The TEW-653AP

When I first looked at the picture on the front of the box for the TEW-653AP I kind of laughed. I mean, the thing looks like a smoke or carbon monoxide detector. Even other people I showed it to thought it was one of those, although one person did say it reminded them of the cameras used in the movie "Enemy of The State". Of course, the little labelled lights are a giveaway and let you know this is more than a simple detection product.

Flipping the TEW-653AP over, you see that it is meant to be flush mounted to a wall or ceiling. This is an excellent method for getting the AP out of view. With traditional ones they are almost always sitting on a table, maybe hidden behind something, but still where they can be viewed.

The TEW-653AP has a nice mounting bracket that helps in getting things in place. We found this to be very easy to use and did not get in the way of the CAT5e cable we used for PoE.

Once you remove the mounting ring you get a glimpse at the two sources of power for the TEW-653AP; the traditional wall power and the PoE enabled R-45 jack. You may also have noticed that this product is very well ventilated. It actually has better ventilation than many full routers I have seen.

The little button on the top of the TEW-653AP with the wrench icon next to it is the reset button. Pressing and holding this for 10 seconds will restore the 653AP to its factory defaults.

Now that we have covered the physical side of the TEW-653AP, let's take a look at its inner beauty. We briefly covered some of the features in the introduction, but as we said there, "the list goes on". The TEW-653AP is so much more than a standard access point. It has functions to let it operate as a repeater and a WDS Bridge. The support for up to four separate SSIDs using VLAN tags (802.1q) makes it extremely flexible. While support for SNMP, remote management, 802.1x authentication, spanning tree protocol (802.1d) support and QoS (WMMs) will make it attractive to enterprise users.

The TEW-653AP operates in the 2.4GHz range (2.412~2.472) with a nominal power output of 18dBm when in 802.11n mode. It draws a maximum of 6 watts of power either from the wall or PoE switch. The TEW-653AP also uses an internal antenna (as opposed to multiple external ones. This is a 4dBi Smart Antenna that has a sensitivity range of - 61dBm to - 93dBm depending on the 802.11 type (n to b) and MCS (modulation and coding scheme).

So, you see there are some pretty impressive things going on under the plain outer shell.