Customer Reviews

SMC2655W 802.11b 11Mbps Wireless Access Point

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have purchased Linksys products in the past and other than the fact that it took 3 tries before I finally received a working DSL/Cable Router, I have always been pleased with the performance but the technical support was a complete joke.

I decided after reading the reviews on Amazon.Com and other sites that I would spend the extra $10 and go SMC because of it's ease of installation and tech support.

I purchased the Linksys PCMCIA card as part of my wireless solution and it took less than 5 minutes from opening the box to surfing on the web to get it and the wireless acces point up and running. The speed performance is beyond expectations. I have the basic cable modem attached to a Linksys DSL/Cable router and plugged the SMC Wireless hub into one of my available Linksys ports and that was it.

I made the choice to go the SMC route after vowing never again to deal with the inept "Hope Desk" offered by Linksys. If you had any thoughts about buying Linksys, think again. SMC is THE way to go.

A month ago, I bought the SMC SMC2655W Wireless Access Point to provide access for my laptop to my small, in-home Ethernet. I use an Orinoco silver card with the laptop. I read many reviews concerning the performance of this combination, and I made the purchase based stricktly on the performance issue.

It's a good thing that I am an experienced network tech, because getting the SMC unit to work with my existing 3com ISDN router and ethernet was not easy. To start with, my router provides DHCP services to all connected workstations. However, the SMC AP didn't seem to respond properly as a DHCP client no matter what I did. Even after I did the firmware upgrade, it made no difference. In the end, I was forced to turn off DHCP on my router, manually set up the IP table in the router, and assign hard IP addresses to every device. To initially access the SMC AP to make the necessary adjustments to it, I was forced to make up a crossover CAT 5 cable and plug the AP directly into a PC to configure it. Also, even though I upgraded the manager software that comes with the AP, it still cannot find the AP automatically on the network. I have to give the manager the IP address of the AP before it can find it. Oh, yes. Don't count on much help from SMC beyond the average front-line phone tech help dummy. After I called SMC, they were ready to tell me that the unit was defective. I had already determined that it wasn't, so I proceeded without their "help" after they couldn't explain to me why it was defective.

After finally bringing the SMC online, the actual operation was flawless and performance was beyond my expectations. There is nowhere in my house or out in my yard that I can't get a full signal according to my Orinoco card monitoring software. I live on a large farm, so I decided to actually test out the range. I found that I could actually still get a medium signal and 5mbs transfer rate at over 1000 feet as long as I could maintain clear line-of-site between the SMC AP and the Orinoco card in my laptop. I could also get a full signal and 11mbs as far away as 600 feet.

No doubt the SMC has a hot radio. I even read that there was info on the web that shows how to tweak even more power out of it. However, I don't consider the installation I had to perform to be a task for the average plug-and-play user. That is why I rated the unit a 4 out of a possible 5. If the software, DHCP client sevices, and tech support were better, I would rate this unit a 10!

I attached this product to a Road Runner cable modem, and with the accompanying SMC card in my Vaio Z505-HS (running Win98), it seems to work just fine. Just make sure you get the firmware upgrade. (see below)

The Access Point has a tendency to go to sleep if not used for several hours (for example overnight). It is easily woken up by power cycling (unplugging and replugging the power supply). On practicallynetworked.com the solution mentioned is to upgrade the firmware. I tried to download the new firmware from SMC, but the format of the zip files cannot be opened by WinZip. They're supposedly some ancient version of zip from the mid 90's.

The solution to this is to call SMC (1-800-SMC-4-YOU) and have them email you the firmware upgrade. The version you want is AP14g8. You will also need a crossover internet cable (...) so you can connect your computer to the access point. SMC will give you the static IP settings you need and walk you through the firmware upgrade.

I had to actually run the utility that came with the SMC card before the Vaio could talk to Road Runner. Setting up the network settings from native Win98 was not sufficient. (See next paragraph.)

My 3Com AirConnect wireless PC card from work does not seem to be able to talk to this access point. The SMC card works fine on the wireless network at work, so it's not a reciprocal problem. I suspect this may be due to the fact the 3Com driver does not support all the functions that the SMC access point uses, such as channel number. My officemate has a wireless SMC router at home with a Lucent Gold Card and reports it works. (My SMC card works with her router as well.)

Overall the access point works fine once you take care of the firmware upgrade. (This is why I gave it only 4 stars)

After reading lots of reviews I was more than a bit concerned about putting together a wireless network. In fact, I had decided to run cables and had purchased the SMC SMC7004ABR Cable/DSL Router as a part of that plan. The router worked w/o any issues. Afterwards, I started climbing around in the attic of my two story house and rapidly lost interest in running cables. Thinking that life was too short to spend days rolling around in loose fiberglass insulation, I finally decided to take the plunge and go wireless. I bought an SMC2662W Wireless USB Network Adapter, an SMC2632W Wireless Network PC Card, and an SMC2655W Wireless Access Point. I plugged the AP into the router, updated the firmware, and it worked. The USB adapter connected to one daughter's Win2000 machine upstairs and the PC card went into my wife's old Win98 notebook. I installed the latest drivers and all worked on the first try. I have ordered another USB adapter for my 2nd daughter, BTW. The out of the box experience has been great. I encourage everyone to take the plunge.

I had a Linksys WAP11 die on me after 14 months. I had always been happy with it ... so I immediately ordered a replacement. It turned out to be the new v2.2.

The Linksys v2.2 wouldn't work reliably when WEP was enabled (neither 64 nor 128 bit). Also, I seemed to have much more trouble with signal strength. So I tried a second one assuming the first was defective, but the with the same results.

So I gave up on the Linksys WAP11 v2.2 and tried the SMC2655W (even though it's supposedly based on the same electronics) and guess what? It not only worked flawlessly with WEP enabled, but it gave a stronger signal, and is about half the size of the WAP11.

You won't believe how small it is. But I'm really pleased with its performance. I'll bet you will be too. I'm a happy consumer with this unit!

Very easy to install. I plugged in its power cord and connected it to the hub. Installed the configuration software on my system, logged in over the lan, changed a few parameters to make it use the IP range of my lan, assigned a password, gateway, entered the MAC addresses of the wireless cards I'm using, and it worked. Installation was intuitive and took around 5 minutes. For someone who is not familiar with networking, it would probably take longer to learn what the various parameters mean. As for signal strength--it is in an upstairs closet and I can get it all over the house downstairs, and in the back yard about 100 feet away. If you know basic networking, you should buy it without hesitation. If you don't, you should read up a bit, buy something simpler, or have a knowledgeable friend come over for a few minutes.

This thing literally worked right out of the box with an SMC PCMCIA NIC. I typed in the AP's address and started configuring. I turned one feature on at a time until I had 128 bit WEP and access control working. The only thing that gave me any trouble is that the web interface requires "0x" before the hex for the WEP string and the NIC won't accept it. Not a big deal for me, but I can see why the guy in the store warned me that people return SMC stuff a lot because they can't figure out how to set it up.

BTW, I also have an SMC router that has worked flawlessly since I bought it.

I'm a professional system administrator and ordered this AP when it's price dropped too low to pass up.

The good:
AP has a very small footprint, mounting holes in back
Excellent range & strength; covers my duplex with excellent strength & quality
Simple to configure MAC address filter & WEP keys once you can connect to it

The bad:
I'm not entirely sure how a non-technical user would ever set this AP up. The documentation indicates that it's "plug & play", and indeed it is as long as you don't want to change _anything_. The firmware shipped with the AP would not work. The latest on the web site would not work. Finally, the 1.7.1 version (earlier version on the website) worked. In order to make it work I had to watch my DHCP server logs (the manual indicates that it ships with a static 192.168.0.254 address; in fact mine shipped with it's DHCP client on. Scanning for the AP has yet to work for me, but if I connect to it's DHCP assigned address with the default password I was finally able to get in.

Once in, configuration was a breeze, and as I said the AP has been working just fine since then.

By comparison with the experience I had with a similar product by Linksys, this baby was up and running in no time. I set it up in a Windows XP machine and then in a Windows 98SE machine, and both times it was a breeze to get up and running. One piece of advice (I learned it the hard way): don't expect this technology to go be able to go through metal doors. It just will not happen. Other than that, in a more "normal" setting, it should perform just fine.

I am using this access point with the SMC7004ABR router and the access point has never been a problem. I used the AP straight out of the box without upgrading the firmware and I've never had to reset it or change any settings for the 6 months I've been running it. I've also got MAC filtering and WEP working.

The one place where newbies could have problems is in setup. I had read some other reviews that suggested changing the IP addresses of my router to use the range the AP was expecting. I did that and things worked right away. I might have been able to configure the AP to look for a different IP address but I didn't try that.

One thing to consider is that this version of the hardware can only be configured via Windows software. The newer version has a web interface that isn't tied to Microsoft products. Ultimately, the price and the really good reviews for the product led me to buy it anyway. Also, I have only really used the software once when I set the thing up.

One more general note that might explain all the reviewers power-cycling the AP - the wireless client that comes with Windows XP is somewhat buggy and junky. Some of the WEP setup in the client is non-standard. Also, it seems to not reauthenticate itself at various times. For a while, I was working around the problems by disabling and re-enabling my wireless adapter. Then my company switched to the Odyssey wireless client because of this issue. This fixed all the problems, both at home and at work.