NETGEAR Wireless Desktop Access Point (WAC104) - WiFi 5 Dual-Band AC1200 Speed | 3 x 1G Ethernet Ports | Up to 64 Devices | WPA2 Security | Desktop | MU-MIMO | Supports 3 SSIDs | 802.11ac

Once you get it set up, it works fantastic. Strong wireless signal on both 2.4 and 5 bands. Super-fast wireless from my 900MB home broadband. Excellent access point.The only thing is, as others have said, is that the instructions for how to "just plug it in to a port on the router, and DHCP will take over, and then set it up" are unproductive. The default setup in the AP is for DHCP, but for the wrong network due to its default IP address of 192,.168.0.100. My router is 192.168.1.1, and the AP doesn't get set up properly by DHCP. I tried to follow these instructions first, and as others have said it just doesn't succeed, for the obvious reasons.But I've had prior experience with an earlier version of the Netgear access points, model WN604. The setup approach in that older model was outright described for manual method, temporarily connecting directly to a laptop or PC via ethernet cable. These are exactly the same manual configuration instructions as are described in the user manual for this new WAC104. Once you take this manual approach, instead of the DHCP approach, it's just a few minutes to complete the setup and get the WAC104 prepared for actually being connected on my 192.168.1.1 network.You first need to get your laptop or PC into the TCP/IPv4 properties, in order to change from "DHCP" to "manual static IP" mode. This is from Network and Sharing Center, and then click on "Change adapter settings", and then select your ethernet connection object, and right-click and select Properties to get the Properties dialog window. Then select the "Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)" item, and push the PROPERTIES button. You're probably in "obtain an IP address automatically" mode, which means your PC/laptop is normally handled by DHCP from your router. Temporarily you must instead change this to "Use the following IP address", to assign a static IP (as described in the manual setup instructions of the WAC104 user guide) that will make the WAC104 directly visible to your PC/laptop.Enter an IP address of say 192.168.0.201, and a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, and you can leave the "default gateway" blank. Then push OK, and OK your way all the way back out, and shut down. Then disconnect the ethernet cable from your PC/laptop to your LAN, and instead connect it from the PC/laptop directly to one port of the WAC104. Now re-boot the PC/laptop, and ignore any startup errors you might get from any of your software that might complain about not being able to get to the internet.On the computer, open a web browser and enter 192.168.0.100 in the address bar. A login window opens.Enter the access point user name and password.The default user name is admin. The default password is password. The user name and password arecase-sensitive. You can change these default values later as part of your setup, if you want.The Home page displays.Customize the access point settings for your network environment. My approach was to configure the WAC104 for "static IP" (not DHCP), exactly as I did with my previous WN604. I picked a known available and currently unused IP address of 192.168.1.124, with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, and a default gateway of 192.168.1.1, and a primary DNS server of 192.168.1.1. This means in normal operation your WAC104 will always have a static IP address of 192.168.1.124 from your router at 192.168.1.1. And that means you can always subsequently get back into the setup dialog of the WAC104 if you want to, by using a browser and addressing it via 192.168.1.124.I also set my desired new SSID network names for the 2.4 and 5 networks, along with the new passwords (i.e. "passphrase") for those WiFi network signins.I also set wireless security to "WPA2-PSK [AES]", for maximum wireless speed on both 2.4/5 bands. At first I checked "WPA-PSK [TKIP] + WPA2-PSK [AES]" but when I pushed APPLY I was warned about the full-speed limitation of this option, something I wasn't aware of. So I instead checked the "WPA2-PSK [AES]" option which is perfectly fine with me.If you want you can also change the WAC104 login username and password through the Administration -> Set password dialog.Push the APPLY button, to save all customized settings.After you complete the setup go back into Network and Sharing Center, etc., and change the PC/laptop TCPIPv4 properties back to original IP address or DHCP. Then shut down the computer and power-off the WAC104, and disconnect everything.Now you can reconnect the PC/laptop with ethernet cable back to your router, and reboot. Everything should be back to normal again.And you can connect the WAC104 through its own ethernet cable run to an open port on your router (or remote switch). Power-on the WAC104, and wait for the lights to stabilize. You should now be able to confirm that you see the two new 2.4/5 WiFi networks using your smart phone and a WiFi Analyzer app.You should also confirm from your PC/laptop that you can also get to 192.168.1.124 via a browser.Simple and straightforward. Just manually connect static-IP PC/laptop via ethernet cable directly to the WAC104 for setup.

Very good product

I bought this with the assumption it allowed for a trunked connection to provide access for a management vlan. I swear I read that somewhere. I knew it wouldn't split the primary vlans or allow multiple SSID'S but I could swear I read a management vlan could be trunked in (if you don't know about vlans just ignore what I said, it doesn't matter to most people).Oh well, fortunately it's on the list to allow flashing OpenWrt so that's my next step. This voids your warranty I'm pretty sure so I don't recommend anyone else try this unless you're pretty good with tech. It's my background and I've done this before but could end up with a bricked ap and will just have to live with that if so.Anyway, to set this up can be pretty simple. As I mentioned, the instructions actually make it harder than it needs to be and borderline make no sense.Just plug one ethernet cable into the ap and the other end into your router and a second ethernet cable into another port on the ap and the other end of that into a computer set up to receive its address via DHCP (as most are).What happens is the AP is also already set to receive an address through Dhcp out of the box which it will get through your router. Likewise, your computer connected to the AP will get an address from your router which passes seamlessly through the AP.(Ignore the part about making a wireless connection to finish the job. No idea why they recommend doing it that way. You're already connected via the ethernet cable which they already told you to connect (in a confusing borderline nonsensical manner which looks like no one at Netgear proofread their own tiny 6 page quick setup guide)).At that point, your router, AP and computer will all be on the same subnet (network) and should all communicate. In fact, if your router is online, they'll all be connected to the internet so you can immediately do a firmware update on the AP (it's actually safer to configure it at first offline though, I just like living dangerously I guess :) - and I work quickly getting the security up once connected. Also, you're behind your router the whole time so you're not exactly wide open like you would be setting up a router while online this way) .The slightly tricky part is knowing what IP address your router will assign to the AP. As long as you plug the AP into a port you use for some other device and know what address range it assigned to whatever device is normally plugged into that port, you'll at least know the range of addresses to try. Just go through the range on a web browser trying each and eventually one of them will connect you to the AP.From there it's similar to setting up a router except there are far fewer options since it's a bridged rather than a routed interface. The router remains the gateway and dns, the ap will get a address in the same range as will your computer and will be just like another device in that range. It's almost invisible from your computers perspective. . A wireless AP is only connected to for admin purposes and otherwise can be mostly ignored during usage.If you like, you can restrict the range DHCP assigns on the port you connect to on your router to just two addresses temporarily just for the purpose of setting up the AP and in that case, check which IP your computer got and you'll know the AP is the other one. No need to guess.Good luck. It's not a bad AP if you only need something simple. It's the bottom of their line for AP's I think. So. You shouldn't expect the world, I suppose. It's basically just the R6220 router with the WAN port deactivated. In fact, I wouldn't doubt it actually is that router modified after the fact to cut out the routing via WAN functionality.