Equipment
Wi-Fi Equipment
Access points and controllers for indoor and outdoor coverage, from one building to a full campus.
A good access point is one that behaves predictably at the busiest hour of the day. What actually separates models is not the data rate on the box — it is how many concurrent clients the radio holds without degrading, the antenna pattern, and how cleanly the controller hands a client from one AP to the next.
The controller is the layer that turns a set of access points into one network rather than several independent devices: central configuration, simultaneous firmware updates, one access policy, and a view of where the load actually sits at any moment.
What to weigh up
- Client density: a conference hall with several hundred simultaneous handsets is a different problem from an office floor.
- Where it mounts: indoor, outdoor-rated and wall-plate models each have their own coverage pattern.
- How it is managed: on-site hardware controller, software controller, or cloud management.
- Power: almost always PoE, which ties the AP choice to the switch choice.