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Forum Discussion
WAX218 Fast Roaming
Folks, After reading the following closed topics: https://community.netgear.com/t5/Business-Wireless/WAX218-Mesh/m-p/2061812 https://community.netgear.com/t5/Business-Wireless/WAX218-roaming...
The discrepancy is coming from the officially promoted usage and features and the effective implementation observed.
From the technical view, there are simple explanations. Even the WPA2-Enterprise 802.11r implementation requiring the config of the mandatory mobility domain ID is automatically hashed from the SSID ... and made available "automatically" from the underlaying Open Source platform..
ddps wrote:
And I have to report that it works *flawlessly* - way better than any other implementation I have seen outside of Cisco. It certainly works as well as any mesh installations I have seen, if not better.
Can't agree more - this applies to Essentials WiFi 6 WAX21x as well as to the cloud manageable WAC5xx and WAX6xx.
One reason for this is the "simplicity" of the technical implementation of Business Wireless Access Points and the strict network design on VlAN structured networks vs. consumer and SOHO/SMB "throw in" Mesh solutions which have to cover many (in certain aspects far to many) use cases. many Mesh makers focus on pure wireless backhaul. More advanced offer wired backhaul capabilities, even some consumer routers are (silently) making use of VLANs, eg. for true isolated guest networks. What this means for the inexperienced shoppers becomes visible in the communities. Customers expect almost any possible combinations, like making randomly select normal business Wireless Access Points to be workable as mesh satellites, like mix-and-mesh random switches with and without VLAN capabilities, with and without configured VLANs. Customers expect things just to work, even complex things like mesh system on mixed wireless and wired backhaul, the ability to configure some VLAN access ports on the master or the satellites, where something apparently "simple" like a NAT-loopback should work. Features which can be implemented thanks to industry standards and business-class implementations with ease are becoming challenges to the makers of the complex, multi-SSID and multi-VLAN "just-throw-in-with-minimum-insight" mesh systems.
Wish you ddps a wonderful year, and enjoy your great network!
Well said!
FWIW, I moved from a WAC6xx to these WAX218s and I find their management vastly superior. The Insight managed products — if you use them without Insight, which is what I did — have a wonky and slow UI. The WAX218s are way more responsive to manage, and they are rock solid. Love this product, and find my WiFi to be the highest quality I've ever had. As you said, the key is in the purity of the implementation. It's just doing all the basics right, without a lot of extra layers of "featuritis" to cause issues. Good stuff.
ddps wrote:
The Insight managed products — if you use them without Insight, which is what I did — have a wonky and slow UI. The WAX218s are way more responsive to manage, ...
The WAX6x0 UI is back to be fast and responsive, not much of a difference to the WAC21x. I'd state if that grey shade with the "Loading..." would not be there (simply not required for 99 of 100 views, as everything loads immediately [logs take a little bit longer]) it would feel almost perfect again. Don't know exactly what (and even less why) they have applied changes on the WAC5xx Web UI about a year or so ago - on Chromium based browsers there are massive wonky and slowness parts [saying it nice - without a forced reload at an early stage, it can't be that the first page does take what feels like minutes] indeed. Would love RaghuHR to bring the attention required - the WAX6x0 proofs it's not a design issue.
All these WAX21x and the WAX6xx make up brilliant APs, indeed!
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