Engenius EAP9550 Wireless N 300Mbps Access Point/Repeater

Deployed two of these in a multi-story house for wireless coverage. Work fine, but ran into a very odd problem while deploying them. The client had a Verzion cell extender unit made by Samsung installed, and for some reason, these units would always cause it to error out if configured for anything other than repeater on odd channels. Yes, ODD channels - not even. After a day of frustrating testing and reconfiguring, I got it all working, and the client is happy, but I have not encountered that issue before or since.As for the deployment, that was very straight-forward. PoE from switching room was pre-run, so I just had to program the units for the right mode, channel and other sundry settings. Usually took about ten minutes to set up each unit, then installed them and tested. Web-based interface is easy enough to understand if you have some knowledge of networking terminology and theory. Units are very nice-looking, and the blue LEDs are somewhat bright. In my case, I was lucky that the clients loved the soft blue glow from the units because they were perfect 'night light' type illumination in the locations where the units were installed. There was an option to turn off the indicators, but it is buried in the interface and the LED indicators are helpful when chasing gremlins.This is not my first experience with EnGenius products. Their history has been mixed. Either the units run great from the start, or they are trouble children and fail before the first year is out. Most of mine have been the former, but the issue with the odd channels and the sheer number of resets I had to do to get it all working correctly worry me. I will update if they go south.

The pros: it seems to be an incredibly stable access point. We have an office of 11 people, and while most of them are on hardlines, we all connect to our wireless network with our notebooks, tablets and phones, and we're a pretty data-intensive bunch. We seem to burn through a new access point about once a year: it works fine for a while, but then it crashes and needs to be rebooted, sometimes several times a day. We've only had this for a few months, but so far it's showing no signs of instability. It was also very reasonably-priced.The cons: The range is really crummy when compared to access points we've used in the past. It won't completely cover our building, which is a first (we're not a very big office). There are dead zones, and this AP doesn't seem to support an external antenna, which means we're SOL unless we buy another AP or a repeater.I'd definitely recommend it to someone who only needed to cover a small space, but if you've got more than 1500 square feet or so, it's probably best to look for something else.

This is supposed to be a N AP, but it does not see the N Network to become an Access point. Moreover, the GUI is so bad, NOT clear on how to do the settings and where to do the settings...I had heard a lot about this little known company and it's amazing products, but I am very disappointed. ONLY BUY if you are an expert....

We own a small IT business and have purchased 3 of the Engenius and 3 Trendnets. The Engenius always have weird issues with connectivity in our building. With two people on the same Engenius with offices next door to each other, and one person can connect and the other can not because of no signal. Traded it out for Trendnet and both offices had great signals. Have had this happen two other times and the Trendnet always works where the Engenius does now.

I needed to add another wireless access point to my home system. My cable modem and wireless router were located on the opposite side of the house from my kids' bedrooms and the reception there was almost non-existant. I had tried a range extender that used the house wiring and it was pretty much worthless. I saw a similar repeater and located this one through a search. The only reason I don't give this five stars is because the instructions are written for iT professionals only. I am fairly comforable in tackling most of my home networking and wireless issues. However, the instructions for this devise were very difficult to understand and I had to call their help desk. Fortunately their technician was able to help me get it set up. The signal is strong and provides the access that was needed in the bedroom portion of the house. Additional set up instructions for security are just as confusing but I was able to get that figured out on my own.