Cisco CWB150AX experiences

[ddaenen1]

Having scanned the market for a while now for AX capable access points. I have 3 Cisco WAP571 AP's right now (and one spare ) and i have been extremely happy with them. Solid as a rock, easy to manage. So i am leaning towards staying with Cisco instead of switching over to something else. I don't want anything cloud-managed but would like a similar feature as the WAP single point setup.

Today i bumped into the Cisco CWB150AX AP's. Looks like exactly what i need. Has all the right features and an amazing price point of 120 Euro. In fact, a similar cost as a 2nd hand WAP571 a couple of years ago which has me wondering if i am missing something here and maybe the new CWB150AX is not of the same level of quality and reliability or features/speed.

Anyone has any experiences with these AP's or is able to provide additional insights?

 

[coxhaus]

My thinking is they are 2 x 2 APs and at some point, Cisco will release 4 x 4 APs which will cost more. But I am wondering also. I have the older Cisco WAP581 APs which have 2.5 gig ethernet.

 

[tgl]

My thinking is they are 2 x 2 APs and at some point, Cisco will release 4 x 4 APs which will cost more.

Seem to be out there already, but the price is pretty darn steep:

Cisco-Catalyst-C9120AXI-B-E-Access-Point

 

[coxhaus]

Seem to be out there already, but the price is pretty darn steep:

Cisco-Catalyst-C9120AXI-B-E-Access-Point

You are looking at enterprise Cisco APs. I am talking about Cisco small business APs. The SMB units are a lot cheaper.

 

[ddaenen1]

My thinking is they are 2 x 2 APs and at some point, Cisco will release 4 x 4 APs which will cost more. But I am wondering also. I have the older Cisco WAP581 APs which have 2.5 gig ethernet.

Good catch on the 2x2 whilst my WAP571 is 3x3 and throughput on 5GHz is also higher on the WAP.

 

[Tech9]

Do you have any 3x3 clients? This AP is newer and may have better coverage than yours plus supports AX clients.

 

[coxhaus]

I was looking at the specs and the 150ax supports a lot of clients as many as my Cisco WAP581 APs.
"

Maximum clients

● Maximum number of associated wireless clients: 200 per Wi-Fi radio, for a total of 400 clients per access point, or 1000 in a system

 

[coxhaus]

My wife is ordering the new AppleTV 4K 2022 version which does Wi-Fi 6. I am going to order 2 of these Cisco 150ax wireless APs and run the AppleTV wirelessly to test it. I have an 85-inch Sony TV 4K.

PS
They are ordered. They were $105.31 each.

 

[sfx2000]

My wife is ordering the new AppleTV 4K 2022 version which does Wi-Fi 6.

The Apple TV4K has three generations, so be mindful there... 2nd and 3rd gen support 11ax, the 1st gen doesn't...

That being said - I have the 2021 variant which has thread support, and also have the older Apple TV HD (formerly known as ATV4, which doesn't support 4K tv, and is WiFi5 on the Apple A8 processor)...

To be honest, hard to tell the difference between the two boxes...

 

[coxhaus]

The Apple TV4K has three generations, so be mindful there... 2nd and 3rd gen support 11ax, the 1st gen doesn't...

That being said - I have the 2021 variant which has thread support, and also have the older Apple TV HD (formerly known as ATV4, which doesn't support 4K tv, and is WiFi5 on the Apple A8 processor)...

To be honest, hard to tell the difference between the two boxes...

Yes, that is why I added 2022 model. We are getting the AppleTV 4K 2022 with 128 gig and ethernet port. It just came out and is listed as Wi-Fi 6. It is actually cheaper than the 2021 model was back then. It is $149 for the 2022 model with 128 gig. I have the old one 1st gen.
Oh, the 2022 model is a little smaller than the older one. It will be here today.

My new Cisco 150ax wireless APs are scheduled for Friday delivery. I am still waiting for my dual port Intel NIC to run Opensense on. I also bought a 10 gig dual port Intel NIC to try. I don't think my small Dell can process all the traffic of the NIC but I want to see how much heat it gives off as I have a Cisco 10 gig switch. I may need to wait on the newer kernels for NIC support as FreeBSD is behind Linux. I think Opensense is a little ahead of pfsense in kernels so it might work. Any way the price was cheap for 10 gig NIC.

 

[sfx2000]

I also bought a 10 gig dual port Intel NIC to try. I don't think my small Dell can process all the traffic of the NIC but I want to see how much heat it gives off as I have a Cisco 10 gig switch.

Nice - 8x PCIe slot should have more that enough bandwidth I would think - is it more a concern with the Packets per Second when dealing with 10 gig?

Core I5 or similar should be more than enough there - recall that Apple MacMini intel has 10 gig as an option - those run laptop CPU's

 

[coxhaus]

Nice - 8x PCIe slot should have more that enough bandwidth I would think - is it more a concern with the Packets per Second when dealing with 10 gig?

Core I5 or similar should be more than enough there - recall that Apple MacMini intel has 10 gig as an option - those run laptop CPU's

I have a 16x PCIe slot. The problem is the CPU being a 3.4 i3 cpu. I am thinking around 5 to 6 gig of processing traffic. I might be able to stuff an i7 in there but then again heat is my problem and I bought the i3 54 watt for low heat. I actually have a larger Dell with an i7 processor that I could use as my wife bought a MAC, but it gives off a lot more heat than my small Dell i3. Probably if I really wanted to do this, I would buy a new Dell with low heat and run 10 gig.
I still want to buy a Cisco Firepower 1010. I just need to figure out the red tape so I can buy a license. I am just playing now since I have never run Opensense before.
And it does not matter if I cannot process 10 gig of internet traffic as I don't have it anyway. If the 10-gig card works well, I will just leave it.

PS
A 10-gig card would buy me being able to run a routing protocol and not worry about routing protocol overhead.

 

[sfx2000]

You might be good with the i3 - can always look at Netgate (pfSense) for sizing...

Their 7100 1U device...

• Quad Core Intel® Atom C3558 2.2 GHz
• (2) 10 Gbps Intel x553 SFP+ ports

 

[coxhaus]

You might be good with the i3 - can always look at Netgate (pfSense) for sizing...

Their 7100 1U device...

• Quad Core Intel® Atom C3558 2.2 GHz
• (2) 10 Gbps Intel x553 SFP+ ports

I think some where I read about the Dell 3020 motherboard to where it was limited to a little over 5 gig/s with i3 so it could be a motherboard limitation with cpu feeds. And I might be wrong.

My AppleTV 4K 2022 came in and I am streaming on it right now. HomeKit seems to be working.

 

[sfx2000]

I think some where I read about the Dell 3020 motherboard to where it was limited to a little over 5 gig/s with i3 so it could be a motherboard limitation with cpu feeds. And I might be wrong.

You're probably right - the i3 is Haswell (i3-4xxx), which if I recall is PCI-e 2.0, so a 16-lane slot would 8GB/sec* - but that's bytes not bits...

*PCI-e 2.0 is 500MBytes per lane raw speed...

 

[ddaenen1]

My wife is ordering the new AppleTV 4K 2022 version which does Wi-Fi 6. I am going to order 2 of these Cisco 150ax wireless APs and run the AppleTV wirelessly to test it. I have an 85-inch Sony TV 4K.

PS
They are ordered. They were $105.31 each.

Great. I am most interested to learn about your first hand experience with these APs.

 

[ddaenen1]

@coxhaus : did you get the AP's in the mean time. Anything to share?

 

[ddaenen1]

Seems @coxhaus has been missing from the forum for several months now. I hope he is ok...

 

[coxhaus]

Yes, I am running the Cisco CWB150AX wireless APs. I set them up once and they keep working. A couple of things is the code is loaded after a power outage from what I can tell. It takes a couple of minutes for them to run after a power outage. I have not had any real issues except I lost the main password to them. The PC I had it saved on I wiped without thinking. I plan to set them up again, but they just work, and I have not had time.
I think for the price they are good. I think they are better than the older Cisco WAPs I owned except maybe the Cisco WAP581. The WAP581 were very good except no WIFI 6.
I still have Windows 10 loaded on my laptop. Windows 11 is on the list for me to upgrade. My understanding Windows 11 is required for WIFI6 so I am not sure I have really tested them until I load Windows 11. My statement is based on Windows 10. My wife's MAC laptop and our iPhone12s work without issues.
I plan to run 3 APs when I set them up again as I want better coverage in my back yard. I do not see extended coverage on the edge using an iPhone 12.
And of course, I am still running my VLANs and Cisco L3 switch.

 

[sfx2000]

@coxhaus - good to see you're still around.