Cisco develops the highest quality Enterprise-class Aironet Access Point Series that are always fully compliant with local wireless regulatory laws and requirements, while maximizing performance (i.e., max Tx power available) and radio channel availability per the local regulatory domain. This is in contrast to the competitive landscape where other vendors tend to offer a “one size fits all” AP or WLC SKU or regulatory domain specifications, for example, which offers the “lowest common denominator” in terms of performance and channel availability for all countries, say, between Singapore and Brazil. And every regulatory domain from FCC (US) and ETSI (EU) to NOM (Mexico) and ANATEL (BRAZIL), to name but a few, gets its respective specs optimized on every Cisco AP. However, as more spectrum gets opened by many of these regulatory bodies, the complexity of how to allow these changes to be realized by users of these products and keeping the solution simple can actually become quite a complex task. There are many different ways to implement a solution, each with its respective limitations to adhere to the requirements as well as these changes. Furthermore there are many liberties other vendors take against the requirements. Our corporate compliance team however takes regulatory requirements very seriously and fully adheres to the letter of the law.
To ensure a fully compliant yet the most flexible solution that optimizes what’s available in terms of performance and channel availability Cisco has embarked upon a patented solution to allow a single domain solution, (a.k.a Universal AP) to be utilized worldwide via a geo-location provisioning system – Cisco AirProvision app. The Cisco AirProvision app enables a Universal AP to start out with a set of common denominator settings and allows additional channels/power settings to be utilized based on it’s geo-location and approval mapping. Universal domain allows ease of deployment worldwide while being fully compliant to the specific regulatory bodies. This allows great inventory simplification for global customers as well as distributors while continuing to adhere fully to the regulatory requirements.
By leveraging a geo-location solution we enable the most flexible product in any country in the world period.
Click here to see the Cisco Universal AP setup video!
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Thanks for the Blog and the video!
Can the Reg Domain be changed after setting it the first time?
Thomas
Thomas – Thank you for your question. Yes there is auditing option to update the Reg Domain if say the AP was staged in one country/domain and moved to another country/domain or if a multinational company needs to move inventory from one location to another.
That is truly a brilliant feature, sounds like it makes setting up the network far easier. Point of curiosity – how many different kinds of regulatory domains ARE there today? Is the number more than 10? More than 20?
Rich – Thank you for your comment/question. To answer your question based on the current optimization and number of countries we have approvals for, the count is about 14 unique domains. Additional information to consider is that there are lot of changes with spectrum being considered by many regulatory bodies so there are certainly more changes anticipated.