WAX630E

I've used various Cisco access points in my home over the years. It was finally time to upgrade. This Netgear access point resembles their general appearance and form factor (though it is a bit larger) and looks nice mounted to the ceiling in its place. The UI is much more user-friendly than the Ciscos for a small business or enthusiast home user, but still supports key functionality you'd find in business access points such as multiple SSIDs for different VLANs. (The proper way to manage a Cisco is via command line, not the rudimentary web UI.) You can assign multiple SSIDs to the same VLAN. There are three radios (2.4, 5, and 6 GHz) and they can be assigned to SSIDs however you want -- you can put all 3 on a single SSID or pick and choose as needed. Wireless speeds are a massive upgrade over a wireless-N Cisco as expected. I'm not a heavy wifi user as I prefer to hard-wire anything that can be hard-wired so I can't really compare to other access points or consumer routers and my internet connection is a measly 300Mbps, but if you are copying large files over the LAN or have gigabit internet this will make a difference especially with multiple clients sharing a 2.5Gbps uplink (I am stuck with 1Gbps for the time being). The downsides compared to a Cisco: you can't use a WLC for mesh (it has cloud-based mesh support but that requires a Netgear Insight subscription) and this one is limited to only 8 SSIDs unlike the Cisco's 20. But are you really going to need 20 SSIDs in practice? The cloud mesh is likely going to be cheaper than buying a new Cisco WLC for a small business too, though this could be a bit pricey for home use.

Had an issue setting up the WAX630E. The router would reset the configuration on every power cycle. Netgear phone support was extremely helpful and walked me through a factory reset, which fixed the problem. Powered with a 2.5Gb PoE+ switch and connected to a Wi-Fi 6 client, I observed 349Mbps down on Speedtest, and about 440Mbps writes to my NAS on the local network! Very nice.

This is the Access Point for you if you need high speed internet access or attaching more than 50 devices to you network…and that is easy to do today. We no longer compete for bandwidth or lose connections. I love my Netgear AP amd it is so easy in to setup.

You can't use the mesh networking without enabling cloud managment. Cloud management forces you to give up local control - of ALL APs.

I thought I would splurge on the latest and greatest WAX630E. Also bought a WAX610 to use as an extender. The mesh never worked properly. Apple devices just hop back and forth between the two APs for no reason, getting denied authentication half the time. There's no option to run ethernet to the extender, so it has to be in wifi range of the main Access Point, which kind of defeats the purpose a bit. The in-built local Web Server for setting configuration is just absurdly slow, barely useable. The boot time is ridiculous, like 10 minutes. The cloud management option looks kind of decent at first sight, but the monitoring info is 15 minutes out of date, and displayed badly/incorrectly. If you are using the cloud interface for just this one box, you will find everything is very spread out over multiple tabs and drop-downs and magic buttons. Annoyingly, you can't edit the displayed names for clients, you just get a list of all the MAC addresses in the client list. That's pathetic, even EEROs let you name connected devices. I eventually just ran the 630 as a single AP and it is OK at that provided you don't want to configure or monitor it much. Big waste of money really, an EERO works better.

Update 12/4/22 firmware update speeded up the web interface to a point of no complaints. I remove the other two APs and put them to an IOT VLAN leaving this access point by its self for the entire house. It is a 2700 square foot ranch on a basement with 3 car garage attached total coverage is 6400 square feet. The ap is mounted in the center of the vaulted ceiling in the livingroom which is center of the house. Through put in the livingroom where most of the wireless usage is actually about 150mbps higher than with 3 AP on the same channel. Slowest speed in the house is 650 MBPS on 160Mhz channels, peak is 1880 Mbps seated back to a server. Everything is now plugged into a POE switch and battery backed up. We have very short millisecond power blips everywhere week, not enough to rest your clock but enough to cycle the AP, which still takes forever to boot. No longer an issue now. Really happy with the AP. Old review I use the internal web management that you do not need to pay extra for, once setup you will probably never need it again except for firmware updates. When connected to an internal server with 2.5 GBE connection and using 3 clients, one on 2.4GHz, 5GHZ and 6GHZ at the same time through put hits 2.2 GBs, not bad at all. 6GHz bands are not any faster or slower than 5GHz given the same MIMO (2x2, 4x4) most if not all clients are 2x2 or 1x1 so speed from the two radio bands is the same. oddly enough if you wanted to use wireless backhaul the 5GHz channel would be better, not sure why 5GHz is 4x4 and the 6GHz is 2x2, but most clients are not 6E.......so...... Using wired backhaul with 2.5GBE is the best. I ended up using the 1 gig ethernet port to an Nvidia Shield that sits right below the AP, nice. I have had mine installed in my house for 2 months now. One on the Livingroom ceiling and the other in the Basement. I did not enable any fancy features on the APs as it seems to slow down through put. I am very happy with the performance once they are booted up, which is a forever long 3 minutes (WTF-OVER!!) and the web interface is super slow; WHY!! Other than that once they are booted stability has only been interrupted by a Firmware update. Tech support........they don't want to talk to you if it is in a residential install. The AP is pricy but it does work.

My number one gripe is that there is no way to install a new TLS certificate for the web UI--you're stuck with the self-signed cert that is generated/shipped with the device. This is basic functionality that shouldn't be lacking in _any_ device with a web UI these days. Otherwise, the feature set seems good and I haven't had issues with dropped clients or poor WiFi performance. The web UI is a bit slow to load the initial dashboard after logging in and it's not as easy to maneuver as I would like, but all-in-all these UI items aren't show-stoppers. I probably would have bought a different brand if I knew up front that I couldn't put my own certificate in there.

I use the Wax630e with PoE tplink switch 60 watt budget.. works well with other firewalls for the most part such as pfsense, opnsense etc Cons: Interface is slow when applying changes Some people have reported issues with noise emanating from this app under load. I am one of them) Dash board should have more features by default but unfortunately requires Netgear Insight service $$ Sometimes on network drops from electricity loss the AP doesn’t turn on all bands correctly because of a bugs in the code of the firmware. I have to toggle on and off the 5ghz band in order for the 2.4ghz band to be seen. Slower than normal boot up from power loss. Requires POE++ switch for full speed on 2.4ghz range despite only using 27 watts max Large footprint for an AP Dated physical design Cannot change the ADMIN or disable this account Pro Can use in standalone mode without $$ Can use on PoE + switch at reduced power Wall mount bracket installation is a breeze Ton of configuration options 1 year of free support Good price for features Good signal footprint Vlan and multiple SSID features Super easy to configure Interface layout is excellent Can shut off LEDs