I recently came across Peplink products and it had me intrigued. Here is my current setup:
Modem -->Firewall -->ASUS AC5300 (AP Mode) —> AC87U (Media Bridge)–>Ubiquiti unifi AP AC Pro
ISP speed: 1GBps symmetrical
Devices: About 25 devices not including guest
I like to replace my asus devices. I been looking at AP One Enterprise but have several question on it. Can the AP work without Peplink routers ap management? For example, Ubiquiti has a software base controller and a one time setup only. I was also looking at Peplink balance One even though it’s throughput is lacking I can live with it. Can the balance one turn into an AP? (Why do I want to do that? Just in case I gave away my asus and my firewall breaks I needs a dhcp/router.) Is there a device in peplink product line capable of media bridge? Since I have several PC/Printer a far from my room that connects to LAN via media bridge instead of wireless. Any other info you all want to recommend or provide would be appreciated.
From my understanding the AP One Enterprise has a web UI and can run standalone without a controller.
I am considering buying a AP One E. as well but comparing to a Ubiquiti Unifi AC Pro I am not sure why it’s double the price for nearly the exact same specs. You have an UniFi why do you want to go with a Pewave AP?
The Ubiquiti doesn’t have its own web UI to configure directly as you said, but you can get the mobile app and do it directly without a controller. I would prefer a WebUI instead of app like the Pepwave but not sure its worth double the cost.
I have found basically zero reviews of the Pepwave AP One enterprise, while the UniFi is quite popular so there is a lot of info out there on its performance. The Unifi did have some throughput issues that where worked out last year and seems to be getting near max throughput comparable to more expensive access points (Ruckus, Meraki). Pepwave is a big unknown here.
The Pepwave AP one seems to have had a hardware refresh to Rev 2 sometime last year but I can find no info on what changed.
Perhaps someone from Peplink can chime in and provide any more info that could explain why you would buy an AP One over a UniFi at twice the price.
Yes, the AP One has its own web UI and can run standalone without the need of any controller.
We are not trying to compete with Ubiquiti and we never will. For reasons why you would go with Pepwave vs other vendors please check out the following post:
You would never see this kind of interaction with other vendors!
Jharrell you are correct there is barely any reviews on pepwave ap one enterprise. Personally, I have had my ap ac pro for about 5 months now and I have tons a problem with it since I bought it. I think Unifi ap are like beta products since they are still tweaking and adding new feature to their software. If you go to their forum they are constantly getting disconnection issue which I had until just recently I did a lot of tweaking with beta firmware. Anyhow, not trying to compare them but I did answer all my question by looking at the manual of the product of peplink. I would probably buy an ap one etherprise and test it out. I appreciate the reply though.
Thanks for comparing them, your the first person I have found looking at a AP One Enterprise to replace a UniFi. These obviously compete in the same space, and I like Pepwave products but its very hard to justify spending 2x as much for what looks like the same thing on paper. Real world performance and reliability is something that’s hard to gauge from marketing materials while reviews from real users can help tremendously.
If the Pepwave AP Pro E. is more reliable than the UniFi and is able to get close to max AC 1300 (600-700MBps real world) throughput then it is worth it. There seems to be nothing to go on here, there are some Amazon reviews, but they are lumped in from the AP Mini product, none for the enterprise. 3gstore has 3 reviews, 2 positive, one negative indicating poor performance. Meanwhile the Unifi has many hundreds of reviews all over the web mostly positive.
Saying the the UniFi and the Peplink AP don’t compete seems like a silly statement to me.
Please share your experiences if you go with the AP One E. I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts since you also have a UniFi, I think other would as well.
As a 3Gstore employee I of course have some bias, but from my experience I would say that between Ubiquity and Peplink, Peplink wins hands down. I’ve personally tested a number of Ubiquity APs and the one major thing that I have issues with is long term reliability. Yes you can achieve massive throughput on the UniFi platform, but it is in my experience not consistent. For me and the businesses I work with I see reliability and consistency being the the reason to look at Peplink over anything else.
Depending on your comfort with setting up APs, the Peplink does have a much easier to use GUI. The UniFi GUI is messy by comparrison and having to SSH into the controller or AP for anything isn’t end user friendly. With the Peplink, just let the AP controller do its job and configuration is seamless. That isn’t even diving into InControl and its uses.
Yes the Peplink experience is more expensive up front, but long term you’ll save yourself a lot of time and hassle in configuration and troubleshooting. My 2 cents.
edit - As a quick PS, I love the Ubiquity NSM5. Their point to point solutions are fantastic and work great. Hopefully that explains my stance on these.
Besides 4G/3G solutions, we also supply Peplink’s and Ubiquiti’s WiFi solutions on a different webshop.
There’s nothing wrong with Ubiquiti, we’re happy with selling both brands.
But on the long run, you’re better off with Peplink.
If we look at the RMA percentage of Ubiquiti hardware and compare it to the RMA of Peplink hardware, Peplink wins by far.
Ubiquiti is very simple and more focussed on the private/consumer market, in my opinion.
Edit: I see you’re planning to connect 25 devices, excluding guests.
Definitely go for Peplink on this one, Ubiquiti AP’s are on their max around 30-40 devices.
Ubiquiti says the UAP-AC-PRO supports up to 200 devices, but we have had serious stability issues around 40 users more than once.
Hello @West
We are working with several partners and customers in Australia who are changing over other well known bands of equipment in favour of the Peplink Pepwave WAPs for Wi-Fi and management.
When it comes to wireless links such as long range commercial PtP & PtMP (as Peplink do not currently have a suitable product) well that is a speciality in its self and you need to choose bands carefully there (if you want the brand we are currently focusing on, please PM me, this is Peplink’s forum, so we will not mention them here out of respect of Peplink).
One thing we would like to be able to have our other brands of PtP and PtMP working within the Peplink InControl2 platform, the brands we have been using all have their own proprietary platforms for managing the wireless links for there products (and all have unique strengths & weaknesses). Of all the platforms we have to use due to our diverse customer base, Peplink’s InControl2 is still our favourite.
As @kevin said, [quote=“kevin, post:6, topic:8379”]
