Asus 4544617 EA-N66 WIRELESS RANGE EXTNDR Black/Silver

First off, I should say, I really expected this thing to be bigger than it was. When I opened up the box and saw this tiny little pyramid shaped thing, I started to second guess my decision. I'm not sure what to compare it's size to but it's small. I was wondering if it was going to be strong enough to create a network large enough for the job ahead. It literally took me 5 minutes to get this up and running in Access Point mode. It took me quite a bit longer to troubleshoot the cabling problem in my brand spanking new house. I have CAT5e running from a high plant shelf in the living room (vaulted ceilings) to my basement. The cable just wasn't crimped correctly by the builder. Once that was fixed, and considering it's central location, the signal coverage was awesome! It covered the main floor of the house which is about 1,300 sq. ft and the basement which is another 1,300 sq. ft. All locations indicated a very strong signal from my cell phone and some other wireless analyzers I use at work. I walked around the house and the signal was "good". I also walked out to the street and it indicated a "fair" signal. The distance from the WAP to the street is approximately 240 feet when using 2.4 Ghz. So, I thought that was pretty good. I haven't had a lot of time to do a bunch of internal testing. The tool I used didn't show the transfer rate unfortunately, but I transfered a 1.5 GB movie from a Windows machine connected to the network via Ethernet cable to my Macbook, which was on the wireless network, using the 5 Ghz band. The transfer took about 30 seconds. By my calculations that's pretty close to 400 Mbps. Switching over to 2.4 Ghz, transferring the same movie, took over 2 minutes. My Roku and other wireless devices connected to the network easily and quickly. I was able to stream HD videos/movies without any problems. If you understand networking, you'll know that it's a gimmick when the description talks about using the 5 Ghz band for online streaming for the increased speed. My internet connection is 8 Mbps so my streaming is largely dependent on that fact. My internet connection is the bottleneck in the network. Both 2.4 and 5 Ghz bands will both support HD streaming just fine. If you are streaming video from your local network then you'll see some amazing speeds from this device. The real reason to use 5 Ghz would be for connecting to other machines on your local network and downloading/uploading content or for moving to a band that is less crowded because of interference problems caused by your neighbors on 2.4 Ghz. I was looking for a WAP with PoE, considering it's location I didn't want to worry about power outlet accessibility. I purchased this thinking it had PoE but when I attempted to power it with PoE it didn't work. Looking over the details online and the user manual turned up nothing about PoE. I made a mistake. This isn't the fault of the unit or ASUS but my own oversight. Fortunately I do have a power outlet kind of close by but it's an eye sore stringing the cable over to it. I would like to see this unit use PoE in the future. I would certainly buy one. I forgot to mention, I had a small problem when I first connected some devices to it. I remember reading a review that suggested upgrading to the latest firmware (I can't remember the firmware version off the top of my head). I did so and the problems disappeared. Now it seems to be extremely stable. I have only used this in Access Point mode, so I can't say much for the other modes. So far I like this little WAP. It's small but it packs a big punch! I would definitely recommend this to others and will probably buy more in the future.