I need indoor WiFi AP for 2.4 + 5 GHz, 2+ SSID on each band with VLAN support, max 10-15 clients expected. There must be 3+ ethernet (ideally 1Gbit) ports, not necessarily indenpendent on L3/routing layer, but must be configurable for different VLANs (one will be input trunk port connected to backbone, other two will be access ports for different VLANs). VLANs for ethernet ports will be different than for wireless. 802.3af/802.3at powering and/or PoE output 802.3af/802.3at on one ethernet port will be welcome.
Please, which HW will be sufficient (i prefer some compact units) for this needs?
(I found ‘hAP ac’ / RB962UiGS-5HacT2HnT unit, but I’m not sure about VLAN configurability. Also it seems as it supports only passive PoE)
Thanks in advance, Franta
Not many Routerboard models support 802.3af/at PoE… and compact units featuring WiFi only support 802.3af/at PoE in.
Other than that, all Routerboard devices support VLAN, if not in hardware then in software (implementation is nice, performance gets hit though).
Apart from hAP ac, there’s also hAP ac² … the wired part is superior while the wireless part is slightly inferior compared to hAP ac.
Hi Metod,
thanks for Your reply! I also found wsAP ac lite/RBwsAP-5Hac2nD unit. What I see as a big plus is that this unit has 802.3af/at PoE powering. On other hand it has only 100Mbit Ethernet ports.
Also, block diagram: https://i.mt.lv/cdn/rb_files/wsAP_5Hac2nD-180511140134.png has switch part as unnamed with “wire speed” notice - which is not clear to me.
Please, has this unit also VLAN support on Ethernet and WiFi ports?
Thanks, Franta
The wsAP ac uses System-On-Chip QCA9531 and even producer of the chip doesn’t specify what kind of switch chip they integrated. But that’s logical, it’s integrated … so they might only tell that switch chip integrated is similar to XXX product.
As to the VLAN support: table about switch chip fetures says that wsAP ac lite features an “Atheros8227 like” switch chip and that switch chip supports VLANs in hardware. However, the real AR8227 has a limitation that ethernet interface can not be hybrid port (untagged access port of a VLAN and tagged of another VLAN). As wsAP ac lite doesn’t have real AR8227, this detail might be different …
None of RBs support VLANs over WiFi natively, that part is always done in software. But then, everything regarding wireless is done in software (no HW offload for e.g. communication between wired and ethernet port), so this is not a huge surprise. But VLAN support in software, hende for wireless as well, is pretty good in ROS, so I wouldn’t worry about that.
BTW, wsAP ac lite has only single Tx/Rx chain on 5GHz, so theoretical peak speed is 433Mbps (in reality more likely 100-150Mbps), which is half of what dual Tx/Rx chain units (such as hAP ac2) can offer (or one third of what triple Tx/Rx chain units such as hAP ac can do). Surely that depends on wireless client capabilities as well, but most of contemporary wifi devices support at least 2 Tx/Rx chains.