NetWave Lotus Alpha is Immunity's Wi-Fi 6 access point range for commercial deployment — the indoor AX820 for offices, wards, classrooms and guest areas, and the ruggedised outdoor AX821 for campuses, streets and open spaces. Designed and manufactured in India, MTCTE certified, and managed from either an on-premises controller or the cloud.
| Lotus Alpha (AX820) | Lotus Alpha OD (AX821) | |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment | Indoor | Outdoor, weatherproof |
| Typical use | Offices, wards, classrooms, lobbies, guest areas | Campuses, quadrangles, streets, villages, car parks |
| Standard | Wi-Fi 6 | Wi-Fi 6 |
| Power | Power over Ethernet | Power over Ethernet |
| Management | NetGuard X5 on-premises or NetCloud Central | NetGuard X5 on-premises or NetCloud Central |
| Notable | Designed for client density in enclosed spaces | India's first PM-WANI certified access point |
Full specifications, radio details and port configurations are in the model datasheets — AX820 indoor and AX821 outdoor. Detailed figures are supplied on the datasheet rather than summarised here, so that what you quote from is the current controlled document.
Wi-Fi 6 is often sold on peak speed, which is the least interesting thing about it in an enterprise setting. What matters in a dense environment is how the standard handles many clients at once.
OFDMA lets one transmission carry data for several clients at the same time rather than serving them strictly in turn. In practice that means a meeting room or classroom full of devices behaves better than the same space on older standards, even where raw per-device speed is similar.
Much of the traffic on a corporate network comes from phones, scanners, sensors and IoT endpoints rather than laptops. Wi-Fi 6 scheduling and target wake time reduce airtime waste from those devices, which improves the experience for everyone sharing the channel.
No access point solves a bad plan. Wi-Fi 6 raises the ceiling, but the number of access points, their placement and their channel plan still determine whether a space works at peak occupancy. We size against the busiest hour and validate with an RF survey.
| If you are covering… | Use | Because |
|---|---|---|
| Open-plan office, meeting rooms | AX820 indoor | Density-oriented indoor coverage on PoE |
| Hospital wards and corridors | AX820 indoor | Predictable coverage through dense construction |
| Hotel guest floors | AX820 indoor | Per-room coverage with portal-based guest access |
| Campus grounds, walkways | AX821 outdoor | Weatherproof housing built for field conditions |
| Public and street Wi-Fi | AX821 outdoor | PM-WANI certified for public access deployments |
| Warehouse yards, car parks | AX821 outdoor | Outdoor coverage where there is no ceiling to mount to |
Both models are managed the same way, and you can change your mind later.
On-premises — the NetGuard X5 Controller provides wireless control together with gateway security, captive portal and authentication in a single appliance. This suits single sites and deployments where control must stay on the premises.
Cloud — NetCloud Central provides zero-touch provisioning, per-site dashboards, remote operations and AIOps monitoring across an estate. This suits multi-site operators and lean IT teams.
Many customers run both: local control at each site, central visibility across all of them. Whether one appliance or several makes sense for you is covered in our architecture comparison.
Access points need PoE and a switching layer that can enforce segmentation. Our NetForce managed switches provide PoE access ports and hardware VLAN separation, so guest, staff and operational traffic never share a broadcast domain. Where existing switching stays in place, PoE injectors and adapters can power individual access points. NetWave access points are standards-based and will run on third-party PoE switching.
Immunity equipment is MTCTE certified (and CE, FCC & RoHS compliant), with products listed on the Trusted Telecom Portal. Immunity also holds WPC approval, an IEEE OUI and an IANA PEN. Certification status varies by model and changes over time — ask us for current certification status on the models in your design and we will confirm in writing.
Lotus Alpha (AX820) is the indoor model; Lotus Alpha OD (AX821) is the ruggedised outdoor model in a weatherproof housing. Both are Wi-Fi 6 and both are managed the same way.
They are managed either by the NetGuard X5 controller on-premises or through NetCloud Central in the cloud. Which you choose depends on whether you need local control, central multi-site visibility, or both.
Yes. The outdoor AX821 is India's first PM-WANI certified access point and is used in public access deployments. If you are looking specifically at running public Wi-Fi as a business, see PM-WANI.
Yes. The access points are standards-based and will run on third-party PoE switching. Pairing them with NetForce switches simplifies VLAN policy and consolidates support, but is not required.
At our facility in Sanand GIDC, Gujarat. Immunity has designed and manufactured networking equipment in India since 2009.
Tell us the spaces you need to cover and the numbers you expect at peak. We will recommend a model mix and access point count, and send the current datasheets.
Wi-Fi 6 introduced several mechanisms that only show their value under load. Here is what each one does in a real deployment, without the marketing gloss.
Earlier standards gave the whole channel to one client at a time. OFDMA divides a channel into smaller resource units so several clients can be served within a single transmission. The gain is largest where many devices send small amounts of data frequently — which describes most offices, classrooms and wards. It reduces latency and jitter more visibly than it raises peak speed.
In a dense deployment your own access points are the main source of interference. BSS colouring tags transmissions so a device can distinguish its own network's traffic from a neighbouring cell's and transmit rather than needlessly deferring. This is what makes tighter access point spacing viable in high-density areas.
Sensors, scanners and building devices wake, transmit briefly and sleep. Target wake time schedules those wake-ups so they stop competing randomly for airtime. On a network with hundreds of IoT endpoints this frees capacity for the people using it, and extends battery life on the devices themselves.
Multi-user MIMO allows an access point to transmit to multiple capable clients simultaneously using spatial streams. The benefit depends on client support and on how devices are physically distributed, so it complements OFDMA rather than replacing it.
Wi-Fi 6 arrives with WPA3, which strengthens authentication against offline password attacks and improves protection on open networks. For guest and public deployments this matters more than throughput.
Access points are only as reliable as what feeds them, and PoE is where wireless projects most often get pinched.
A switch may support PoE on every port but have a total power budget lower than the sum of those ports. Populate every port with an access point and the budget, not the port count, becomes the limit. We calculate total draw across the estate as part of design.
Ethernet runs to roughly 100 metres including patch leads. Outdoor and large-site deployments frequently exceed that, which is where fibre to a local switch, or a repositioned comms cabinet, enters the design. Better to find this during survey than during installation.
Outdoor access points need surge protection and proper earthing, and mounting must account for wind loading and access for maintenance. Weatherproof housing is necessary but not sufficient — the installation practice around it matters as much.
Where existing switching stays in place, PoE injectors and adapters power individual access points without replacing the switch.
The honest answer is that it cannot be calculated from floor area alone, but the reasoning is straightforward.
We will do this sizing for your sites before quoting, and we will show the working.
Two access points of identical specification can perform very differently depending on how they are installed. These are the practical points that most affect the result.
Ceiling mounting in the occupied space almost always beats mounting in a corridor or comms room and hoping the signal reaches. Access points above false ceilings, inside metal enclosures or behind ducting lose a surprising amount of performance.
In the 5 GHz band there is enough spectrum to plan properly; in 2.4 GHz there is not. Overlapping co-channel cells cause devices to defer transmission, which users experience as slowness even at full signal strength.
Turning transmit power to maximum is the most common self-inflicted problem in dense deployments. It makes cells overlap, encourages devices to cling to distant access points, and degrades roaming. Lower power with more access points outperforms fewer access points shouting.
A post-installation survey confirms the design performed as modelled and catches the handful of locations that behave differently in practice. It is a short exercise that prevents long arguments later.