Looking for a dual-band AP.

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kumquat

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I just upgraded my aging Linksys router to an EdgeRouter Lite and am super happy with the performance. Right now, I'm using my router in AP mode for wireless.

I'd like to replace it with a dedicated dual-band AP. I'd rather not spend $100+ if I didn't have to. I'm not sure what's out there for quality dual band APs.

Suggestions? Thanks.
 
Using a TL-WDR4300 with OpenWrt to bridge 6 WLANs (3 different SSIDs each on dual-band) to 3 different VLANs. 4th VLAN is for management and wired only. Uptime 6 months now. Never any problem.

Fresh after toying around with it:

interfaces.PNG
 
I will use a router in AP mode if I need to but I'd much rather find a dedicated AP.
 
The term "dedicated AP" is kind of meaningless. It's all just the same kind of hardware these days. The key is the software. I even removed all packages that deal with ppp and pppoe and all that, so for all intents and purposes, this box _is_ a dedicated AP now. It doesn't route, it has no IP addresses on the WLAN side, no DHCP server, nothing. It just bridges Ethernet frames from WLAN to VLAN. Its process lists consists of a DHCP client on the management interface, an NTP client, several hostapd, an sshd and a login on the internal serial port. That's it.

"Router" and "AP" are just software capabilities. Strip a router down and you have an AP. You aren't "wasting" hardware resources or anything.

The box draws around 4W.
 
I also want to stick with stock FW. Plenty of experience with DD-WRT and others.

I appreciate your input, but if I buy anything I want to buy a device designed and sold as an AP and not a router.
 
Fair enough if you do this for support/warranty reasons. I just wanted to make the point that even a TP-Link AP is probably not very different from a TP-Link router hardware-wise. I mean they don't make different wireless modules for APs and routers. It's the same hardware and wireless chipsets are generalised enough to run in different modes (client, repeater, hostap) these days.
 
I understand that, thank you.

I'm also interested in POE. I'm sorta thinking about forgoing the 5 GHz band and just using a UniFi AP. I'd love to find something similar that's dual band but not $200.
 
Engenius makes some WAP's that will run on POE. I've looked into them, and they generally get good reviews. Some models better than others.

They have units that look like traditional WAPs, and some that look more like UniFi's. Not sure if they'll do hand-off though. They do support multiple SSID/VLAN.
 
Yeah, they're also pricey. It's weird to me that you can get a dual-band router for $60 but a dual-band AP starts at over twice that.
 
kumquat said:
Yeah, they're also pricey. It's weird to me that you can get a dual-band router for $60 but a dual-band AP starts at over twice that.
Click to expand...

Typically, but not always, you get what you pay for. A $60 router usually isn't as good as a business-ish-class $150+ AP, but I understand everyone has a budget (I'm going through this right now myself).

If your budget is that low, you might have to bite the bullet and get a router-turned-AP, or buy used as suggested above.

Ubiquity UniFi AP's are only like $65-75 though, and get a lot of really good reviews. That's going to be your best bet for a dedicated wireless AP, new, in that price range I think.

ETA: The base UniFi units come with a POE injector, as they are all meant to run on PoE. I do believe they are not standard 802.3af (or something like that), in they use lower voltage I think. I haven't used one yet but it's high on the list. That should only be an issue if you have an existing POE infrastructure, and the included unit will work obviously.
 
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