TP-Link EAP245 V3 | Omada AC1750 Gigabit Wireless Access Point | Business WiFi Solution w/Mesh Support, Seamless Roaming & MU-MIMO | PoE Powered | SDN Integrated | Cloud Access & Omada App | White

I got my first AC1350/EAP225 way back in 2018 during a Black Friday sale. I got a second one this week to see how well the mesh networking feature works. For the price, I am really impressed. Before buying, I was concerned because one other reviewer said his mesh network collapsed when he powered down the PC that hosted the controller software, but that hasn't been a problem for me so far. I shut my home PC down over night, and noted that both APs were up and serving traffic just fine when I woke up this morning (before turning on my PC to run the controller software again). My second AP isn't connected to anything other than a garage wall outlet, so I know it's working without the controller running when I'm on the other end of my property surfing YouTube on a laptop. When I fired up my PC and the controller software this morning, I noted half a dozen clients from my in-laws RV in the driveway were already connected and merrily surfing away while my PC remained off.Speaking of the controller software, it's pretty nice. Some of the English is a little broken, which I find funny, but otherwise, the software is really high quality, especially for being free. It has lots of features like channel strength scanning, showing a map of clients, event log, available bandwidth, who's using which bands, signal strength, error rate, throughput, and a lot of other stuff. It's pretty fancy.It looks like the controller software is built with Java and runs some sort of Java servlet container. You access the UI via browser. I noted that the software uses a self contained Mongo database server. I elected to install the software to my "Program Files" folder, so I had to adjust some NTFS permissions to allow Mongo db write access and make it work correctly, but it otherwise doesn't need to run as Administrator. If you have no idea what I'm talking about here, this EAP setup may not be for you, but if you're an IT person like me, it's great.I'm a software engineer that didn't even know what 'mesh networking' was exactly, last week, and I found it pretty easy to learn and implement. The 'Omada' software is available and regularly updated on the TP-Link website, and I had to download new firmware for my APs right off the bat, too. Once the software is running though, it's pretty simple to provision the access points. Just make sure you know what you're doing with WPA2, passwords, etc. to keep your network to yourself, of course.The package doesn't have any of the BS bloat that ships with home version mesh network packages like 'Antivirus' junk and 'Parental Controls', that I can tell. Just pure, professional, wireless networking. It does have things like 'Guest Network', and some other bells and whistles geared toward small businesses. This package feels like it was made for IT people and an office, and that's good.

Update June, 2022: still perfect.Update 8-19-2019 : Still going strong and no complaints!I only have one of these and I am using it in a home environment. I really should have just logged in to it and configured it by ip but I am a bit of a nerd so I run the free ormada controller software on a VM. I saw a few reviews talking bad about the controller software but I haven't seen any stability issues yet on version 2.6.0 but then again, I am just running one EAP in my home at this point.I previously ran a TP-Link TL-WA901ND which is a 3x3 MIMO 802.11n WAP. I was extremely happy with it. It had amazing coverage, PoE capability and the speed was great for a 2.4Ghz single band WAP. I bumped our internet speed from 100 Mbps to 300 Mbps and all of a sudden, the 100Mbps Ethernet port on the WAP was a bit of a bottleneck (As well as the real world speeds of 802.11n).Update: I bought a couple cheap 8 port managed switches to try out the VLAN tagging on this thing and boy is it a nice feature. I now have a guest network with a captive portal that tags to a guest network VLAN which I restricted to accessing only the WAN and the VM running the TP-Link controller software so the captive portal displays properly. I love this EAP. I really love that with the controller software, if I ever need to add another it should be a very painless and seamless process.I picked this particular model to replace the WAP over higher performing models due to it's support for passive PoE and that it even included the injector. The low price helped too! I wanted one of their EAP models due to the extended features like VLAN support on a per-SSID basis and the captive portal. I always wanted a guest network that was truly segregated from my normal subnet.So I have been running it only for about a day so far and am extremely happy. Yes, the range is a little less than the powerhouse TL-WA901ND that it replaced but it still adequately covers my little 1200 sgft house and the back yard. If I need to add another, the controller software would make the integration incredibly easy. The speeds have been great so far with an average of 8 devices concurrently on the AP.IT supports MU-MIMO but I would be surprised if even one of the wireless devices in my house did so that is useless. It does also support beamforming, band steering and airtime fairness which is quite impressive considering the price. Sure enough, once I enabled band steering it punted my wife's ipad, son's iPhone, our Roku and my laptop right up tot he 5GHZ band.I created a second SSID in seconds on the 2.4 GHZ band, assigned it upload and download caps and created a quick captive portal in maybe 3 minutes tops. It also will support vouchers including the ability to print them out for you to cut up and distribute. The statistics you can pull up with the controller software are impressive as well. Once I get the two managed switches in that I ordered I will be able to VLAN my guest network onto a separate subnet with internet access only.I am just blown away with the things this EAP can do for the price. This along with the controller software would be perfect for a small to medium business.