Amped Wireless AP20000G Review
Contents:
1.
Intro
2.
Setup
3.
Features
4.
Performance
5.
Conclusion
Intro!
Please note that the Access Point is located on the 2nd
floor office. My house is approx. 1800 sq ft and has 4 BR 2 BA and it has mixed
construction dates, thus, a diverse set of materials and consistency. There are
5 other APs detected by my phone’s chipset and around the same amount seen by
my USB adapter (Netgear WG111V3 connected to desktop for management and screen
shots).
Wireless Devices used:
1 Desktop PC running windows 7 with a Netgear USB adapter
(WG111v3)
2 LG Optimus S Android Smartphones
1 Xbox 360 with WLAN controller built in
Acer Aspire laptop with built in Atheros chipset
USB Storage devices used:
1 IOSafe Fireproof/Waterproof USB HDD
1 Sandisk Cruzer 16GB USB stick
Setup!
Unboxing and setup: Initial setup was extremely easy! It was
actually easier then setting up my Netgear WGR614 Router. Just hook up the
antennas, connect the Ethernet cable to the router, then plug the power cord in
and go to setup.ampedwireless.com from a wireless client and enter a little bit
of info in like Wi-Fi name, etc. and then you’re connected. Please note: If you are using this with an
Amped Wireless Router you must input the AP’s IP address instead of
setup.ampedwireless.com because that defaults to the router’s config instead of
the Aps.
The initial setup wizard was very easy and quick and should
get most typical users setup within 2 minutes including a reboot of the router.
When you first setup it’s protected with WPA and the
password “wireless” for you. This is a good thing unless you have neighbors
that know that you have an Amped Wireless AP. LOL. I suggest changing this
immediately as well as proceeding to the next paragraph’s instructions.
Going to setup.ampedwireless.com is much easier then
accessing by an IP address. This is much easier to remember! Please note,
however the config page is not password protected by default and a login must
be setup after initial configuration. It can be accessed by doing the
following: more settings>management>password. For the first time it did
not accept my username I entered in. I chose a custom name and password and the
AP did not accept it. However I chose the name “Admin” and that was accepted.
Strange.
Features!
Basic Settings: Configure your SSID, the broadcast, Data
rate, etc…
From here you can
configure and setup guest networks! You get 4 for each band (frequency)
As you can tell I’m a brony… LOL…. From here you can
configure your security settings.
You can setup the security type of the guest networks from
this screen here as well.
This is the MAC Address Filter menu. From here you can allow
or deny MAC addresses for more security. I do this on my network in addition to
having WPA2 security.
From here you can setup an access schedule. For example if
you don’t want your kids being up all night online:
Here are the advanced settings:
Here’s the USB Storage menu with my SanDisk Cruzer Mounted.
All you got to do is connect and then share!
Here’s how easy it is to browse to the files on it:
Network>Amped_AP_USB>mnt>and there are your files!
They are contained in the /mnt/directory so you will have to click on that
Performance!
Wireless performance:
We are mostly going to do several tests on the AP.
First test....
streaming video:
I went outside around 175 feet from the AP20000G and I was
able to stream YouTube videos with little buffer. This amazed me. Please note
that there are 5 other networks near my house and my AP is placed at the
opposite end of the house! HD did have some buffering at that distance, however
it was actually tolerable. HD had NO BUFFERING/pausing at around 75 ft and pre-
loaded 25% of a 35 min video is about 8-15 seconds. It takes 35-45 seconds or
more for that much prebuffer to fill on my Netgear WGR614. Very nice!
2nd streaming video test: was able to stream SD
video and at a decent speed with little buffering at 230ft!!! AWESOME!!!!
Gaming test: We setup an Xbox 360 with the built in WLAN
controller on it and we put it through a few online games and it performs on
par with the wired Xbox 360 that doesn’t have the WLAN controller! No lag
related to the wireless at all even with other APs using the same channels and
microwaves have been used close to it as well. AWESOME!!!!
Browsing on all wireless devices is on par with wired
throughout the house.
Throughput measures:
I will be also gauging the throughput on the AP with an app
called AirMapper from Fluke Networks. You can walk around various parts of the premises
and it will tell you the throughput of the AP from wherever you are walking.
So far it’s looking like it caps at 10Mbps (subscribed
12Mbps connection) and goes no lower than 4Mbps within the confines of my
house. Not bad.
Next I will be running through the readings using Fluke
Networks Airmapper for Android
Please note: I am mostly using this app for throughput tests
at various distances. This is currently set to test a 13mb .mp3 file hosted on
a remote server that’s hosted on the east coast about 400 miles from my current
location.
Here’s the results so far:
Location 1 (just outside of office): 15 ft: 9.5Mbps @ -20dBm
@ 100 % sig str.
Location 2 (bottom of stairs in foyer area): 30 ft: 7.5Mbps
@ -35dBm @ 100% sig str.
Location 5 (downstairs bathroom-tricky celling and lots of
wonkies) 18 ft: 5.52mbps @ -50dBm @ 100% sig str.
Location 3 (back porch) 35 ft 4.34Mbps @- 65dBm 98% sig str.
Location 6 (white garage across the road from 2 neighbors
away) 120ft 2.21Mbps -69 to -72dBm 65%
sig str.
Signal Quality and
consistency:
For my environment my config was the following:
Basic Settings:
2.4 GHz:
Channel: 9 (least congested on average in my location)
Channel Width: 40 MHz
Data Rate: Auto
----------------------------------------------------
Advanced Settings:
Control Sideband: Upper
WMM: Enabled
Preamble Type: Long Preamble
IAPP: Enabled
Protection: Disabled
Aggregation: Enabled
Short GI: Enabled
WLAN Partition: Disabled
STBC: Disabled
20/40MHz Coexist: Enabled
Please Note: There
are a lot of APs in my area. I am still getting way better performance than my
Netgear WGR614 with most anything. RSSI values stay better than the Netgear by
at least 20 points or more.
Average RSSI Values:
(using the Amped Wireless Analytics tool for Android)
Amped Wireless AP20000G: 30-50ft avg. @ -22 to -32dBm/50-75ft
avg. @ -47dBm/ 170ft @ -72dBm
Here’s a few screenshots from Amped Wireless Wi-Fi Analytics
software for windows:
This is on the desktop with a weak Netgear USB adapter that
has a little issues…. It’s very old and has been beat up a lot:
This is a funny result using the Acer laptop that has a
built in Atheros adapter:
It’s funny how everyone else’s APs were flipping out while
Amped Wireless was chill! LOL!
Here’s the readout from 45 ft away on the back porch, door
closed, stormy weather:
USB Drive testing:
I have tested the speeds in the following USB drives:
IoSafe 500GB USB HDD
Sandisk Cruzer 16GB Pen drive
And both drives performed decently. I had no stuttering with
HD videos being played back through VLC media player or no skipping sounds
through windows media player. Image galleries loaded just as fast as if the
drive was attached to the desktop via the USB. I am very pleased with the
performance and ease of use of the USB sharing! Works fine with all OSes I’ve
tested. I have tested this on Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and
Windows Server 2012 (my workstation) and all OSes pick it up effortlessly.
Transfer rates were around 3-4MBps read and write on both drives from wired and
wireless clients. I highly recommend this AP if you really want an effortless
file server on the cheap. ;-) The speeds may not be blazing fast, however this
should be fine for most people.
Transferring YouTube videos I downloaded….. and look.. it’s
EPIC MEAL TIME! LOL.
Please note: I am now running Windows Server 2012 and check
out the new file transfer dialog! Nice!
Conclusion!
The Amped
Wireless AP20000G is a very nice access point. It has awesome coverage and tons
of features. It sets up easy and is very stable, has USB sharing added for even
more awesomes!
Pros:
·
Hardcore
coverage!
·
Easy
setup
·
Lots
of features
·
Dual
band
·
Guest
networks
·
USB
sharing
Cons:
·
Somewhat
slow USB transfer speed in comparison to direct USB connection
·
No
print server
Overall
rating 9.0/10
Recommended: Yes!
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