TP-Link TL-WA901ND 450 Mbps Wireless N Access Point, Passive PoE Power Injector, 3 Detachable Omni Directional Antennas, 10/100M Ethernet Port

It's great value for money, but not as reliable and strong as more expensive ones. Since I work online as a tutor I later decided for a NETGEAR EX8000-100EUS AC3000 which is great.

My TL-WA901ND 450Mbps Access Point works exactly as expected, has been stable and has a good feature set, certainly I would recommend. I'll be getting another couple myself in future as my house is almost WiFi-proof so needs multiple access points (APs).I've only given 4 stars as the copper network interface is 10/100Mb, so is slower than the 450Mb wireless standard. Whilst you'll never get a real world 450Mb from the '450Mb' wireless standard I suspect you'd often see more than 100Mb. Performance tests consistently show a little under 100Mb/s throughput so I would appear to be hitting the limits of the copper interface. That said 100Mb is enough for my wireless requirements, anything that needs to be faster can run over copper.The management interface is easy to use and offers all the features you'd expect and possibly a few you don't always get: - Option to for the AP to serve IP addresses via DHCP, not sure why you'd have your APs doing this instead of your router, but some may need it - Multiple SSID support with support for VLANs on the copper interface. This lets you have multiple logical wireless networks running back to your switch/router. Note that if you want separation of the traffic coming from your multiple wireless networks when the traffic goes out the copper interface you need to use VLANs, which means your switch/router needs to support VLAN tagging. - Watchdog timer - automatically reboot if you can't ping a target for a period of time, my AP has been stable, but I can see where this could be usefulTwo very useful physical points - the AP has screw slots that allow it to be wall mounted either way up - The unit comes with a Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) injector, so can be placed up to 30m from the PSU.More on the optional PoE feature. You can plug the power supply (PSU) into the PoE injector (both supplied in the box), then run a single Ethernet cable from the injector to the AP. This single cable will handle power and data, as the PoE name suggests. This is really useful if you want to put your AP somewhere that doesn't have a nearby plug socket. In my case this has allowed me to wall mount the AP above the picture rail close to the ceiling, so it's well out the way. When I add more APs in future they will be powered in the same way as it's a very tidy solution.The supplied PoE injector supports cable lengths up to 30m, if you needed a longer run you'd need a different pair of injectors, but TP Link offers these too, you'd either buy an  injector  then a separate  splitter  or purchase as a  pair . I won't need any cable runs longer than about 20m so should be fine with what comes in the box, I suspect most others would be too.

Awkward to set up, however good signal and with filters turned on good for dedicated use, i.e. Linked to specific devices, to stop interference from next doors Wi-Fi, still working well. !!

I've tried this in a few ways before settling down to using it as an access point. I started using it as a bridge to take the wifi signal from the router, and relay it with a different network name to a much larger area. But this became a bit of a faff for no advantage, so I set it up to repeat the main hub's network into the parts of the house that couldn't be reached. Then the router started playing up so I ran an ethernet cable through to the TP-LINK and it now broadcasts an excellent wifi signal throughout the house, much much better than my technicolor router.This is where the PoE is useful. I can run the ethernet wire right through the house to place the hub in a convenient position, and i don't have to put it near to a mains socket or have the mains adapter wire showing (the mains adapter is next to the router and the passive PoE injector - supplied in the box - powers the TP-LINK through the ethernet cable). I can't tell you how useful this is!It's straightforward to set up in any mode, although it did require that I log into its control panel (find its default wifi network, type in a web page which sometimes routes to the internet and sometimes to the device, and type some numbers in which may take a bit of looking up). It's pumping 20Mbps (ie broadband - not sure how fast my ethernet is) via Wifi to my office and back, which is better than I've had using Powerline or any other method and pretty much as good on Wifi as when i put my laptop right next to the main hub.But then I needed to do something a little more clever. I wanted to attach my Femptocell (mobile phone signal strength box) to the TP-Link so that the mobile phone signal was stronger in the office. They always say to only plug the femptocell into the main router hub. But it worked, straight away. Very pleased.NOTE about femptocells - you get them from your mobile phone provider, you pay a monthly fee, and they register them to the specific address where you are using it. If you move it to a different address, they will probably stop it working and in any case you are breaking the law (yes, you can actually be fined heavily and jailed). And it only works with phones on that mobile provider, eg EE. It routes the phone call through broadband. Speak to your provider. Wifi Calling is probably better but I don't have that option with my mobile provider.

I was hoping given the fact its covered in aerials that this would provide a larger coverage "bubble" than the built in wifi of my Sky Sr102 router enabling me to turn the built in wifi off, but the coverage / signal strength is very similar - as confirmed with a wifi analyser app on my tablet. This is operating in a 70s built plaster board partitioned property, so not a particularly difficult usage case.Not a deal breaker for me as I mainly bought it to improve connection to my wifi security cameras in the garden, which is easily achieved by placing it on a window sill adjacent, running a long ethernet cable back to the Sky router and using this unit in its default access point mode. This essentially required no need to access the setup screens to get up and running making installation really easy, although I did so to change the default admin password to something that a an IT savvy 5 year old couldn't guess.Overall did the job I needed, but range is average at best.