Zyxel ZyAir G3000H Wireless Access Point

I've spent half my day setting up a small wireless network with a couple of Zyxel ZyAir G3000H Wireless Access Points. What an absolutely stonking bit of kit! Full retail price is £130 but the street price is lower.

You might be forgiven for thinking that an access point is an access point... You would be wrong in this case though.

The first fantastic feature is the Multiple ESSID mode, a single access point that can support up to 16 individual SSID's, each SSID can have a it's own security profile. The security profiles include a choice of encryption protocols, WEP, WPA or WPA2. The usual mac address access control can be turned on if you wish.

The G3000H is designed for use in hotel environments. It's important that individual users aren't able to access one anothers computers over the wireless network... they're not going to use your wireless network if they think they might get hacked are they? Anyway, the G3000H has a Layer 2 Isolation feature, turn it on and that's it, individual users can only access the devices you allow. The first thing that happens when you turn it on is that your network access stops! You need to program the mac address of your default gateway into the L2 Isolation allow list to get things moving, it makes sense to enter the mac address(s) of the access point too.

It's very rare that a wireless access point needs installing in a spot that has a mains power point handy... Good job this device supports power over ethernet too, another great feature. Attach a power over ethernet injector somewhere between the access point and your switch and that's it, plug the data cable into the access point and it powers up too!

Nice bit of kit, well worth the extra cash and interesting to play with.