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Solved
WNDAP660 Connectivity Issues
I'll try to keep this story as short as possible. I run a small office and about two years ago I upgraded an older netgear G only access point to a newer WN203. All was well for about a year. Then I...
So since the firmware upgrade and a factory reset this has been working.
I must say, a few days ago my Mikrotik wAP ac access point came in the mail and I am throughly impressed. The AP is probably ¼ the size and puts out way better coverage. I've had 0 issues with random latency spikes, throughput drops and random wlan lock ups like I was with the wndap660. And it only costs $84 new! It simply puts the $300 netgear to shame. It only takes about 5 seconds to boot up and start receiving connections. Changing any settings through the web interface are applied instantly and you don't have to wait a minute for the device to reboot like with the netgear.
I've had 0 issues with it so far. Even better it allows my laptop to connect using 3 mimo streams, never happened with the netgear. I rarely saw network throughput above 80mbs with the netgear, but now I can do 160mbs easy. For the last 6 years I've used netgear only products and I have always had small, but livable, issues with wifi here and there. Just figured it was normal. But apparently its not, and I am never going back. The only sorry thing about Mikrotik, is the configuration interface. It is full blow and made for ISPs. The wAP comes configured as a router, but to make it a simple access point, you only need to delete the firewall rules, turn off its dhcp client and server, and then set a static IP on the bridge interface (can configure your wifi security). After that you are good :)
Wow. The config u had to do was SOP so not a big deal. Great price too! It would be nice if Netgear fixed this for real.
Esaym,
I'm interested in the Mikrotik but there are 3 features of the Netgear that I really would like to have:
1) POE support. Both of my Access Points are sited away from power so I am using the PoE feature to power them.
2) VLAN I have segregated my personal traffic totally from Guest traffic using the VLAN feature on the WAP which I then carry over the network to my router on an isolated VLAN,
3) SNMP monitoring. I heavily used an snmp network monitor to check my network devices so snmp support is a must.
Are these supported on th Microtik?
Regards
David
SNMP and POE support is standard. You can have a different vlan tag for each interface. But if you wanted to have two different ssids both with different vlan tags but both on the same interface, you would have to go to the wireless interface menu, and then select "Add New" and under type you would want "Virtual". Or from the command line, something like:
"interface wireless add mode=ap-bridge master-interface=wlan1 vlan-id=1 ssid=guest security-profile=profile1"
If you do go the mikrotik route, and you are not too good with linux networking, you'll probably want to take a back up of the initial config first. Messing with firewall rules and setting IPs, you'll probably end up losing connectivity to it over IP. But the windows config tool "winbox" or something like that can connect to it via mac address so you shouldn't be able to completely brick it and lock yourself out (speaking from experience :smileyvery-happy: )
So far my only complaint is that the WMM power save stuff isn't as good as most other consumer grade stuff. Usually my cell phone only looses about 2% battery charge over night. Now it is loosing about 10%. But I can live with it.Esaym,
Many thanks. I found a few reviews for the mikrotik and they were very complimentary saying it's great for Apple devices, never locks up, basically a solid device. Obviously if I knew this before I would definitely have bought the Microtik but right now I have a solution that works. I dont have the user load that requires me to have the AMPDU set and the device has actually been stable for weeks on end. So I'm not happy that I paid £200 for a an 802.11g WAP but it works and I am using some of the enterprise features. Right now I cannot see why anyone would buy the new WAC series like the WAC510 when there are users like us with an issue with wireless that has been oustanding for years. They must be using the same microcode. Anyway thanks for your help in diagnosing my problem. Let's hope Netgear inject some resources into clearing down the issues with the WNDAP660 to lift their brand.
Regards
David
Dear All
We have made potential fix for this kind of issue. Could you please reach us https://www.netgear.com/support/contact.aspx to get the patch image?
Thanks
Raghu
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