Setting up a company's internet network is not as easy as calling your home provider. Especially in medium and large companies, you need an access point that can support many different devices, many connected via a switch and Ethernet, and these numbers can reach the tens. As a domestic device with twenty connections already collapses, there are professional WiFi access points for companies such as the Zyxel WAX610, designed to host hundreds of connections.
We thank Zyxel for giving us the product for review.
Table of Contents
Unboxing
The Zyxel WAX610 box, open.
This is how we find the access point as soon as we take it out of the box and the protective packaging.
Designer
Zyxel WAX610 connectors. We see the Ethernet cable connectors on a LAN port and an Uplink port.
Look at the bottom. It has a groove for laying cables at the bottom.
The wifi connector has enough space to handle cables comfortably.
The Wi-Fi connector comes with an accessory so that it can be attached to the wall of the IT department office.
This is what the Zyxel WAX610 looks like with the adapter for wall mounting.
Zyxel WAX610 top view.
In case it is giving us problems, we have the forced reset button.
Zyxel WAX610 Photo Gallery
Managing Nebula, the operating system
The Zyxel WAX610 is controlled by the Nebula cloud operating system. We must register on the Zyxel website and we will have access to all these options to monitor the health of the network, along with reports and a very complete control panel.
Being in the cloud, even from home or in a hotel thousands of miles away, we can monitor the state of the network and even outright deny all access in the event of an emergency such as a malicious connection.
Putting the Zyxel WAX610 to the test
To test the massive connection capabilities, we have simulated virtual connections with Jperf to see when connection quality starts to drop. Here we see that with 50 simultaneous connections, which is already much more than a home router can handle, it has no drop.
With 100 virtual connections, no saturation is in sight that could collapse it. The decrease in the transfer speed when having to be distributed among so many devices is normal but it is not a noticeable decrease.
Experience and evaluation of the Zyxel WAX610
Being a professional WiFi access point for companies, whether they are offices or premises with public to those who want to offer a WiFi service so that customers do not have to use their data, we have done a test of its Nebula operating system together with virtual connections with JPerf.
Nebula is the operating system that the Zyxel WAX610 runs on. We have tested many of its cloud management capabilities. We have not noticed any shortcomings or failures when it comes to managing it in the cloud, so members of the IT team can easily manage it from home, now that teleworking is spreading and establishing, so they will not have to travel to manage connections and permissions.
To check its ability to withstand many simultaneous connections, we have done a simulation in Jperf to simulate simultaneous connections. In our test we have come to inject 300 simultaneous connections and no type of slowdown or problem has been noticed until reaching that high number. This would be the equivalent of more than one hundred workers of a company with their work computers, mobile phones and tablets connected to the company network, or more than two hundred clients with their mobiles or laptops in a hotel restaurant or service area. a mall that wants to offer free WiFi.
Knowing that a home router that comes with the operator usually collapses the 20 Wi-Fi devices connected simultaneously, reaching three hundred connections is a very high figure and one that is unlikely to be reached unless we are forcing said figure of connections.
Finally, we have found that the POE (Power over Ethernet) power supply is very convenient so that through a POE injector or connected to a switch that already supports it, it will be one less cable to connect, and that in an office or computer room very busy, it is very convenient. In this way, the Zyxel WAX610 is one of the WiFi connectors for professional users more comfortable to use thanks to its operating system, and with a capacity for simultaneous connections that is unlikely to be saturated.
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- POE power capability.
- More than 200 simultaneous connections without crashing.
- Its management operating system is really useful and comfortable.
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- It is not made for home users.
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