Netgear WG302 ProSafe Wireless Access Point Review
The Netgear WG302 is a Business class 802.11g wireless access point (WAP), which is available for around £150 in the UK.
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It includes features such as WPA, WPA2, Backend Radius Authentication, Client MAC address filtering via a local or Radius database, Multiple SSIDs and VLANs (Via firmware upgrade). The access point also supports POE (Power-Over-Ethernet) for convenient placement away from a power source, and SNMP for management and monitoring with a tool such as Cacti. The WG302 can be monitored with standard Cacti templates, to monitor uptime and interface throughput. If you want more information about this, please get in touch.
From past experience (the roll out of 20 WG302s on a corporate wireless LAN) they are not recommend as access points (APs) for use in high traffic environments, nor for a Large number of Clients.
With a high amount of network broadcast traffic the access points stopped responding all together, and "disappeared" from both the wired and wireless side. The only way to restore access to the AP is via a power cycle. Eventually we had to place all wireless access points on a separate routed subnet to stop broadcast traffic hitting the WG302s. This appeared to stop the access points crashing.
Occasionally the AP stops responding to SNMP requests, which can be at best irritating and worst destroys any statistical data which could be being gathered.
If they are to be deployed in a small network, with a small number of clients, the WG302 will perform very well, offering features normally only found in more expensive Cisco models. The range provided by the (very large) antenna is good, along with most of the security features which they provide.
POE, works fine, as do VLAN and multiple SSID's.
The Web Interface is very intuitive, and the access point is quick and easy to set up. A Command line interface is also available via SSH or Console if required.
They do give very high latency for wireless clients however, sometimes into the 100-200ms range, even with a relatively small number of connected devices. This would be unacceptable for anyone wanting to use them for gaming.
In Summary:
A good low cost solution for a small network with features usually associated with high end devices. Not recommended for large scale deployment (5 or more access points with 20 or more clients), and if you are planning to monitor your network with SNMP, make sure you don't need statistics to be that accurate!
Finally; Always check the bug list on the Netgear website, as you may find that the feature you want simply doesn't work in the latest firmware release.
Feel free to email me with questions or comments:-website@djax.co.uk.