OK, where do I begin with these WAPs?
First off, I would like to state that these WAPs lack quite a bit when it comes to enterprise level installation documentation. That being said, there is enough documentation that once you feel your way around the configuration of these devices you can set up quite an extensive, distributed network.
My installation was for a large campus on two floors with peak connected devices between 100 and 200 devices. We purchased 10 but are currently only using 8 since the radios are so strong. We have multiple VLANsand SSIDs in our WLAN. The only way we could do this was to create 4 different profiles, each profile had two SSIDs, one for our corporate (this was the same VLAN in each profile) and one SSID for our guest network. We are using a total of 5 VLANs (networks) with our WAPs. This keeps the network small to keep it from reaching total density per segment that slowed the network. We are not using the portal on the WAPs but we are using SSID isolation and using the default rule which blocks each network segment on the guest network. We are using Untangle router for DHCP and routing for our guest network, assigning and controlling all 4 public VLANs (as well as two other VLANs for public desktops and one for devices).
Our network performance has increased exponentially over the older Netgear WAPs we replaced. We do not experience the high latency as reported on another review, but to be fair, since we isolate the SSID and block the other network subnets we have little multicast traffic and no router advertisements to slow down the network.
The two greatest aspects to these WAPs in my opinion are flexibility to set these WAPs up exactly how you need to, including isolating only 1 of multiple SSIDs out of many on them as well as apply a restrictive set of access rules while leaving the other SSID unblocked. In most scenarios this is a must, clamp down security on guest networks while allowing interconnectivity for corporate devices on another SSID.
My second most favorite thing is the controller software,I will admit that you do have to do a lot of licking to get through all the configuration but to me this is a plus. Being a system engineer at work I actually appreciate this, makes it less likely to misconfigure something due to too many settings on each page. I appreciate the centrality of how to manage the WAPs especially over such a large campus. The controller software actually gives you quite a bit of useful information including connection strength of each connected client. Lets you check the signal density through the network to isolate any bad spots. Another useful feature is the ability to set a reboot schedule, this is helpful since all WAPs (even Aruba and Ubiquiti) tend to run into issues.
Over all, I am extremely pleased with these. I would recommend these over any WAPs except maybe some of the ultra-high end enterprise level WAPs that cost over 5 times as much. We have seen @ 40 devices connected to a single WAP with a connection still over 50 Mbps with high throughput. Less densely connected WAPs see on average well over 150 Mbps (most devices connecting over 200 Mbps). This is pretty important on the real world types of networks these WAPs will be installed in and to have the TP-Link EAP220 achieve this level of performance for the rice they are marketed at makes it almost a no brainer to go with these WAPs if you are cruising around Amazon looking at buying multiple WAPs for a large business class network.
The only cons I can think of with these WAPs is the lack of highly detailed business level documentation to help achieve a distributed network. The only other downside is the rather small community which usually means little if any knowledge base type of assistance.
| Wireless Type | 802.11n, 802.11b, 802.11g |
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