Sunday, May 23, 2010

AirLive WL-5460AP v2: Almost An Enterprise Access Point

I have two of these at home. They're cheap and sturdy Access Points (APs) that pack many features, most of which I didn't know they existed before poking into them today.

In case you don't believe that these cheap APs are worth it, here are some numbers to shock you: One AP had 78 days of uptime (no restart) and another had 101 days of uptime!
And I say "had" because I updated them with the latest firmware, so they had to be rebooted.

91 images were the total to cover all the features this AP provides! The only downside is that even though the firmware is being updated once in a while, the documentation still refers to the old firmware, so you may have to invest in some trial & error episodes to get things done.

Wireless modes:
  • Access Point
  • Client: Client-Infrastructure / Client Ad-Hoc
  • Bridge
  • WDS Repeater
  • Universal Repeater
  • WISP
  • WISP + Universal Repeater
  • Gateway: AP + Router (Static IP, PPPoE, PPTP & L2TP)
  • Bridge (send beacon)

Features in various modes:
  • 802.1x / RADIUS authentication and encryption (includes accounting support)
  • Encryption: None, WEP, WPA-PSK (TKIP), WPA-PSK (AES), WPA2-PSK (AES), WPA2-PSK Mixed
  • Fragment & RTS threshold control
  • Preamble: Long or Short
  • SSID Broadcasting (Enable, Disable)
  • Single SSID support
  • Inter Access Point Protocol (IAPP): Used to handoff between different APs
  • 802.11g Protection: Prevents network degradation when b & g clients use the same network
  • Transfer Power Level (Tx): Default = 18dB. Lowest = 8dB. Highest = 20dB
  • Watchdog: Reboots AP when watched host can't be reached
  • Wireless Client Isolation: Prevents hosts connected from seeing each other
  • Wireless MAC Access Control (Filtering): Allow/Deny Listing
  • IP/MAC/Interface Traffic Control/Shaping: Quality of Service (QoS)
  • DHCP: Disabled, Client, Server, Relay agent
  • Packet Statistics: WiFi Interface, Ethernet LAN, Ethernet WAN
  • MAC Address Cloning
  • System Logging: All system or Wireless only, and can log to a remote syslog server
  • Network Time Protocol (NTP): Time synchronization
  • 802.1d Spanning Tree support
  • In WISP mode: WAN port (Static IP, DHCP, PPPoE, PPTP, L2TP)
  • In WISP mode: IPsec pass through support over VPN
  • In WISP mode: Virtual Servers - Port forwarding (single or range)
  • In WISP mode: Special Applications (port mapping / port remapping)
  • A single DMZ host support
  • Enable / Disable remote management on WAN port
  • Dynamic DNS (dyndns): support for dyndns & TZO only
  • Encryption choices: On WLAN, WAN or both
  • In Gateway mode: Denial of Service (DoS) prevention
  • URL filtering (doesn't say if it's blocking or allowing!)

All of these features are slapped into a 2MB firmware image!

1 comment:

Gyula said...

I have 5 5460APv2 access-points in my network and I'm very satisfied with them. This is a very cheap AP, I've bought the last two for only $15... I really recommend this AP!