Aruba R4W01A

Aruba R4W01A Wi-Fi 6 Indoor Access Point

These affordable Wi-Fi 6 access points provide high‑performance connectivity for any organization experiencing growing numbers of mobile, IoT and mobility requirements. With a maximum real-world aggregate data rate of 1.49 Gbps (HE80/HE20), they deliver the speed and reliability needed for venues and workplaces such as schools, midsize offices and retailers.

INCREDIBLE EFFICIENCY:

The 500 Series APs are also designed to optimize user experience by maximizing Wi-Fi efficiency and dramatically reducing airtime contention between clients.

Features include Orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA), and cellular optimization. With up to 2 spatial streams (2SS) and 80MHz channel bandwidth (HE80), the 500 Series provides ground breaking wireless capabilities for budget-conscious deployments.

Advantages of OFDMA: This capability allows Aruba’s APs to handle multiple Wi-Fi 6 capable clients on each channel simultaneously, regardless of device or traffic type. Channel utilization is optimized by handling each transaction via smaller sub-carriers or resource units (RUs), which means that clients are sharing a channel and not competing for airtime and bandwidth. 

Aruba Air Slice™ for Extended Application Assurance: Initially, APs in controller-less mode (Instant) can provide SLA‑grade performance by allocating radio resources, such as time, frequency, and spatial streams, to specific traffic types. By combining Aruba’s Policy Enforcement Firewall (PEF) and Layer 7 deep packet inspection (DPI) to identify user roles and applications, the APs will dynamically allocate the bandwidth needed. Non-Wi-Fi 6 clients can also benefit. Air Slice™ for APs uses Aruba Central for management.

Wi-Fi 6 aware client optimization: Aruba’s patented AI-powered ClientMatch technology eliminates sticky client issues by placing Wi-Fi 6 capable devices on the best available AP. Session metrics are used to steer mobile devices to the best AP based on available bandwidth, types of applications being used and traffic type – even as users roam. 

Aruba Advanced Cellular Coexistence (ACC): This feature uses built-in filtering to automatically minimize the impact of interference from cellular networks, distributed antenna systems (DAS), and commercial small cell or femtocell equipment.

Intelligent Power Monitoring (IPM): Aruba APs continuously monitor and report hardware energy consumption. They can also be configured to enable or disable capabilities based on available PoE power – ideal when wired switches have exhausted their power budget.

Green AP energy efficiency: Aruba Wi-Fi 6 APs utilize analytics from NetInsight to automatically transition in and out of a sleep mode based on client density. Learn more in the Green AP At-A-Glance.

IOT PLATFORM CAPABILITIES:

Like all Aruba Wi-Fi 6 APs, the 500 Series includes an integrated Bluetooth 5 and 802.15.4 radio (for Zigbee support) to simplify deploying and managing IoT-based location services, asset tracking services, security solutions and IoT sensors. This allows organizations to leverage the 500 Series as an IoT platform, which eliminates the need for an overlay infrastructure and additional IT resources.

Target Wake Time (TWT): Ideal for IoTs that communicate infrequently, TWT establishes a schedule for when clients need to communicate with an AP. This helps improve client power savings and reduces airtime contention with other clients

ARUBA SECURE INFRASTRUCTURE:

The Aruba 500 Series includes components of Aruba’s 360 Secure Fabric to help protect user authentication and wireless traffic. Select capabilities include:

WPA3 and Enhanced Open: Support for stronger encryption and authentication is provided via the latest version of WPA for enterprise protected networks.

Enhanced Open offers seamless new protection for users connecting to open networks where each session is automatically encrypted to protect user passwords and data on guest networks.

WPA2-MPSK: MPSK enables simpler passkey management for WPA2 devices – should the Wi-Fi password on one device or device type change, no additional changes are needed for other devices. Requires ClearPass Policy Manager.

VPN Tunnels: In Remote AP (RAP) and IAP-VPN deployments, the Aruba 500 Series can be used to establish a secure SSL/IPSec VPN tunnel to a Mobility Controller that is acting as a VPN concentrator.

Trusted Platform Module (TPM): For enhanced device assurance, all Aruba APs have an installed TPM for secure storage of credentials and keys, and boot code.

SIMPLE AND SECURE ACCESS:

To simplify policy enforcement, the Aruba 500 Series uses Aruba’s policy enforcement firewall (PEF) feature to encapsulate all traffic from the AP to the Mobility Controller (or Gateway) for end-to-end encryption and inspection. Policies are applied based on user role, device type, applications, and location. This reduces the manual configuration of SSIDs, VLANs and ACLs. PEF also serves as the underlying technology for Aruba Dynamic Segmentation

HIGH-DENSITY CONNECTIVITY:

Each 500 Series AP provides connectivity for a maximum of 256 associated clients per radio (512 in total). In real-world scenarios, the maximum recommended client density is dependent on environmental conditions.

FLEXIBLE OPERATION AND MANAGEMENT:

A unique feature of Aruba APs is the ability to operate in either controllerless (Instant) or controller-based mode. Controller-less (Instant) mode

In controllerless mode, one AP serves as a virtual controller for the entire network. Learn more about Instant mode in this technology brief.

Mobility Controller mode:  For optimized network performance, roaming and security, APs tunnel all traffic to a mobility controller for centrally managed traffic forwarding and segmentation, data encryption, and policy enforcement. Learn more in the ArubaOS datasheet.

Management options: Available management solutions include Aruba Central (cloud-managed) or Aruba AirWave – a multi-vendor on‑premises management solution.

For large installations across multiple sites, APs can be factory-shipped and can be activated with Zero Touch Provisioning through Aruba Central or AirWave. This reduces deployment time, centralizes configuration, and helps manage inventory.