The EnGenius ECW220 WAP: One Year Later, it gets an S. What's the S for?

[@engenius]

Hey thank you for reviewing out products!!! Security and safety is very important to us so we definitely appreciate the S!!!!!!

[@dangingerich2559]

Meraki is owned by Cisco, so charging egregious amounts for services is kind of their MO.

[@elminster8149]

A subscription for a WiFi AP for home use? Seriously? Next thing you know BMW will have a subscription for heated seats.... oh wait.

[@coffeemaddan]

Absolutely lost me at the 'cloud connected' bit. What a shame this phone-home s^t just won't die.

[@agr-tech]

they have versions that dont connect to the cloud - I use them, they are great

[@MemeScreen]

@@agr-tech are they keeping that around though? I haven’t seen any new products releases from them in a while.

[@agr-tech]

@@MemeScreen Good question. I hope so.

[@abavariannormiepleb9470]

Could you do a comparison series looking at the advantages/disadvantages of the various “more professional but still okayish price-wise” brands like EnGenius, Mikrotik, Ubiquity, ZyXEL etc.? An important feature for me is that management works well without forced cloud stuff. Also a table how fast manufacturers reacted with firmware updates to security flaws in the past as a general reference would greatly influence my purchasing decisions. Could contribute with a ZyXEL WAX650S I’ve also been very happy with.

[@wiebowesterhof]

They're all pretty good. If you can VPN into the network, generally you can avoid any cloud stuff.

[@steffeneilers8530]

Ubiquiti is definetly the 800 pound gorilla, if you discount Cisco. They make a lot of stuff, from CCTV over switches to phones. But if you want to talk their wireless solutions you'd be here all day, I recently had my config wiped and handover screws around again, there are cases when I've had a better (audio calling) experience with my 5Ghz network due to quicker (it seems) handover

[@Clarence-Homelab]

My personal opinion: Zyxel has had major security issues in the past because of hard-coded passwords. My trust in them is absolutely shot and I will not use anything from them at the moment.

[@CousinBumbleF]

Just 8 months ago I was so upset with the performance of ubiquity. I was having random ports on my “”enterprise”” switch just decide to not work (everything on the client / host dashboard said “connected”, frustrating). I blamed it on some old marvel nics and one end of life Unifi switch on the network that was end of life anyways. After getting new intel nics and upgrading to the new flex switches powered by the “”enterprise”” Poe switch… had the same darn problems. I did something you should NEVER need to do on equipment labeled “enterprise”. I un-adopted all devices, fresh install of the cloud key 2 OS, upgraded all devices (via ssh), and made a new site. Long story long, I currently have 7 months of uptime on all devices and everything is working impressively. I Just hope they learned from their mistakes / transgressions so the road ahead stays smooth. Sorry for the massive rant, had to say it and I’m sure my wife is tired of Wi-Fi talk. Thank You for the video!

[@Prophes0r]

Even if we ignore all the IoT devices, today's homes have SO MANY devices compared to 10-15 years ago. And I'm not just talking about WiFi. It's getting to the point that it can be REASONABLE to start subnetting a 'normal' household just to cut down on broadcast traffic. My household has 3x adults, and we take care of 2 kids a few days a week. Without including anything from my HomeLab or the actual services I run for the household, there is still... 4 Laptops 2 Desktops 4 Tablets 4 Phones (+6 more for regular weekly visitors) 3 E-Readers 4 SmartTVs 1 Printer (A real one. Mini-fridge sized laser printer. Like, runs an internal web server. Not one of those silly all-in-one inkjet money-pits) 2 Access Points 3 Switches 1 router = 28 devices And remember that doesn't include the servers, containers, dev-phones, old laptops, etc. Those add another 50-100 more. Then you need to take into account that most things are both poorly designed and also trying to spy on your shit 24/7. Each of those 4 smart TVs calls home with a DNS request for 6-20 different services LITERALLY every 5-60 seconds. Even when you remote into them and gut their running services down to the bare minimum they STILL generate more than 10k requests per day. *RANT* And apparently these TVs are the well behaved ones... My brother brought over a Samsung TV so I could make a quick mount for it, and I swear I'm not making this up or exaggerating this, my IDS started throwing a fit after about 15 minutes. When I went to look at the logs, the TV had enumerated the entire internal network, presumably to look for services it could interact with. On it's own that's not terrible, "smart" devices like to try to self-configure so only the minimum amount of work is required to connect them together. But the logs ALSO showed that every time if got done talking to a device and asking it who/what/when/where/why/how/etc, it established a session with some Samsung server and sent a bunch of packets. - New device? Who is your daddy and what does he do? - A managed switch eh? Running any other services? What patch are you up to? - Let me just call Uncle Samsung... Now, I can understand if it makes it easier for Auntie when her TV chats with the XboX to let it know that it's DTF. But what benefit could there possibly be for the TV to check if my network has a PXE/NetBoot service? In what world does Samsung need to know whether or not my SWITCH accepts telnet/SSH?

[@frankyfourfingerss]

Samsung TVs are a network atrocity. I took a couple of mine to task a few years ago after I looked at my network traffic. Turns out if you mess with local services or start choking its network communications the smart hub service has a nervous breakdown. Ended up putting fire TV hardware on them and taking the tvs off the network. There was just no way I could stop them from soliciting EVERY DEVICE on my network every 6 seconds.

[@AaronPace93]

I bought the local version of these last year based on your video. While I’m generally happy, they do their thing, I have emailed support several times for questions on features, and never a reply. I really don’t want to know the RMA experience.

[@TyGeer]

This is great I installed 10 wifi routers in my house. 5 bars everyplace. Coincidentally my whole family has been diagnosed with rare cancer. But the signal, bro.

[@NickMach007]

Perfect timing. I just started researching a new home network system. Can't wait to see more about this topic!

[@zstation64]

I agree with your thoughts on the other system with its random firmware updates and AR stuff. It's rubbish. Ripped a load of it out of my house and replaced with TPLink Omada, and it's been set and forget. Totally hassle-free, APs running on 2.5G POE, great speeds and reliability.

[@BNETT21]

NZYME can run on a Pi and do similar things to air guard. I'd love to see you guys do a comparison. NZYME can also log to Greylog and let you deep dive into what it's picked up.

[@eclecticdebris]

It's funny that you are willing to tolerate a new company with a predominantly subscription based model simply because they offer a free trial and _some_ features locally, when you know, probably better than anyone else, that this is exactly how the companies start and then, in a couple of years, start "requiring" cloud login/integration for nearly everything (for example, Ubiq***), and before long, are charging for subscriptions for everything. Feels very dis-engenius IMO.

[@slipknottin]

Ubiquiti still doesn’t require cloud login/integration…

[@lordgarth1]

@@slipknottin Yup. The cloud integration is great if you are managing other peoples network but you don’t need it.

[@Rickymcdd]

@@slipknottin Yea was going to say the same. I do like it for remote access to check on clients

[@cromefire_]

While ubiquity has I think a link in every app to send you to their cloud "relay" (which is even free), but they are not really pushy about it, so I think it's fair.

[@Rickymcdd]

@@cromefire_ app? never used one.

[@Seniormeowingtons]

I currently use 4x EnGenius EAP1250's in my house. Very happy with their performance.

[@sirseriously]

I recently went from ubiquity wifi 5 to aruba wifi 6 and havr been happy with it. Both were managed through a pfsense box made out of a low end hp thin client and i over tripled my throughput. 6e is nifty, but I dont have a usecase for it. Everything i need to be that fast is wired.

[@aj0413_]

Aaaand this is why I run Ethernet to everything; ports for it are the first thing I look for in any potential place to move to

[@NeptuneSega]

Even to a mobile device?

[@aj0413_]

@@NeptuneSega my laptop(s) hook up to a dock with Ethernet and so does my Switch. The only devices purely on Wi-Fi are my iPhone and iPad

[@gmt-yt]

The situation where you had to buy from EnGenius/Ubiquity or "worse" (in terms of price/performance) to get transparent federated wifi with wired backhaul has ended. You still have to pick a vendor but the ASUSes and TP-Links of the world finally have this as a standard feature (vendor lock-in required). Now if only OpenWRT could catch up .... :(

[@derekjcooper]

Top shelf EnGenius - surprised it isn't more common. We ditched the previous system and we are amazingly pleased with the backend functions - including great VLAN support. And their outdoor AP EWS850AP - simply awesome.

[@MemeScreen]

Do you mean you ditched the EnGenius on premises system for the cloud?

[@derekjcooper]

Sorry @@MemeScreen - that wasn't very clear. We ditched our previous AP system by another vendor for EnGenuis and couldn't be happpier. Did not elect for their cloud system.

[@MemeScreen]

@@derekjcooper Thanks for the clarification. I'm interested in their on-premises system, but I am worried that they are starting to abandon it for their cloud devices.

[@derekjcooper]

I don't think they'd do that @@MemeScreen as lots of installations won't want their APs talking to the cloud and opening interesting holes in their firewall.

[@MemeScreen]

@@derekjcooper the main indicator of this, in my opinion, is that they haven’t been releasing any new products for it since 2019. They are releasing new APs and switches for the Cloud service only.

[@wiebowesterhof]

Thanks for the update video. It is always good to see something has worked well in the real world. Ubiquiti has allowed non-cloud again, after a lot of shouting from the community. I've got far too many pieces of their gear by now and slowly replacing some of the oldest stuff. Agreed with the more access points with less power each. My network is also OTT and I like being able to manage parents-in-law's system and help keep them a little safer. I've got UDMPro, 10G switch, a few POE 16/24 switches older and gen2, a bunch of 48 port switches and at inlaws a UDM Pro. Both with APs (6 and 2 respectively) and cameras (10 and 2). Works great now, and finally with a decent VPN option. EnGenius wasn't particularly great years ago, they've come a long way. Unifi has recovered since the original video posted in about Sept 2020. It was a total mess for a while, but they appear to be back on track. To be fair, any of the non-ISP routers/wifi are typically significantly better. Both EnGenius and Unifi variants can be a good match, it depends on the needs though. It is funny, Unifi was a disaster with firmware for a while a couple of years ago; TPLink I wouldn't trust for the 'likely to never see an update' other extreme, enGenius seems to have it fairly balanced. Overall, it is good to get the right product for the right application. This is where having these types of videos really help.

[@darcsentor]

UniFi was worked great for me too. Got 11 pieces of UniFi gear at my home office and the WiFi and Ethernet have all been rock solid. UniFi changed there base OS a few years ago and this now seems to be working great. Also they have an AP with a security radio too. Set a DMZ for my web servers with it and that’s been rock solid. Only issue I have is that the UniFi firewall could use a few more features.

[@cromefire_]

Is kinda sad that ubiquity has no competition... Either you have "dumb" equipment (which is fine for consumers) or cloud stuff like enGenius... So more competition would be great. Also ubiquity never not allowed non-cloud AFAIK? I've had ubiquity equipment for 3 or 4 years now and I've never even had an account with them.

[@darcsentor]

@@cromefire_ the Cisco small business line of switches, routers and AP’s looks pretty interesting, but got burned by their EOL policy’s. Got a new Cisco router and they dropped support 1 year later. Shame I really liked it too.

[@cromefire_]

@@darcsentor But are they centrally and locally controllable?

[@wiebowesterhof]

@@darcsentor The UDM and UDM Pro have a few more features now, but still no load balancing and some stuff is 'their way' (json file tweaks excluded). I like them a lot to help manage the networks for other family members, but agreed, the firewall stuff is still weak compared to say pfSense. That said, you can slap a pfsense in front of it, works great.

[@3within1]

I would put IOT devices on 2.4 and everything else on 5, 6E. We use Mist/Juniper at work at you don't need a lot of APs. One every 30 feet or so depending what the predictive says.

[@ffp3]

I'm wondering if you're actually trolling people with no space on root partition and updates available in a background? :) How does those features fair with what Unifi offers? Is that something you've tried and was frustrated with previously?

[@andljoy]

extreme networks are pretty good too . Don't talk to me about terrible old devices.... we have a bunch of older devices that where "updated" to have wifi, but they put the wifi inside of a shielded case and wonder why they get collisions everywhere !

[@Bob-Fields]

If Nest and Ecobee taught me anything is the any cloud appliance or service is forbidden in my home.

[@johnpaulsen1849]

My one experience with Engenis was trying to get access to a clients aps after their it guy left. No reply at all. We have up and replaced the APs.... So back to Aruba we went.

[@WhitentonMike]

I setup a TP-Link AX1800 with 3 X20s. One of the units is set as the main router and is connected directly to my ISP. The other two are wired with Ethernet. The thing I like is the easy setup. The thing I don't like is the devices give you no control over the APs channels. It forces all the units onto the same channels but my WiFi interferrence is different for each of the units. It would be better for me if I could individually control the channels. I may try to set them up individually as APs and see how that goes.

[@Jsteeeez]

Macaroni in a pot thats some WAP

[@dfgdfg_]

YSAC?

[@jellederksen1187]

I bought the Engenius ECS1112FP switch and EWS357AP access point last year. Since I don't want any cloud managed devices, I was going to manage the switch locally. Big mistake. The switch local web-ui and SSH daemon only support DES and 3DES encryption. No modern browser or SSH client can negotiate a secure cipher and you are unable to securely connect to the switch. You can only use http and telnet to connect to the switch. This must also mean the Engenius cloud connects to the switch with (3)DES. This is all very poor security. No more Engenius for me.

[@MemeScreen]

Thanks for the info. I’m reconsidering purchasing from them now.

[@MemeScreen]

Are they killing off their on premises product lineup? I noticed they aren’t getting new products anymore.

[@ParanoidMarvinMk2]

EnGenius isn't working with a Taiwanese company, EnGenius is the brand that a Taiwanese company (Senao) uses in North America (Europe as well? I don't know). They use the Senao name in Asia. How different the engineering is, or if they are just rebrands, I don't know, but it isn't a separate company.

As a long time Surface user the intel AX201 in my Pro 7 was a Huge leap forward for wifi, the previous solutions were kinda bad.

[@dunastrig1889]

Thanks Wenell! I've been looking for a few old Ubiquiti wap replacements.

[@mitchross2852]

Wouldnt 2x2 APs be a limiting factor in speed? Why not 4x4 to take advantage of the speed ( assuming client has a 4x4 radio too ).

[@wskinnyodden]

Not bad, me as I am renting I took a merciful approach to my landlords WiFi (2.4G + 5G). It is actually an ISP router and quite a nice one at that, but as I am plenty aware that in this house there are 4 users at any time using the thing and personally myself have a considerable number of devices that need network access one way or the other my approach was simple, I got myself an AtomicPI which is running as a WiFi ISP Client and re-sharing the thing via Ethernet through a fully Managed 1Gbps switch (HP 2nd hand), this was crucial to ensure a couple of things, firstly to not completely destroy the WiFi performance when I'm transferring data to or from my NAS, which can be a couple tens of Gigabytes in some cases, while at the same time ensuring my local network performance would be guaranteed in any case and even if the ISP router hit the boots I would still have a working network. This has done wonders in terms of performance for me, my NAS is actually using a triple bonded link to the switch so I can have more than one client at full gigabit speeds (which I have confirmed to work beautifully), as well as improving my security. For example, as I have a VPS elsewhere in the world, thanks to my approach I can put my whole network going through a VPN just by connecting my router (Atomic PI) to my VPN server :P The only thing I'm currently working out on a solution for is the is to have port forwarding done across a double NAT network. Internally I can easily use either UPNP or manually setup the port forwarding but I have no other way of doing that on the Landords router other than using UPNP port mapping. As such I'm considering how to implement a UPNP request from my double natted network that would cause my router to not only map it's ports but also issue a second UPNP request to the router up the chain to the public IP. Any ideas on this one? (And yes, I'm aware of the potential issues with UPNP security). As a second side note, I have a second AtomicPI working as my MediaCenter connected directly to my TV (which is Smart but I hate smart TVs and how they work) to replace the bullshit that smart tvs provide. So this one is running eLive Linux, which was definitely work my $2 contribution (will definitely increase this considering how this has worked), the darn thing is fast and runs Kodi beautifully for my local media and some Internet media. Otherwise I just use a browser, you know for crap like KZbin and Netflix (which also work beautifully on this system with eLive, though Mint or Ubuntu were problematic). But back to the double UPNP mapping, any ideas you could share on how to do that?

[@b2bb]

Where’s my L1TV streaming box… I’d cop so quick _engagement_

[@donkeyle6364]

It has been 1 year already, but I still did not know what Ruckus Access Point he tried. It got abnormal low result when he tried it, and it conflicts with Ruckus reputation.

[@rdmclark]

I been running two Ruckus Unleashed R610, one in a mesh mode. It been running great. Ruckus has wifi calling setup for your cellphone, Intrusion Detection and Prevention.

[@enthusiasticpaunch]

I fully believe Wendell has a HAL9000.

[@LanceThumping]

My dream is an in-wall device that connects over fiber or 10GBase-T that provides a few ethernet ports and acts as a Wifi AP.

[@thecaptaincaro]

What are your thoughts on Mikrotik?

[@installmentplan]

Personally I've been rolling Aruba gear because they're one of the few companies that ships with a truly controllerless solution that also doesn't require a cloud controller - the IAP series WAPs. All of their Wifi 6 APs are universal so you can crossflash them over to IAP and not need a controller and everything is done locally.

[@cdoublejj]

it sounds the same as netgear insight, local ip web gui access is available

[@CH-og4fh]

Look into Grandstream Wifi Products

[@benjamintrathen6119]

Nice topic

[@zodwraith5745]

Ironic as you're getting more smart devices in your house I'm trying to get rid of them cause none of them work for sh*t. Voice activating my microwave takes a solid 7-8 seconds when I could hit the buttons in under a second. (Besides you're standing right in front of the damn thing when you need to activate it cause you just put something in.) Every smart plug has it own identity crisis. And voice recognition is spotty at best. The only thing I can count on is the Echo Show in the kitchen spying on my conversations perfectly to know what to try and sell me later. 😡

[@goblinphreak2132]

Just ordered the Dream Machine Pro since we have 3 power users using our gigabit internet and we need a but of kit that can handle 3 power users with SQM so we dont bog each other down. I keep hearing people saying "you cant saturate a gigabit link" I mean that's b/s. Just downloading a game from steam gives me 90-110 MB/s which is almost my full bandwidth (1000/1000, under perfection conditions, would be 125 MB/s). And then I am gonna use my old Asus AC86U in access point mode for WiFi.... and i can't wait to have perfect internet. Late down the road I will probably buy a Ubiquity access point to replace the asus one.... but ill see later on. For now having a killer router with firewall and massive switch is gonna really make things easier.

[@AegisHyperon]

It's not that it can't do gigabit, it's that it can't do gigabit with the protection features turned on. If you're just wanting a router/firewall they edgerouter lite can do gigabit too.

[@goblinphreak2132]

@@AegisHyperon bought the dream machine pro. Literally solved all my issues, including ones i didnt know i had. Main issue was odd latency changes. Solved. Second issue was hit reg in shooter games. Solved. Third issue that i didnt know i had, webpage loads are now faster. Like listening to pandora radio songs load instantly no delay between songs. Overall the dream machine pro is fantastic. No issues at all. Why buy a cheap edgerouter when i can buy the big bitch and improve everything.... Edgerouter is a joke.

[@AegisHyperon]

@@goblinphreak2132 "a joke" - aka no different to what you've configured

[@jammetortiz808]

how about going all manual on wifi setups and run openwrt APs?

[@wskinnyodden]

Cloud based network security? NEVER

[@hongtanke]

Engenius has horrible customer service. They've been a nightmare to work with

[@balla2172]

There is a reason meraki/ cisco is losing a giant marketshare

[@TheIncandescentOne]

Maybe a different acronym...

[@Rickymcdd]

unifi and cloud key all the way !!!

[@zstation64]

lol no - Unifi is a toy.

[@Rickymcdd]

@@zstation64 In that case their all toys. I've used everything and they all have there problems. I've found Unifi system the easiest to setup and fix if there problem.

[@TheMadhatter2561]

*Drives to Ryan’s house*. Let’s give this evil twin a shot 😈

[@Kurukx]

When doesnt ryan whine :)

[@nomadsempirebuilder9461]

HAL? really lol

[@TechySpeaking]

First

[@TB-dt2ro]

Was searching for long to get these access points in Australia and finally found them, just google for vqt engenius