Wireless Access

Hello

What switches are you using for Aruba Access points and 2.5 Gbps AP's ? Im hearing prices I almost cannot belive.

On the switch side the usual pairing is the 6300M in one of its HPE Smart Rate variants, which give you 1, 2.5 and 5 gig on the access ports plus the PoE budget to actually feed modern APs, and the 6400 with Smart Rate line cards where the closet is a chassis. That's the catalog answer, and yes, those ports carry a real premium over straight gigabit.

The honest sizing take: you probably don't need multigig everywhere. A 2.5G AP negotiates down to 1G happily, and outside of dense 6E or Wi-Fi 7 tri-band cells, most enterprise APs never sustain more than a gig of real traffic anyway. The pattern I see deployed most is Smart Rate only in the closets feeding high-density areas, 1G everywhere else, upgraded closet by closet as refreshes come around. Price the design that way and the quote gets a lot less unbelievable.

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Dustin Burns

@Worldcom Exchange, Inc.


If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos
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The starting point for a CX switch with smart rate ports is 6200M 36G 12SR5 CL6 (R8Q71A)  

and for AOS-S switch is  2930M 40G 8SR PoE Class 6 (R0M67A)  

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If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos.
Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of HPE or Aruba.
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Original Message:
Sent: Aug 18, 2026 01:56 PM
From: DB86
Subject: Access Points and 2.5 GBps switches

On the switch side the usual pairing is the 6300M in one of its HPE Smart Rate variants, which give you 1, 2.5 and 5 gig on the access ports plus the PoE budget to actually feed modern APs, and the 6400 with Smart Rate line cards where the closet is a chassis. That's the catalog answer, and yes, those ports carry a real premium over straight gigabit.

The honest sizing take: you probably don't need multigig everywhere. A 2.5G AP negotiates down to 1G happily, and outside of dense 6E or Wi-Fi 7 tri-band cells, most enterprise APs never sustain more than a gig of real traffic anyway. The pattern I see deployed most is Smart Rate only in the closets feeding high-density areas, 1G everywhere else, upgraded closet by closet as refreshes come around. Price the design that way and the quote gets a lot less unbelievable.

------------------------------
Dustin Burns

@Worldcom Exchange, Inc.


If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos
------------------------------