Best WAP right now that is not super over priced with modern tech (Wifi 6e or 7)

[ViciousXUSMC]

R760 = Wifi 6E
R770 = Wifi7

Nothing to do with high-end or not...

You could be right, but is that really it or just a coincidence?

Other models do not bind that same way its always the higher number is the higher model.
R710 R730 is not Wifi 1 and Wifi 3 lol.
Same for 600 500 all of them are just numbered basically for their tier and release order.


The 760 just seemed out of place with tri band 4x4 while the 770 is 2x2 4x4 2x2 so a big loss in antenna configuration.
So I would not be supprised to see the 760 beat out the 770 in many situations and unfortunatly that means Ruckus Wifi 7 device is going to be limited when compared to the other tri band 4x4 setups that the competition has.

Would have made more sense to me to take the 760 and just add the Wifi 7 features to it.

 

[Tech Junky]

For curiosity's sake... why does no one talk about Engenius?

Good question. Price? Popularity? Availability?

 

[ViciousXUSMC]

For curiosity's sake... why does no one talk about Engenius?

Looked them up,

ECW536

Right on par with the others, a bit more expensive and its cloud managed.
Still another to keep an eye out for.

 

[NablaSquaredG]

You could be right, but is that really it or just a coincidence?

Yes

First Number = Tier (3 = Low End, 5 = Midrange, 6 = Upper Midrange, 7 = High End, 8 = Super High End)
Second Number = Generation (0 = 802.11ac Wave 1 / 802.11n for R300, 1 = 802.11ac Wave 2 / Wave 1 for R310, 2 = Highend 802.11ac Wave 2, 3 = 802.11ax pre-standard aka R730, 4 = does not exist, 5 = 802.11ax Wifi6, 6 = Wifi 6E, 7 = Wifi7)

Other models do not bind that same way its always the higher number is the higher model.
R710 R730 is not Wifi 1 and Wifi 3 lol.
Same for 600 500 all of them are just numbered basically for their tier and release order.

that doesn't make sense

Would have made more sense to me to take the 760 and just add the Wifi 7 features to it.

lol, that's not how this works

The 760 just seemed out of place with tri band 4x4 while the 770 is 2x2 4x4 2x2 so a big loss in antenna configuration.
So I would not be supprised to see the 760 beat out the 770 in many situations and unfortunatly that means Ruckus Wifi 7 device is going to be limited when compared to the other tri band 4x4 setups that the competition has.

Omada EAP773 probably uses the new bread-and-butter Qualcomm Wifi7 chip (2x2, 2x2, 2x2, most likely IPQ9514 / IPQ9510 / Networking Pro 620 or maybe IPQ5322), R770 probably uses a slightly bigger variant of the same chip (2x2, 4x4, 2x2, most likely IPQ9534 / IPQ9530 / Networking Pro 820).
Omada EAP783 has 4x4, 4x4, 4x4 and most likely uses IPQ9554 / IPQ9550 / Networking Pro 1220.

There is still the bigger variant, IPQ9574 / IPQ9574 / Networking Pro 1620 which does 4x4, 8x8, 4x4 (or 4x4, 4x4, 8x8?). I suppose this one will be used in the R870 AP

Overview of current chips:
IPQ9574 / IPQ9570 / Networking Pro 1620, 16 Streams, 4x4, 8x8, 4x4 (or 4x4, 4x4, 8x8?), will likely be used in R870
IPQ9554 / IPQ9550 / Networking Pro 1220, 12 Streams (4x4, 4x4, 4x4), most likely used in Omada EAP783
IPQ9534 / IPQ9530 / Networking Pro 820, 8 Streams (2x2, 4x4, 2x2), most likely used in R770
IPQ9514 / IPQ9510 / Networking Pro 620, 6 Streams (2x2, 2x2, 2x2), most likely used in EAP773
IPQ5332 / IH 3210, 10 Streams - Don't know of any product. Stream config probably 2x2, 4x4, 4x4
IPQ5322 / IH 326, 6 streams - probably 2x2, 2x2, 2x2 - could be in use in EAP773

 

[Tech Junky]

Qualcomm - TechInfoDepot

Official website: https://www.qualcomm.com/For substantially more information, see: Qualcomm on Wikipedia.

en.techinfodepot.shoutwiki.com

 

[alaricljs]

Looked them up,

ECW536

Right on par with the others, a bit more expensive and its cloud managed.
Still another to keep an eye out for.

I see. The FIT line (SMB/home) is the one with in-house control and they haven't gotten wifi7 into that lineup yet.

 

[blunden]

I cant say that its not good, have not tried it.

I can say in the past having been an early adopter of Unifi, that they were way more popular than they deserved as the performance was not great and the ecosystem limitations suck.

Their MO is get people in with cheap and alluring AP's and then crush you with really overpriced switches and gimp you with unimpressive firewalls.

Lots of people use Unifi APs but non-Unifi switches and routers, including me. It works perfectly fine and the only meaningful features you lose out on are the ones that are actually implemented on their routers and switches, which is perfectly reasonable.

 

[zer0sum]

Thanks for throwing another name in the hat, on paper those look great and price is good.
The unleashed like management really has my interest.

I'll have to see if they have a tri band 4x4 x3 6ghz offering.

I just noticed they also have a new model called the 7665 coming this quarter, which is their first wifi 6E AP.
They're not quite as cutting edge as some, but I guess they're more on the lower end of things.
How many wifi 6E and 7 devices do you actually have anyways?

Tri radio - 2x2 for 2.4/5/6G with MU-MIMO DL/iUL OFDMA

Qualcomm chips with:
QCA8081
QCN6102
QCN6112
IPQ5018

https://fcc.report/FCC-ID/YZZGWN7665

 

[iball]

For curiosity's sake... why does no one talk about Engenius?

Because based upon my own personal experience with them in the MSP space, they're garbage and always crapping out.
Had about 50 of them deployed at once and almost all of them would just lock up after a few weeks, causing us to have to remote into the switches and power-cycle their POE ports to force reboot them. That burned us out on them and we never bought Engenius anything ever again.

We eventually just replaced them all with Unifi APs and didn't have those problems again.
Of course the only Ubiquiti gear we deployed were their APs, no switches or anything else. We didn't even bother with their Cloud Key devices either, preferring to just spin up a small Unifi VM in each customer's vSphere or installing the software on one of their bare-metal Windows servers to configure the APs and manage firmware updates.

 

[ViciousXUSMC]

How many wifi 6E and 7 devices do you actually have anyways?

Not many lol Wifi 7? Probably none.
I think My S23 Ultra is Wifi 6e
My Tab S9 Ultra and Tab S9 are Wifi 6e
My Quest 3 is Wifi 6e and that one is kinda important as I do want to do a lot of wireless PCVR stuff.

But its more that if I am going to take the time and money to upgrade, I don't want the urge to upgrade again for a while by "future proofing" a bit.
I know there really is no such thing as future proofing, but if the current tech is availible it makes sense to go for it.

Also I think it will be easier to configure everything with AP's that use 10gb backhauls and that seems to be mostly a Wifi 7 thing, I can completly forgo needing to get a multigig switch and just use my existing Brocade ICX6450 switchs with 10gb SFPs

 

[ViciousXUSMC]

Lots of people use Unifi APs but non-Unifi switches and routers, including me. It works perfectly fine and the only meaningful features you lose out on are the ones that are actually implemented on their routers and switches, which is perfectly reasonable.

Yeah just not for me, if it works for you thats ok.

But when I started using 10GB all the 10gb switch offerings from them were really overpriced, and then using my own switch meant losing out of a lot of data and features.

For the firewall my DIY PFSense box is infinitly more capable and cheaper and that again meant losing even more metrics and features.

Since the AP's were no better than others offering (and infact much worse I discovered when I changed to Ruckus) there was no reason to use any of their products anymore.

 

[NPS]

I know there really is no such thing as future proofing, but if the current tech is availible it makes sense to go for it.

Yeah but staying 1-2 generations behind the curve can be much more cost effective if you don't need the current gen. Problem is that 6E is not adopted that widely by AP manufacturers, I guess.

 

[ViciousXUSMC]

Yeah but staying 1-2 generations behind the curve can be much more cost effective if you don't need the current gen. Problem is that 6E is not adopted that widely by AP manufacturers, I guess.

Id say the biggest reason to go for it for me is the fact I have affordable 5gb WAN service and I am a tech geek that wants to see big numbers and have a crazy setup.

There is no practical reason or need for sure.

I just upgrade things for the sake of upgrading them and enjoy the design and building of things usually more than actually owning them.

So have a R210ii on the way and some 10gb NICs to build me a multi-gig PFSense box already have all my servers and my desktop on 10gb, and when I am doing tests for things like say the new OLED Steam Deck vs the old Steam Deck and I was testing the wifi chips and writing a review about it, I felt like my wireless network was holding me back from honest results.

Over the years I have always been the biggest advocate for price vs performance, and being on the bleeding edge instead of the leading edge.
I totally get it, I guess getting older and having a good career now I can spoil myself a bit lol.

I learned so much from this thread though, I love this forum and all its members.
Espeically appreciated the guys that chimed in with the qualcom chip info and all the products to look at.

I think I am leaning twoards the Zyxel right now simply because for triple 4x4 and 10gb backhaul its the cheapest at $800, I would switch back to Ruckus in a heartbeat if I could get it for a better price.

Though I did order a couple of R730's soon as I found out about that R850 hack, so that will replace my WAX630's probably right away until I finish planning out and buying the parts and pieces for this upgrade.

 

[Tech Junky]

6E

I see it as Intel 10/11th gen CPU options that didn't give much boost before 12th gen added pcie gen 5. Sure 6E added 6ghz but same top speed with 160mhz bandwidth.

 

[Tech Junky]

WAX630

Once you get a taste of non-consumer devices it opens your eyes on how stuff should work w/o being hobbled for a dumbed down approach for the mass market. Then it just comes down to budget vs benefit.

10GE is one approach if you can reap benefits from it but, if you occasionally need high speed transfers between a couple of boxes then TB can be cost efficient at higher speeds. I thought about 10GE for backup/restore syncs but, I can get ~15gbps over a cheaper TB cable than it would cost to add a 10GE dongle to the laptop ~$200 + NIC on the PC side. Otherwise the ~1.5gbps over wifi is sufficient for most file moves. Since my server is my router on the ISP side everything is just direct transfers to the drive inside of it which means the bottleneck is the ISP. I switched to FWA awhile ago because it's cheaper and doesn't have as many restrictions like monthly caps or lopsided UL BW. I recently made my own gateway using an M2 modem that sits on a USB dongle and get 3-4X the DL speed vs using the ISP device and switched to a phone SIM to unlock priority data which does better than the FWA deprioritized speeds. Not only do I get better performance but, the price is lower by adding the line to a group account for a bigger discount and more benefits.

WIFI though is only limited by the current tech and budget. If you're working with full sized PCs and have the option of using a PCIE slot you can get creative and bond multiple cards together for higher throughput as well. Using cards other than Intel helps open the options for better performance AP options using hostapd which is the same stuff overpriced prepackaged options use under the hood anyway to make them work. If you want to walk on the wild side you can pick up Xiaomi's new BE routers soon for $40/ea. While they're not top end for performance they would be a boost over AX/E to an extent. Xiaomi WiFi 7 Router BE 3600 2.5G Available for Pre-Order In Asia for just $39

I ditched the consumer stuff years ago when I started my own AIO box journey combining several functions into a single box. Back then I used a QCA based QNAP WIFI card to internalize the WAP ability and stop getting crappy firmware updates from Netgear and the like. The QNAP card though used 2 controllers for 2.4/5 bands independently unlike some current options coming to market. Right now I'm waiting on some firmware to turn on the AP mode option on the M2 cards I picked up for $40/ea to setup a BE option that doesn't cost $500+ or involve those stupid mesh systems.

 

[Tech Junky]

ECW536: Cloud Managed 4x4x4 Indoor WiFi 7 Access Point -- $499 right now // buy 2 get 1 free
Compare Product: EAP783 vs EAP773 - 773 @ $190 / 783 @ $499

Looks like prices are settling in and some deals are to be had. Looking at the higher end options with 10GE ports since it's pointless to look at the 5GE as it becomes the bottleneck. While I'm opposed to spending $500 on an AP it's nice to see some options under $200 like the TPL

 

[ViciousXUSMC]

Guess I never reported back.

I have 3x Zyxel WBE660S as they were the fist available to purchase (Have had them installed since January) and also had the true x4x4x4 triband support, 10gb connections, and free non local management.

They went on sale $200 off for a while making them $600 and now it seems the new normal price is $700

https://www.amazon.com/Enterprise-Grade-Triple-Radio-NebulaFlex-Manageable-WBE660S/dp/B0CL6XBBBT/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=1H5184KE9QPSR&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Srrb3NIyHLGBlNW9vaZEPBBlrNcjlWhqDua4kqp_ITY.XPkTBfsNGn67GPOSbPAwI8aIwCupAckImXOCp9d4ONE&dib_tag=se&keywords=wbe660s&qid=1714673802&sprefix=wbe660s%2Caps%2C99&sr=8-1-spons&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.ac578592-0362-4e0a-958c-0f2dd61d30d4&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&psc=1

A few things that may set them apart, you can do local or cloud management, and you can do PoE power or USB C Power Delivery making them really easy to just pop up anywhere you need in a mesh config with a phone charger.

I have two hard wired for 10gb backhaul and I put one in my garage meshed to the bedroom and that mesh link is operating at about 6.8gbps

The cloud management tier I am using is free and gives me all the features I need/want unlike TP Link that wanted to charge me.

I have had no real issues with them at all, been really happy actually.\

The only thing I would warn anyone about, I took the risk to buy just before Wifi7 was officially certified, as far as I know these have all the tech required to meet the certification but are not certified, and maybe that's why the price break happened.

I am personally not a fan of having to pay for management, I would pay more upfront and get free management and it seems most brands if you get free management cripple you by taking away things like roaming support.

This does not seem to be the case with Zyxel you can get more advanced enterprise like features by paying, but free gives me the stuff I was missing with TP Link and things I was used to with Ruckus.

I would love to have one of the others to compare them head2head, I could even cover it on my YouTube page
See if the cheaper products are a no brainer, or if there is any good reason to get one over the other.

 

[Tech Junky]

Certification just allows companies to flip on features via firmware typically unless they really jump the gun on production and leave out bits and pieces.

What kind of speeds are the clients getting? 6.8 for a backhaul is pretty decent.

 

[ViciousXUSMC]

Still only a 1gb WAN and I can max that out easy even on 6E
I also just built a new firewall using that MS-01 ))))) so yeah I know my router is not going to be a bottleneck and I am ready for 10gb WAN now.

My Galaxy S24 Ultra and my Fiancée One Plus 12 both have Wifi 7 and honestly trying to run iperf I was not getting speeds as fast as I would have expected.

I need to retest, even getting iperf3 working was kind of hacky.

The backhaul (wired) is 10gb on both wired I can verify that on the Zyxel portal or my switches management interface, but yeah the wireless link for the one AP not hardwired reports about 6.8gbps using the 6ghz radio and its "smart mesh" so it detects the best band/radio to use automatically.

I am not a fan of mesh normally, but in this case it makes sense and works well with a basically dedicated radio and only 1 hop to make for a wired backhaul.

 

[Tech Junky]

An easy test would just be a file copy between wireless devices or just one back to a wired. Phones though typically don't have the bandwidth or CPU to hit max speeds. I have an op11 and while the laptop can hit 1.7gbps the phone just can't hit the same throughput. Though your PCs might not have the adapters to test with. MSI has them selling for $50 but last week they were $40.