In Wall Access Point - Pictures and Short Review

M

marley1

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Jul 18, 2000
Messages
5,447
So signed up to become a dealer of the HD In-Wall Access Points. Got my first test unit in stock, they are local so got it the next day. Hooked it up and configured. Range is good covering our office, looks to be same range of as a WRT54GL. In office excellent, walked outside, walked to our parking lot and it was saying 2 bars/low. Almost same as WRT54GL that we have.

Passthrough isnt gigabit so 100Mbps, but good stuff, good enough to put behind a printer unit. Unit comes with POE Injector. Looks good, pricing is about $200 for a single unit. They have kits single unit, 4 unit kit that comes with a poe switch, 8 16 24 that come with a POE distribution. I am now a dealer so if you need em come through me =)

I made a quick little mount for it in some spare drywall.

Pictures:
inwallwifi1.jpg

inwallwifi2.jpg

inwallwifi3.jpg

inwallwifi4.jpg

webgui1.jpg

webgui2.jpg
 
should be up now, had to http:// in it =)
shouldn't be slow either.
 
nice!

I'll keep this in mind next time I am in need of expanding or changing up a wireless project.
 
Interesting. I'm not a big fan of the passthough as to me I would think that the idea would be to hang these things as high as possible. Still looks better than what a normal access point would.
 
you could hang em high like that, they make a model with a antena to.

teh point of hte passthrough is to just replace a standard cat5 outlet in a office/house. throw this in there, now you got wifi and a hard wire point.

most offices have some jacks in usually every office, so the idea is you use maybe 3 or 4 to cover a normal size building, and you dont need to run new wire, just plug em in and configure.
 
I now have it on a POE switch instead of an injector and its running great too. also got a 4xem POE IP cam as well =)

POE CENTRAL!
 
$200 doesn't seem worth it to me... would rather just have a regular AP mounted on a wall even if it sticks out more.
 
but some users dont want that. and its a good deal, POE injector alone is like 50 bucks this comes with it.

for the normal home user this make no sense, but for a new business thats making a new office, i doubt they want a bunch of linksys routers spread around and then plugged into power or cables run around.

or for that matter a blue box with antenna stick off the wall =)

all depends on what you want to do, this seems business grade but I really haven't checked out hammering it.

i am putting 3 of these at a high end home builder, redoing his office all cathedral ceiling and all high end, good way to put these in, will lead to more business in some of his houses. clients like not seeing cables.
 
It looks really nice but I agree, I think the price is a little high for what it is.
 
Our bluesocket controller started supporting something like this the last firmware update; we're sticking to ceiling mounted MIMO APs tho.
 
Neat idea.

As for the price...if you're doing new builds...you can wash off a chunk of the 200 bucks by not having to put in a wall plate. You can wash off some of the otherwise additional patch panel ports. You can wash off another long cable run through the ceiling that would have been otherwise run for an AP. So potentially these units would have a net cost of about a hundred bucks.

Performance...hard to say, on the downside...wallplates are usually low. Also often between a desk and the wall, so some blockage there.

Would be interesting to see how these perform under heavier real world loads. In an office environment...this means running applications over the wireless...not just internet surfing. And this is where I see lower grade APs fail.
 
marley1 said:
but some users dont want that. and its a good deal, POE injector alone is like 50 bucks this comes with it.

for the normal home user this make no sense, but for a new business thats making a new office, i doubt they want a bunch of linksys routers spread around and then plugged into power or cables run around.

or for that matter a blue box with antenna stick off the wall =)

all depends on what you want to do, this seems business grade but I really haven't checked out hammering it.

i am putting 3 of these at a high end home builder, redoing his office all cathedral ceiling and all high end, good way to put these in, will lead to more business in some of his houses. clients like not seeing cables.
Click to expand...
For new build I'd plan for a cisco or otherwise enterprise class wireless system, not a linksys. ;)

Really these seem to be on the low end for Commercial gear, even the dummy cisco access points are about that. So probably not a bad deal. Are they centrally managed from a controller or individually managed?
 
Interesting concept. A bit high for just a wireless AP (not a high gain, etc.), but good for some situations most likely.

Problem for me is I see ceiling mount as more useful for most of the retrofits I do for offices.
 
marley1 said:
I really haven't checked out hammering it.
Click to expand...

Do some transfers across it.....leave some laptops running all day on it, transfer a few hundred megs....then an hour or two later transfer a few more hundred megs. See if you can run some apps from a server in hour office and leave 'em running all day.

Push 'em a bit more by doing the above with several laptops hanging off of 'em..even try a few concurrent transfers.
 
i will mess more at the office 2morrow, not much at my office to test tho. i can run outlook over https, only other application was quickbooks.

this client, just wants wireless in his office, last IT company had a sonicwall as main firewall/router and just a wrt54g upstairs as the access point.

all they will be doing is using it for wifi on the owners iPhone, web browsing, checking mail etc. i am pretty sure their laptops dont run Timberline. i think the field guys that come in with wifi just use Outlook over HTTPS. Will be plenty for that. We just know hes gonna want it clean.

showing these to him and the other high end builders around here could amount to us installing in all there new homes. which is easy work and easy money (install, configure, sell switch and router)

these seem to be maintained individually. if i was able to do ceiling mount i would but i couldn't find any models that were clean (dlink has one), and i was thinking god forbid one of the unit fails then i gotta get a 10-15 foot A frame ladder to fix it. Cisco gear is overpriced for what he was doing, and would be the last company i would use. I was going to use Pepwave Office product as now I am a reseller of that but again the client didn't want a black box on the wall with an antenna.

And the 4 pack of these units is priced very good and comes with a POE switch, i think it was like 600 at most for it. so pretty good price.

I will test some more, Yeolde if you want to borrow for a week and test it let me know, i am sure we could arrange it =)

Or if someone has a good test for it let me know. Right now its plugged into my 192.168.2.x network which is run by a Win2k3 NAS Server running DHCP, DNS is handled by my Freedom9 Freeguard 100 UTM Firewall. Thing is running good.

Passthrough point does not push out POE.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top