Up until very recently I’d used an old Cisco WAP121 as my wireless access point in my garden office, and for a long time it was absolutely fine. It was stable, it was compact and unintrusive, and it was powered over PoE which was a massive benefit for me seeing as the switch at the core of my network can supply PoE to each of its 48 LAN ports.
The problem was it was only Wireless-n, meaning it topped out (realistically) at around 75mbps. That wasn’t so much of an issue initially, but now that we benefit from a FTTP Internet connection, and with WiFi 6 being pretty much common place it became a major drawback.
I mitigated this in the short term with a Cisco WAP371, which at least had a 5GHz band, but that turned out to be quite flaky as well as being large enough to stick out like a sore thumb in my office space.
Enter the KuWFi AX1800, a Wireless Access Point promising WiFi 6 speeds at a price that seems too good to be true. At time of writing this is the cheapest WiFi 6 PoE WAP that I can find on Amazon.co.uk, and I must say I’m impressed.
Arriving in a no frills box, the package contains the WAP itself, a very cheap feeling Ethernet cable, a PoE injector, the wall/ceiling bracket, some mounting screws and a Getting Started pamphlet.
The unit itself feels pretty well made. The outer casing has a matt off-white finish which is only ruined by the intrusive KuWFi lettering on the front. It might not be a big deal for some but I prefer branding like this to be more subdued. It’s not so much the logo (although that does look a bit child-like to me) but the fact it’s black printed lettering. It just clashes, and I’d have preferred a shade of grey like pretty much every other WAP on the market.
Below the logo you have a single LED window which gives you a coloured indicator to show what stage of the boot process it’s in and whether it’s functioning normally. The “everything is ok” status is a low intensity blue LED which isn’t too intrusive while still being obvious at a distance, it’s a good look.
To the top of the unit you have the port arrangement. There’s a WAN/PoE port for connecting to your wired network, along with a LAN port if you’re using the AX1800 as a wireless bridge (more on that later). You also have a 12V DC power jack in case you’re not connecting to a PoE switch, though you should note the unit doesn’t come with an AC adapter at all so you’ll need to provide your own if you don’t have a PoE switch or want to use the supplied PoE injector.
Personally, I would have preferred a cable entry point at the bottom of the unit as I intend to feed it from a network outlet at a low level, but I can understand why it’s at the top given that most people will mount the WAP at ceiling height and have the cable come straight into the top. It’s a “me” problem, but it’s one you should consider as well.
The supplied wall bracket just clips into the back and it’s more than strong enough to support the weight of the unit either wall or ceiling mounted. It’s a nice touch that it comes with its own fixings as well, though the ones supplied are for solid brick walls, so you’ll need to look for other options if attaching to a stud wall.
To the rear of the unit you have the default login details for the WAP, which is important because they appear to be unit-specific and aren’t replicated in the manual. You’ll probably want to change the details to something more familiar but at least the defaults are readily available to get you up and running.
Powering up the unit via the supplied PoE adapter I was able to follow the instructions to set a static IP on my laptop to get me on the same subnet as the WAP, I was then able to easily access the web interface and change to settings that I needed.
Some online reviews mentioned difficulty in setting up the WAP using the supplied instructions, but I honestly didn’t think they were that bad so long as you know a little about IP addressing.
When you first log on to the web interface you’ll be able to run the configuration wizard which will let you choose from AP mode, Gateway mode or Repeater mode.
AP mode is exactly what you think; it connects to a LAN port on your existing network and allows wireless devices to connect to your home router, which then allocates an IP address and allows access to the rest of the network. For most people this’ll be the mode you want, and the setup is pretty straightforward only requiring you to set an IP for the WAP itself and then program in the SSID and passphrase details. It takes a few minutes and after a quick reboot you’ll be able to connect to the AP and access the rest of your network with no issues.
In Gateway mode the WAP basically becomes an entire router, connecting directly to your ISPs modem or ONT and handling all of the network address translation to your ISPs equipment, as well as acting as a DHCP server for client devices. I can’t imagine this is often used, but if you are in a remote site and only require wireless internet access I suppose it would cut down on the amount of devices needed.
The repeater mode does what it says on the tin; it’s used for extending your home network to an outbuilding by connecting to your existing router over WiFi and making the connection available via it’s own WiFi network and the wired Ethernet port. I’m not a massive fan of these sorts of systems as they add complexity and latency to existing wireless networks while also possibly introducing interference. A better option would be to run an Ethernet cable to the WAP to act as a backhaul, but if it’s your only option then the repeater mode is there.
For my use case I set the device up in AP mode, changed the SSID and passphrase, gave it a static IP address for my network and then rebooted it with no issues at all.
Once rebooted you can log back into the WAP using whatever IP address you assigned it and you’ll be presented with a rather snazzy looking interface.
To the right you’ve got a network traffic graph which updates to show the uplink and downlink total data rates.
You can also see the CPU and RAM utilisation of the WAP as well as view its configuration details as well as the SSID details.
There’s also a section where you can input the location of the device, which is useful in an enterprise environment where you might have dozens of similar WAPs deployed across a site.
Looking through the web interface there are plenty of options available for those with more complex networks. One nice touch I picked up on was the in-built channel scanning feature which shows you how congested the 2.4 and 5GHz bands are in your area, allowing you to specify which channels you want to use. There are apps for this for Apple and Android devices, but it’s nice to have it built into the AP itself.
In terms of Wi-Fi options, you have quite a few things to configure and play around with. For both bands you can setup multiple virtual access points, each with their own SSID, passphrase and VLAN configuration. If you’re on a network which utilises VLANs to segregate traffic, then this is a great feature. So long as the switch port you’re connecting to is appropriately configured as a trunk it means you can run multiple networks over the same access point utilising VLAN configuration.
In terms of device management there’s no real surprises; you can backup and restore the devices configuration, return it to its default settings, configure a timed reboot to ensure it runs effectively, upgrade the firmware and configure an NTP server so that it receives its time and date from an online source.
There’s also a really useful log viewer which can assist with any fault finding you need to do and provide an assurance over which devices have connected at which time, etc.
When it comes to performance, I’ve been using the AX1800 for about 3 weeks now and in that time it’s proven to be everything I could need from a PoE access point. Granted the area I’m covering isn’t big (a 5m x 3m garden office) but the coverage outside into the garden is good meaning between this WAP and the main router in the house I’m always on Wi-Fi.
Performance across both bands has been good, the 2.4Ghz band is pretty much used only by smart bulbs and other IoT devices like the air conditioner (there’s also an aging PS3 connected via 2.4GHz as well) but it’s been rock solid and there’s been no issues with devices randomly disconnecting or being otherwise unable to connect via their apps.
The 5GHz band has been good enough. Within the office I’m routinely getting around 500mbps to Wi-Fi 6 devices, which is enough to saturate my Internet connection. For higher traffic devices like my iMac (which I use for editing and routinely sends large files to my NAS) I’ll stick with a wired connection, but for test purposes I took every Wi-Fi enabled device I own and set them playing content from YouTube at 1080p simultaneously and each of them was able to play back a 20 minute video with no noticeable buffering or down-sampling to lower resolutions.
So all in all, I’m really impressed. From the build quality, to the firmware, to the features and performance there’s nothing really not to like here, and it comes in significantly cheaper than comparable options from TP-Link, Netgear and Ubiquiti.
For the price, you should definitely consider the KuWFi AX1800.
