Customer Reviews

Cisco WAP4410N Wireless-N Access Point - PoE/Advanced Security

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

I recently purchased two of these Cisco WAP4410N WAPs. The goal was to help my brother-in-law cover his large home with good quality wireless. Based on my experience doing previous WAP installations, my guess was that is would take between three and six WAPs to full cover his large house (which has lots of brick and steel) with good quality coverage. I was impressed that by strategically positioning the units I was able to cover the entire house with only two of these WAPs. The coverage consisted of three floors (one was a finished basement).

The setup of these units was simple, the firmware is stable, and configuration was straight=forward. Since they were setup they have worked flawlessly and required no further attention.

The only thing a bit unusual (for those used to Netgear, Linksys, etc.) is that you have to setup a Cisco account (no charge just register online) to be able to download firmware, etc. This ended being unnecessary because the firmware in the unit was up-to-date.

If you're looking for really good WAPs that support Wireless-N and have lots of configuration options (e.g., Mesh, Multiple SSIDs, etc.) I highly recommend this unit. It has a slightly higher price than other (consumer units) you can buy, but it definitely deserves the "business-class" label that Cisco gives it.

 

I just installed 2 WAP4410's on a Linksys RVS4000 router and brought them up in a basic configuration just to get the system running. I will be tuning the configuration over the next few weeks and will report the results.

Right out of the box, the units worked as advertised with zero hassle. I updated the firmware, changed the admin password, assigned both static IP addresses and resolved the host name to enable roaming which has worked well thus far. I initially enabled SSID broadcast to make it easier to find for setup, but I will eventually disable. So far (anecdotal) the speed seems good, and the APs have had no issues with a mix of a/b/g/n devices. I have no plans to enable PoE, as there are known issues with the link speed dropping to 100mb/s. So far, so good.

It has now been a month, and I have enabled a second guest SSID and have configured links with a number different devices (WGA600n gaming adapter for an Xbox360, WET610N for printer with no hassle at all). The performance and range have been excellent. No problems with the VLAN or the QoS functions for streaming.

In the final analysis; a little pricey but an excellent product. 5 Stars.

After reading some of the stronger complaints and one star ratings, I still bought the WAP4410N, based primarily upon my experience with Cisco products. Once received, I immediately downloaded the latest firmware update: WAP4410N-fw-2.0.2.1-K9.img. Connected the access point to my computer and followed the quick start instructions provided. Flashed the firmware and rebooted the access point. Set the configuration to work with my gigabit network configuration and then reset my HP wireless printers and wireless computers.

This works as designed, no issues and no drops. So I'm not sure what those 'experts' are saying when they complain. Maybe they were on an older version of the firmware, maybe it was something else, but this access point is much stronger than the old Netgear WG302 access point we had.

As far as experience goes, I have 25 years in IT with a good bit of that in network appliances. This is a good small business/home business network appliance. And I do recommend it, above and beyond the negative comments posted here. And we do intend to buy more.

The price is good and the warranty is 3 years.

Having been fed up with the problems I've had with building my own and buying various AP's, I decided to spend a little bit more and try this one. It's been fairly dependable. I use the "fairly" qualifier, because I have had a an issue or two, but I can't be sure it wasn't a neighbor setting up a new AP on the same channel, or something like that. Otherwise it's been solid in nearly a year of service. I really appreciate that it supports IPv6 out of the box, even in the management interface. It's got a lot more control than a regular consumer AP with things like vlan support and pretending to be multiple AP's with different SSID's, etc. One other thing is that it's more and more difficult to find a decent AP only wireless AP. At the consumer level, they all seem to be wireless routers now. I already have a firewall and only wanted an AP. This fits the bill nicely. One other feature I'm not using now, but may later is PoE.

We bought a couple of these 4410N for office. It had to support VLAN trunking (802.11q), multiple SSIDs, RADIUS authentication on a Windows server and 802.11n. On paper this nice Linksys supports all these features, right?
In fact multiple SSIDs feature simply doesn't work with stock 2.0.1.0 firmware on devices with MACs starting with 68:xx:xx (that's all new hardware, I guess). I had to open a ticket with Cisco and they sent me 2.0.2.1 beta firmware which fixed the issue. But it still doesn't work for iPhones with Radius authentication feature enabled - the device puts iPhone's MAC into "User-Name" field instead of a real domain login name.

Overall, it's not a business-grade solution, I wouldn't recommend it so far - the software is waaay too buggy.
And if you want to buy it for home - consider other options. You don't need VLANs support anyway. Linksys E3000 or Netgear WNDR3700 cost about the same, but provide 5 GHz band and faster transfer speeds.

I had been wanting something to replace my aging but still working Linksys WAP54G Wireless G Access Point for some time. I avoided the WAP4400n because of negative reviews and many problems experienced by users. So when Cisco finally came out with a newer model the WAP4410n, I figured they must have fixed the problems in the WAP4400n. They couldn't possibly release a new model with the same problems as the old one right? Wrong! I purchased two of these from Amazon. The first one arrived and worked perfectly until I decided to upgrade the firmware to the latest version. After that, no connection, no nothing. It just died. A second unit had the same results, another brick. Now, I have upgraded the firmware in my old access point and router on several occasions and never had a problem. It is not rocket science but you must do it correctly or a brick is what you will get. I am a network administrator by profession. I thought I had done everything right but I was beginning to second guess myself. A conversation and some tests by Cisco Tech Support determined that both units were defective and I should return them. Amazon graciously took them back and refunded my money.

Looking for an alternative, I did some research and found the TRENDnet TEW-670AP Dual Band Wireless N Access Point. After buying nothing but Linksys products for years, I was reluctant to trust an unknown brand like TRENDnet but after my experience with Cisco, I had nothing to lose. I decided to try TRENDnet and purchased the TEW-670AP. The unit has great specs, 5GHz that the Cisco unit couldn't match and great performance, often connecting at 300Mbps. It also costs less than the Cisco unit. I couldn't be happier. I highly recommend the TRENDnet TEW-670AP. Avoid the Cisco WAP4410n like the plague!

 

DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT. I know this person has had success, but the success ratio is abysmal. Just read the CISCO forums on this device. This device locks up in an odd way. When this WAP locks up I began watching the logs on our router I see the client being assigned an IP address, but the client machine never gets the IP, hence the client machine times out it's attempt. This problem is most notable for iPad, Apple laptops and Linux. It happens less with windows clients, but it still happens. Only way to unlock is to either re-boot or power-cycle. Then the WAP works for about 4-6 hours then again if you re-connect it hangs and you never get onto the network.

This thing is so bad, that I have a little workhorse AirLink SuperG as a backup. The Airlink has NEVER had issues in the 2-3 years I have used it, and it has been up 24/7/365 during that time. I am actually very disappointed, as are the 216 other posts you will see in the Cisco Forum. It seems that Cisco when it bought Linksys, put Linksys HW into this device, junky HW, put the CISCO name on it made it look official and then say that it is all the administrators fault. Well when I see a post with a comment like this: "Some time ago I was Cisco certified, so I have had faith in Cisco products. I also sold them for a living, which made it a natural choice, but I am struggling to come to terms with my purchase here." (posted on Cisco's forum 08/29/2010). There are 45,000+ views of this issue on Cisco's forum. Cisco is dropping the ball and is acting like every other silo vendor out there by have abysmal customer support.

I tell you now, if you have a heterogeneous network I would steer very clear of this product.

And just so I can counter the "well Linux always has wireless issues", think again. I have been in several hospitals, my network at home and other hotspots where I was on and off those networks several times a day and NEVER had connection issues. But this "THING", give it 4-6 hours max after power cycling and LOCKUP and no new connections allowed. Only thing I can say nice is that *most* of the time once you have an established connection it at least has the courtesy to not drop you 95% of the time.

Here read the CISCO forum for yourself.
[...]

I have 3 of these WAP4410n AP's running in office environments, all over PoE connected to enterprise level Cisco gigabit switches. These are great units on the v1 firmware. Recently bought a new one that came with the latest firmware. Using PoE connected to a Cisco 3560 gigabit switch, the AP would turn off after about 15 minutes of operation on PoE and wouldn't come back on. Hooking it up to regular power would get it going again, and then you could disconnect the wall plug and let it run on PoE for about another 15 minutes before it turned itself off again. Nothing in the event logs of the AP or the switch. I downgraded the firmware to the older v1 version, and it's been solid as a rock ever since.

I'll buy some more of these and keep trying the new firmware, but if I run into any problems it will be back to v1 for solid operation.

I am a System/Network Administrator with 39 years of IT experience, over 15 years of network experience, and almost two years of daily experience using the WAP4410N (version 1), and it is without a doubt the most unreliable wireless device I have ever used. My 2008 $49 Linksys WRT54GS router at home is far more reliable and never caused me a single access problem in almost three years of use.

Without any notice the WAP4410N loses contact with the LAN and will not pass traffic from it to the LAN, so the wireless device will make a wireless connection to the access point, but it will never receive an IP Address from the DHCP server.

The process is random and can happen anytime. All of the fixes that are offered over the years have only delayed the process. The loss of traffic flow can happen many times over a single day or even days on end.

Powering the device via AC Power or POE has no effect. Sometimes a reboot will fix the problem, sometimes a hard reboot (pull power) will fix the problem, sometimes nothing will fix the problem and I have to wait for the problem to disappear on its own.

What connects the WAP4410N to the LAN side has no effect, because I have had it connected to different devices (routers, switches), different brands (AdTran, Dell, and Cisco), different speeds (100Mbps, 1Gbps) and even a brand new Cisco 2960-S switch ratched down to 100Mbps/Full Duplex has had no effect.

I have installed every version of firmware that has been released, tried every configuration change (including using SSH to access the CLI and making changes to the configuration that way to bypass the web interface), and I have read every post including a massive two year old post on the Cisco Community forum with well over 1,800 entries all reporting the same problem.

Cisco released version 2 of the hardware last summer/fall with a crystal on the LAN port to fix a jitter problem with some 1Gbps switches, but the people who tried version 2 all reported that they had the same problem.

Even crazier the problem can go away for two or more weeks or even for up to four months and then one day it pops up again.

I highly recommend that you don't purchase this product, unless you want pain in your professional life.

As you can tell it happened again today, and this incident was the last straw. I will start a search for a reliable access point tomorrow. I will have to replace four (4) of these devices and even though the rest of our network uses Cisco for the core, it is very unlikely I will replace these access points with Cisco access points, at least not at this price point. If you decide to purchase the WAP4410N, my remark would be "Caveat emptor"

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UPDATE Wednesday, August 31, 2011:

I updated our four WAP4410N Access Points to the latest firmware version (2.0.4.2) last week as recommended by Diana from the Cisco Small Business Team and one of access points failed this afternoon in the same identical manner that they all have been failing over the last three years.

I have sent an e-mail to the Cisco Small Business Team and I will post a follow-up if there is a resolution or a lack of resolution to this problem in September.

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UPDATE Thursday, January 5, 2012:

This is my final follow-up on the WAP4410N. This last Fall (September 2011) Cisco replaced all of our WAP4410N hardware version 1 devices with version 2 devices. We continued to have problems with all of the WAP4410N devices until I changed their parameters as follows:

Force LAN Port Speed to 100M: Enabled
Wireless Network Mode: G Only
Key Renewal: 36000

All other parameters are set to factory default and the devices all have with a Static IP Addresses.

I have to say that Cisco attempted to solve the problem and they where very nice about replacing all of our hardware version 1 devices with version 2 devices, but finally the only way to stablize the devices was to limit their wireless capability to G only and limit their wired interface speed to 100Mbps.

The WAP4410N access points are all connected to Cisco 2960-S switches, which are 1Gbps switches, but in the past they have been connected to Dell and AdTran switches and they have always had the same problem.

I do have to thank Cisco for making an effort to fix the problem, but at this time we have budgeted to replace all of the WAP4410N access points with an Enterprise controller based system and will donate the WAP4410N access points to charity.

 

I recently purchased this product to extend my wireless coverage on my home network. I have a Linksys WRT310N wireless-N router and a Linksys 8 port gigabit switch. I've been unable to use the Wireless WDS Repeater or the Wireless Client/Repeater modes with the Linksys WRT310N wireless-N router, no matter how I configure the WAP4110N.
Evidently this has also been a problem with the WRT610N see "WRT610N AND WAP4110N CAN'T BRIDGE WIRELESSLY" at [...]. According to David Carr, a Cisco monitor "A reasonable solution would be not use the wrt610n and get a wrvs4400n version 2. Your connecting up a consumer product up to a small business product and in the past i have seen issues with stable and reliable connections..."
Also in certain recent models only SSID #1 works while the rest do not, see "WAP4410N MULTIPLE SSID NOT SHOWING" AT [...]. A firmware patch is being worked on but not yet generally available. The product overall is a good one if used with the following recommended router/switches: WRV440N wireless gigabit router or the SRW2008PSwitch with POE. Please be careful if trying to connect to Linksys consumer grade products.
- Further investigation has led me to understand that the WDS mode which allows wireless repeating and bridging is not available in the consumer class devices. Also the SSID patch is now readily available through Cisco Support.