Linksys Access Points - cloud vs. local management

[the-ninth]

Hi,

I want to deploy 6-10 Linksys access points (AC1200) in a private housing community. Linksys offers two ways of managing the access points, either via their Linksys Cloud Manager or local web interfaces. Even when going local you can have a master, so the configuration needs to be maintained in only one place.

Does anyone here has experience with both options? Are there any pros and cons to consider? How is the ease of use of both options compared?

Thanks for your support!

Regards, Robert

 

[L&LD]

Pros? With a Linksys router? I don't know any.

Cons? Cloud Manager. Any and all of them. It is great that you can do it locally, but is the cloud required in any way? If it is, this is a no-go.

What kind of costs are you contemplating here?

With that many access points, it seems like a commercial or enterprise solution is a better route.

@Trip can help with suggestions there, but in the meantime, what is the layout (pictures, drawings?) of the complex, and what are the SqFt specs?

For this type of installation, you want it to be set and forget. Linksys is not what comes to mind for those types of applications.

What you want is Ruckus equipment instead, I suspect.

 

[Trip]

@the-ninth - Welcome Robert; happy to help.

@L&LD - We're only looking at Linksys APs here (specifically the LAPAC1200's); not routers. I presume the OP has a separate, discrete routing/firewall solution (hopefully business/community grade). Also, a cloud-accessible control plane is not the devil some make it out to be; at least not when its properly deployed and designed into your architecture (such that you're not screwed if it ever goes down, which is what I think you were insinuating, so we're actually advocating for the same level of caution in that regard). While these APs might be a notch under other SMB options, they appear to review decently and I'm sure they function well enough. That said, there are certainly higher-end options out there, and Ruckus is one of them, but the OP doesn't automatically want that instead; if he's price-sensitive enough to not want to invest $300-1200 per AP (as most would be), then there are other lower-cost options that may make more sense for this use-case.

Although I don't have direct experience with them, from the research I did, it appears the control-plane is simultaneously available from the local master AP (at bare-minimum) and cloud portal (if you chose to use it), so if for some reason their cloud went down and/or the housing community had a WAN outage, you could still administrate the APs locally or from afar via an out-of-band WAN plus a VPN -- as reachable as any other business-grade offering.

That said, I might be inclined to look at some other APs from some names with a bit more pedigree, just for comparison if nothing else. I really liking Cisco CBW right now. An equivalent AP would be the CBW140AC (~$110 each). CBW runs a trimmed-down version of Cisco's enterprise Mobility Express controller (in fact, the 140AC appears to be an Aironet 1815i in sheep's clothing, at least according to this Reddit post), so it should be very solid. Available locally via an identical master/slave type of setup, plus Cisco does offer the ability to host your own Business Dashboard portal via a cloud provider if you want to (but don't provide it free, in-house like Linksys does).

Happy to help answer any more questions.

 

[the-ninth]

Hi guys,

Thanks for your response!

What I am doing is generally not professional-grade - we have a private common network between a couple of households, originally built 25 years ago to play computer games, now mainly used for sharing Internet access. ;-) I want to establish a single SSID with WPA2 Personal authentication, and be able to administrate these limited settings of all Access Points from a central place.

Since we are already using a Linksys router and switches I checked their access points first, read some fairly positive reviews and since they seemed to fulfill our limited requirements ordered three for testing (wanted to have a master, a backup master and a slave). What I liked is also that there are no license fees for the cloud management.

I compared the configuration options of the cloud and local management interfaces now a bit. While the cloud management has everything I need, there are some options it does not provide, such as the scheduler or rogue AP detection. The cloud management is only needed if you want to change the configuration - once the configuration is done, the access points work fine without connection to the Internet.

However, there is a show stopper - it seems that if you move the access point to Cloud Manager 2.0 there is no route back to local management. The local web interface is switched to a simple page, providing some basic info and asking you to add the access point to Cloud Manager. Even a full reset does not change this.

Will try to research this a bit more, but if it turns out to be true those access points will go back to where they came from - I don't want devices that will become bricks once Linksys decides their "limited lifetime" ends, or when Linksys ceases to exist as a company.

Regards, Robert

 

[the-ninth]

OK, now found a Linksys support page that confirms it - once you migrate a device to Cloud Manager 2.0, there is no way back to local management.

Apart from the Cisco CBW, are there any other options in the 100-150$ price range per access point which I should look at?

Regards, Robert

 

[the-ninth]

Started a proper new thread regarding other recommendations: https://www.snbforums.com/threads/w...ints-with-clustering-for-small-network.68217/

 

[Trip]

Will reply in that other thread.

 

[L&LD]

Glad you were able to research and verify before you bought into it. I see 'Cloud management' and what I hear is 'Sucker!'.

 

[the-ninth]

Will reply in that other thread.

Thanks, looking forward to your input!