What Access Point Do I need

Yucca

Yucca

Yucca

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Nock/Leicester
Any help would be appreciated.

I have a Netgear Rangemax Dual Band Wireless N Modem Router in my office. As the house is very big we have many areas the wifi does not reach.

Each room has an ethernet socket which is all collected to the modem router via a switch. Therefore I purchased a Netgear WN802T v 2 Wireless N Access point and had someone set it up in my lounge for me. We connected it to the ethernet socket in the wall via network cable and the access point extends/boosts the wifi in that room.

I want to buy a further 2 for another two rooms but the model seems to no longer exist. And any random website selling it is selling it for £80+ where as my original purchase years ago was only £23.99!

Iv had a look at Netgear access points and they seem to be very expensive. There are also several models and I don't know which one would be best to utilise the maximum potential of my current hardware.

Any advice would be appreciated.
 
I have installed a couple of Ubiquiti Unifi base stations in my house and so far they have been brilliant. They support seamless WiFi roaming which works really well.
 
Brycheiniog said:
I have installed a couple of Ubiquiti Unifi base stations in my house and so far they have been brilliant. They support seamless WiFi roaming which works really well.
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Please tell me more? What is seamless wifi roaming?

What router are you using?
 
Yucca said:
Will this model work fine with everything I already have and I can walk from room to room without having to disconnect and reconnect to different wifi's?
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Usually people set their ssid's to be the same and passwords but broadcast on different channels, so your OS should pick up on the fact it has a stronger alternative wifi to connect to and change over. Providing you have connected to that wifi network previously and have the password saved and set to automatically connect then for normal browsing you shouldn't notice the handover from one access point to another. If you want it to be seamless in terms of having a VOIP call pass from one access point to another without the call dropping then no it almost certainly won't do that.

Seamless wifi also referred to as 'zero handover' is not implemented on all of the Ubiquiti AP's that cost a lot more in most cases for the AC ones. Also something to consider is if you go down an enterprise solution route such as Ubiquiti then the cloud based controller for the AP's is not something you get included for an unlimited time. I think they come with 3 years cloud controller support so after that you'll no doubt have to pay to extend that. As far as I know none of the AC Ubiquiti AP's support zero handover at the moment which they are implementing in their own proprietary way so it's new and reading some of the comments on their forums is by no means fully stable and proven.
 
If I buy and use all Netgear access points to use with my Netgear router then will I get seamless wifi from room to room in terms of having a VOIP call pass form one access point to another as you have said?

I assumed thats what my Netgear router and my one Netgear access point is doing currently? Or does my iPhone just jump from one to the other without me even noticing?
 
thenewoc said:
These are fairly inexpensive...

Trendnet TEW-814DAP
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They have a gigabit lan port on the back, is that were I connect my network cable into and then the access point emits the wifi out of the box?

Or does the access point pick up current wifi and boost it?

I want to hard wire the access point to the router via my cat 6 cable rather than picking up existing wifi as the room I want to put it in currently gets NO wifi signal at all......
 
Yucca said:
They have a gigabit lan port on the back, is that were I connect my network cable into and then the access point emits the wifi out of the box?

Or does the access point pick up current wifi and boost it?

I want to hard wire the access point to the router via my cat 6 cable rather than picking up existing wifi as the room I want to put it in currently gets NO wifi signal at all......
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Yep just connect the RJ45 socket on the rear to one of your wall socket RJ45's so it will be connected to your router either directly or via a switch. It will omit a fresh signal from the access point rather than repeating an existing signal.
 
Yucca said:
If I buy and use all Netgear access points to use with my Netgear router then will I get seamless wifi from room to room in terms of having a VOIP call pass form one access point to another as you have said?

I assumed thats what my Netgear router and my one Netgear access point is doing currently? Or does my iPhone just jump from one to the other without me even noticing?
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Nope, it's not something Netgear appear to be pursuing. AFAIK it's not part of the wireless standards so some manufacturers are just trying to push the boundaries with their own proprietary features to add their own USP to their products. Since it's not even fully implemented by Ubiquiti in an enterprise grade product it really hasn't reached the consumer space yet.

If you place the AP's correctly you should have some overlap of signal so you may not loose a weak connection whilst it's in use. It will vary between devices as the firmware and drivers in the client device and it's OS will play a part in how often it is checking for the existence of other signals around it and how it determines it should make the switch to a stronger signal.

It's unlikely your existing gear would not drop a VOIP call, you're just not noticing the handover with internet browsing. You proably have a bit of an overlap with the existing signals which is a good thing but i guess you find yourself being disconnected when you go out of range upstairs.
 
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Thank you for all your help mate.

So you recommend I buy a few Trendnet TEW-814DAP's? Is this the best bang for buck AP you can recommend?

And will it take full advantage of all the features my Netgear router offers? Ie dual band etc?
 
Yucca said:
Thank you for all your help mate.

So you recommend I buy a few Trendnet TEW-814DAP's? Is this the best bang for buck AP you can recommend?

And will it take full advantage of all the features my Netgear router offers? Ie dual band etc?
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No worries mate.

Those Trendnet ones are the cheapest AC WAP's I've found. They don't use your routers dual band as they have their own. Not sure what speeds your routers bands are. Once the AP has received the signal from one of your wireless devices it's no different from your device being connected to the socket, just slightly slower because of the wireless communication. The AP is like a wireless cable if you like. All the AP is doing is passing the packets of data it receives either down the Ethernet cable it's attached to or broadcasting them out over wifi. When the AP is communicating with your router it will be at wire speed, eg Gigabit (providing your router has Gigabit ports) which is most likely faster than your routers dual band speeds.
 
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Also, I'm off to Egypt in 2 weeks and my hotel room as wired internet access. If I take one of these access points with me can I plug it into their wall socket and create my own wifi in my room?
 
Yucca said:
What are your views on this one in comparison mate:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=NW-081-AS&groupid=46&catid=1837

And this one is the next model up/slightly more expensive?...

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=NW-075-AS&groupid=46&catid=1837

Do these both do the same job as the Trendnet you have suggested and if so why is the second one more expensive than the first?
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Neither of these are as fast based on their specs in compassion to the Trendnet's up to 1167 Mbps*. The cheaper ASUS unit is similar to the Trendnet in terms of offering modes for being either a repeater or an access point.

I have no idea why the second one of those ASUS products is more as it seems to be up to 600 Mbps* compared to up to 733 Mbps* on the cheaper unit. The cheaper unit also supports the 802.11ac standard which I don't think the more expensive one does. The cheaper one also has the option to work as an AP whereas the more expensive one I think is just an extender/repeater.

*2.4 GHz + 5 GHz concurrent combined bandwidth stated performance (eg headline specs not necessarily actual performance)

If you don't have any 5 GHz capable devices then the cheaper ASUS unit has a faster quoted spec for the 2.4 GHz band of up to 433 Mbps compared to 300 Mbps on the Trendnet. If however you do have some 5 GHz capable devices, then the Trendnet is quoted as having up to 867 Mbps compared with up to 300 Mbps on those ASUS units.

It really comes down to your mix of devices, whether you can take advantage of the higher speeds offered by 5 GHz or whether you want to invest in something now that will cover the 5 GHz scenario if you think you may have devices capable of this in the future. In addition to this it depends if your use of WiFi is mostly for accessing the internet which in most people's case would be up to 80 Mbps, so well within the capability of any of these devices. However, If you make quite extensive use of WiFi to communicate between devices on your network such as moving files around the network and some of these devices are 5 GHz capable then the Trendnet would offer probably twice as fast experience than the ASUS units.

The other thing I would be wary of is what the strength of the signal is like from those ASUS units as small usually means compromised in terms of antennas.
 
Yucca said:
Also, I'm off to Egypt in 2 weeks and my hotel room as wired internet access. If I take one of these access points with me can I plug it into their wall socket and create my own wifi in my room?
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Possibly, but I wouldn't like to say for certain. You'd need to make sure the AP was set to get it's IP address from the hotel's DHCP server, probably their router's gateway IP address and ensure the AP's subnet mask was set correctly. You can probably figure these out if you connect your laptop to the hotel's Ethernet port first and run 'ipconfig /all' from a command prompt. This is different to how you would probably set it up in your home because you might be using a different sub net mask on your network to use a different range of IP addresses and you'd probably assign a static IP to the AP at home so you knew what address to use to access the web admin features of the AP.
 
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Im not sure if I have any 5 GHz devices! The wifi is mainly for iPhone/iPad internet use but I guess I could be backing up stuff via wifi in the future.

From what you have said it seems its best I stick to buying your original suggestion of the Trendnet.

Egypt - Sounds complicated. Fancy a holiday? lol
 
Yucca said:
Im not sure if I have any 5 GHz devices! The wifi is mainly for iPhone/iPad internet use but I guess I could be backing up stuff via wifi in the future.

From what you have said it seems its best I stick to buying your original suggestion of the Trendnet.

Egypt - Sounds complicated. Fancy a holiday? lol
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I think the ipad has 5 GHz and I think it was introduced to the iphone 5.

The Trendnet devices offer good value for money and they add 5 GHz support which your present Netgear AP doesn't. More people are moving towards 5 GHz as they refresh their devices here and there and find the newest models support the better frequency. I think the slightly more future proof route would therefore be the Trendnet. My worry with going with the ASUS would be if their range isn't that good you could end up needing more of those to cover a similar area that less units of the Trendnet could do.

What I would do is go for one of the Trendnet devices and see how it performs by extending your wireless in the first area you need it. If it lives up to expectations then add another if necessary to extend the range even further.

A holiday sounds great thanks lol, sadly other things to sort at the minute.

If you take the AP with you then you might be lucky and get it working or there might be someone here to help on the forum. You should probably use a VPN connection on your device when using the hotel or any public network too.
 
The only place I could find your suggested Trendnet access point was on a jewellery company!

Ordered 2 over 2months ago. The company is now in administration so no delivery and no refund :(

Can you recommend any other access point which is easily available? Don't OCUK sell something that can do what I want it to do?!
 
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