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826 Review
61 Karma

Review on πŸ“‘ TRENDnet TEW-455APBO: High Power Outdoor PoE Access Point with 14 dBi Wireless Capability by Gunaraj Callaham

Revainrating 4 out of 5

Beautiful but more work than expected

I bought a pair of these to cover a 400ft open space between buildings (Note: WDS mode is used to connect two devices). The open area is covered with forest (dozens of large trees) but I can see between units. The goal is to remove the cable modem in the remote building (so the ROI is only a few months) while connecting all PCs to the same LAN so I can do NAS-based backups, transfer media, share printers, etc. PROS: FAST ! I'm getting >18Mbps downloads from the link (using speakeasy.net to test performance) - about the same speed I'm getting from a PC on the wired side of the network. Price - it is difficult to find analogues in this price range. Well designed and includes everything you need to install them outside the building. Looks great - every day does not hurt the eye. Good technical support. I called and immediately connected with a person who was great to work with. The device was not working properly and TrendNet asked me to fix it with Revain as it is only a few days old. Revain got my hands on the new unit within days - the RMA process is amazingly quick and easy to use. CONS: Devices need to be restarted every time you change settings. Reloading takes 80 seconds per change, so plan on sitting there for a while while you work on tweaking them. The instruction manual is incomplete as many settings are not discussed. Also, it would be nice to be able to determine the strength of the signal while aiming - that's not an option, so you just have to fly with it. Encryption in WDS mode with AES does not work as shown in the user manual. I had to google for a few examples of AES keys (very long string of numbers) until I found one that would accept devices. They seem to be taking a very long time (up to 10 minutes) to connect and establish a usable connection (note this after power outages and reboots). and since there's no way to measure signal strength, one wonders if they're even talking. I would add more but in my opinion the pros outweigh the cons.

Pros
  • Absolutely amazing!
Cons
  • Not bad, but...