel.

5 GHz and 2.4 GHz EMLSR MLO mode

When we change Preferred Wi-Fi Band setting to 5 GHz, the iPhone establishes 5 GHz active MLO link and 2.4 GHz as backup.

6 GHz and 5 GHz EMLSR MLO mode

Now, how do we force MLO using the two modern bands? For the purposes of the demo, I simply disable 2.4 GHz radio on the access point.

The phone establishes 6 GHz active data connection and uses the 5 GHz band as a backup. How can I be so sure? I watched the spectrum and generated nearly 900 Mbps of data over the wireless link. While the 6 GHz channel shows high utilisation, the 5 GHz channel shows no signs of use.

TP-Link Deco app shows 6 GHz and 5 GHz MLO

On the iPhone, we see active channels 69 in the 6 GHz band. That matches what I’ve just seen using the spectrum analyser.

Active 6 GHz channel 69 using max iPhone 16 channel width 160 MHz

How to trigger MLO band change?

Now, I connect the iPhone using 5 GHz channel. I am going to saturate the channel with other client’s traffic. My hope is that high channel utilisation makes the iPhone stop using the 5 GHz channel and switch to the backup 2.4 GHz channel.

And the result? It correctly detected and reported high channel utilisation, but the MLO band change did not happen.

So channel utilisation on its own did not do the trick for me. Perhaps the algorithm penalises and tries to avoid the 2.4 GHz band which is typically in a much worse condition than 5 GHz? Or high channel utilisation must persist for a longer period of time? Time will tell.

What Wi-Fi 7 chip does iPhone 16 use?

As we have learned previously, iPhone 16 supports channel width up to 160 MHz and indeed supports all three 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz and 6 GHz Wi-Fi bands.

What chipset does it use? To find out we are going to enable Personal Hotspot on the iPhone and see what information we can get from the information elements it broadcasts in its beacons.

As we can see here, iPhone 16 uses Broadcom Wi-Fi 7 chip. That’s about the level of detail we can capture from the beacon frames it sends.

Continue reading

Does the iPhone 16 support Multi-Link Operation? Check this blog post.