EnGenius Technologies Wireless Network (ECB600)

This AP basically does what it is advertised to do. I have downloaded and installed the latest firmware for the unit at this time (1.3.7)First, the bad:1. Management is either via telnet or http. No HTTPS, and no SSL. No certificates. You cannot turn off telnet completely, nor can you turn off HTTP. Because there are no encryption options, you send the management name "and password via clear-text across your LAN every time you log into it via telnet or http. Furthermore, you can access the CLI or HTTP management interface via a connected wireless client, and you cannot block this behavior. This is a Very Very Bad Thing.2. There is no help for the management interface via CLI or HTTP. There IS help to show you what the available commands are. However, some of the commands are obscure and it does not explain exactly what they do. I am not a wireless novice, yet there are some settings like "Distance", and a phrase under "band steering" that looks like this:"2.4G and 5G must have at least one the same SSID and the SSID of 2.4G can not duplicate."Aside from being bad English, it's not really clear how this function operates. There are other examples. The GUI is deliberately vague in some aspects leaving it unclear how a particular configuration option affects the access point.3. You cannot change the MAC addresses any of the interfaces, wired or wireless. They are "hard coded". Anyone scanning could determine the basic brand and perhaps even the model of the ap to better know how to structure their attack.4. Some typos in the GUI like: "Scedule Table". Quality control seems poor in this respect and it makes you wonder what else they were sloppy about.5. When it shows you tx/rx byte counts, it doesn't tell you what time period these counts cover. A minute? An hour? A day? Lots of little things like this in the GUI and CLI. A lack of completeness that makes it less professional than it should be.6. The only way to disable an antenna set completely is to configure and use a "schedule". You cannot completely turn off an antenna set manually. For instance, if you only have 5ghz clients and you want to turn off the 2.4 ghz antennas, you cannot unless you use the "schedule" function. Also, you can never remove the "last" SSID for any set. Nor can you disable it. FURTHERMORE, I just discovered that if you ARE using a schedule, and that schedule has the 2.4 ghz antennas turned off and the 5.0 ghz antennas turned on, the 5.0 ghz antenna light is on but the actual radio DOES NOT BROADCAST. (confirmed with a wifi scanning tool on several devices) So the schedule function is flawed in a fundamental way - this function is basically unusable in this version of firmware.7. No DHCP services on the WAP itself. Odd for a "higher end" access point. Not a problem in an office environment but for home use it might be.8. In 2013, daylight savings time for my zone (Eastern Daylight Time) runs from 2:00 AM on Sunday, March 10 and ends at 2:00 AM on Sunday, November 3. The WAP forces you to look up and enter these dates manually if you want your WAP syslog clock to show your actual time. However, the firmware I am running for the wap does not allow you to enter March 10 as a date. It only allows days 1 through 6. More sloppiness.9. Any time you make any but the most superficial change to the WAP firmware, you have to "apply" the change for it to take effect. Doing this forces the WAP to do a "soft reboot", where all the clients get disconnected and the thing reloads - with the new configuration. Most other WAPs allow you to change MOST settings on the fly.The Good:1. The antenna power settings let you exceed the regulatory domain limits. Good power range. However, like I mentioned before, you cannot turn an antenna set off completely unless you program a "schedule".2. You can limit the number of clients that can associate to each radio set (2.4 ghz, 5.0 ghz). However, this is not per SSID, this is per radio set only. Limited application. You can also set mac-filters for connecting clients.3. You can have up to eight SSID's per radio set.4. You can specify what combination of protocols runs on each radio type as well as the data rates you will accept for the combination or protocols you are using.5. You can turn all external LED's ON or OFF individually.6. You can turn off WPS completely. (wps is exploitable so it's good to be turned off when you don't need it)7. You can set a radio up/down time schedule.8. Supports snmp v3 (although I have not tested this)9. A radio set can operate as an access point, client bridge, WDS or repeater.10. Multiple vlan support per SSID. Have not tested this. With VLAN tagging it is possible to reassign the vlan id of the management interface and limit exposure that way, but many home users do not have switches capable of VLAN tags.11. Solidly built. Looks nice. PoE capability works fine. (I have mine connected to a PoE port on a Cisco ASA firewall.)12. Unlike many of its peers that offer 300 mbit wireless N throughput, this one actually can DO IT. MOST other 300 mbit N radio access points don't actually provide that level of data throughput in actual testing - limitations on cheap hardware itself. They do the protocol negotiation but actual data throughput is usually much less than 300 mbit in testing. THIS one can actually reach the 300 mbit throughput level, however.Overall, it seems like a fairly solid AP but only because MOST of its competition is REALLY bad in comparison. It could easily be made so much better with some simple improvements to documentation and functionality.Suggestions for improvements:1. Allow changing of MAC addresses on radios and on ethernet port to whatever the owner wants.2. Allow disabling of telnet completely. Support HTTPS for management. Optionally, SSH.3. Documentation in the GUI. DETAILED USEFUL and COMPLETE documentation, explanations.4. Ability to turn off a radio set completely if we choose.5. Prevent administration of ap being accessible through the hosted wireless interface. This is critical, perhaps the most important of these suggestions. The ap should only be able to be administered through the wired ethernet connection.

Excellent little box! I bought this for my home/office network.The bandwidth steering works well and saves a lot of device configuration headaches. You may not want to use it if you need to fallback to 2.4GHz for range, but the AP is powerful enough where that should not be a problem.Now I'd like to address some of the security concerns that others have raised.Yes, it is not possible to disable the http or telnet interfaces. This, however, would only be a problem for a home user who would be operating this device on the same network as the rest of their gear.For a business, however, you most certainly would be segregating with a firewall already. This device uses vlans to segregate the different SSIDs. If your ruleset is set up properly, the wireless clients will never be able to connect to anything, including http and telnet, on the accesspoint. The management vlan would be segregated from any wireless vlans. You can set which vlan the management interface should bind to in the AP configuration.

This device is really powerful and you will definitely get a strong signal. PoE support means that I can hang it on the wall or ceiling without any issue as the power adapter that came with it is really short. So remember to add a PoE injector.Bear in mind that although the signal is strong, your client device must correspondingly be strong enough to transmit the data back. This is a two-way traffic, not a broadcast.The LED lights are bright and strong enough to light up the room. Good that the settings allow you to turn them off. Stealth mode!The build quality is excellent and the antennas feel sturdy. You can orientate them in any direction you want and it stays there. Only gripe is that every setting change requires you to reload/reboot the device manually which is annoying given that most firmwares out there allow you to make changes on the fly. If you forget to reload, your settings are not applied.

I have just returned my second ECB600. I was having the exact same problem as the first one (also bought from amazon); It would work ok for a day or so [if lucky] and then it would lock up for no apparent reason. Sometimes the 5Ghz would stop working, sometimes nothing would work, sometimes both would work at very slow speed (having wired devices clocking 20Mbs connection speeds at the time).When having problems with my 1st device, I sent an email to Engenius customer service and they responded after 2 days sending some recommended settings (For 2.4GHz: Change Channel frequency on 2.4GHz using non-overlapping frequencies 1,6, or 11, Change Channel HT mode from 20/40MHz to 20MHz only, Lower the TX power to 15dBm; For 5GHz: Change Channel frequency to 44, Change Channel HT mode to 40MHz only, Lower the TX power to 15dBm) and asking to upgrade the firmware (it already came with the latest); well I tried that and no luck [with either device].I have also played with all the possible settings (same SSID between 2.4 & 5 and then different ones, band steering off and on, different security settings, different gains (auto or manual), different frequencies (20/40), different channels). Right after changing the settings or resetting this device it would perform beautifully but come back a couple of hours later and despair would be all upon you. I tried contacting Engenius customer service a second time letting them know about these problems and asking if there was anything I could do [to fix my problems] and I am still waiting for their response. Well, I dont need it anymore, back it goes (kudos to amazon return policy) and never again I would buy an Engenius product, I will stick with Netgear or CiscoMy recommendation is DO NOT TO BUY THIS PRODUCT