EXPIRED WAX630PA: $249.99

[zack$]

Grabbed one of these while I hold out on Ruckus' next line of APs. At this price, I figure there isn't much to loose. Also comes with free two days shipping and the power adapter directly from the Netgear store.

@Patrick, how have these been working for you?

Cloud Managed WiFi 6 PoE Wireless Access Point | NETGEAR

Need strong, reliable connectivity for all devices in high-density environments? Check out the Dual Band WiFi 6 PoE Wireless Access Point. Buy now!

www.netgear.com

 

[yobigd20]

looks nice. but I'm waiting to upgrade my PoE AP to one like this but with Wi-Fi 6E (6 GHz), 10GBASE-T , and mesh support. I don't think that exists yet afaik...

 

[zack$]

The only enterprise WIFI-6E that I am aware of is the Aruba 630: Aruba 630 Series Wi-Fi 6E APs

The Arubas only have 2x2:2 radios, so not sure how actually performance will be despite 6E.

Also, no AP is gonna be able to saturate 10Gb soon (IRL anyway) so, while you can get them on the consumer side...on the enterprise side I'm not sure when you will see one. Ruckus has two APs with 5Gb at the moment and are likely $1000+ (r850 and r730).

The WAX630 does mesh, 100 concurrent users, 4x4:3 radios (hence requiring PoE++), a 2.5Gb PoE and an extra 1Gb port. At PoE+, it will do 50% throughput on 2.4ghz and 5ghz (l) and do 5ghz(h) at 100%.

 

[Patrick]

One of the biggest challenges has been getting PoE++ switches, especially with 2.5GbE. Often getting the power adapter is less expensive than the non-power adapter version which is just silly. If there is so much margin in these that the power adapter version can be sold for less, then why are there even two versions?

On the performance, absolutely great here, but I now go with the "use more APs" method.

I was not overly fond of the mesh when it was used before getting everything wired. The latency was noticeably high. Wired backhaul and they work well.

Insight is a mixed bag. It is nice to have, and fairly easy to use, but in about a year you get to the point where you pay for Insight or you lose the feature. My hope is that these last until WiFi 7.

 

[Fritz]

One of the biggest challenges has been getting PoE++ switches, especially with 2.5GbE. Often getting the power adapter is less expensive than the non-power adapter version which is just silly. If there is so much margin in these that the power adapter version can be sold for less, then why are there even two versions?

On the performance, absolutely great here, but I now go with the "use more APs" method.

I was not overly fond of the mesh when it was used before getting everything wired. The latency was noticeably high. Wired backhaul and they work well.

Insight is a mixed bag. It is nice to have, and fairly easy to use, but in about a year you get to the point where you pay for Insight or you lose the feature. My hope is that these last until WiFi 7.

Tell me more about the "use more AP's" method. Sounds interesting.

 

[Patrick]

Ha! I used to try using as few APs as possible. With the pandemic, I realized having more APs for better coverage was worth a few hundred dollars to me. An example is that I have an AP in the garage (the one that fell) to service the sprinkler system, my workbench/ garage TV/ iPad, and firmware updates for the car.

 

[zhongfu]

I used to have one or two of their AC wave2 APs -- performance was great and all, but Insight felt a bit janky to me (and I didn't really like cloud-managed APs in general).

The built-in web config UI had this "consumer-grade-router-plus" feel to me too, and it was missing some features that I was using, like VLAN assignment based on RADIUS Tunnel-Private-Group-ID. This was a while ago though, so they might've changed it up since then.

Otherwise, the specs definitely look great for the price. If you don't care about anything else (like centralized management a la Unleashed, or the cost of an Insight Premium subscription after the first year), why not?

 

[Churchill]

, and firmware updates for the car.

We have now reached peak technology....

 

[TLN]

The only enterprise WIFI-6E that I am aware of is the Aruba 630: Aruba 630 Series Wi-Fi 6E APs

The Arubas only have 2x2:2 radios, so not sure how actually performance will be despite 6E.

People complained that this AP should've be called 605 or something. 530-series AP have 4x4:4 for example.


Otoh, I'm pretty happy with mix of Arubas and see no reason to go with 6E just yet.