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Using Wi-Fi 6 to Bridge At Gigabit Speed with the EnGenius ECW230

One of the advantages of Wi-Fi 6 is faster speeds and distance. Mesh access points can take advantage of these increased speeds as well as client devices. Once you have a access point connected to Wi-Fi mesh you can then use it’s wired port to connect to a device or switch to extend a network inside or between buildings.

I did some testing with two of the EnGenius ECW230 V3’s a 4×4 Wi-Fi 6 access point with 2.5Gb ethernet port. I used a laptop with a 5Gb Sabrent USB 3 ethernet adapter and external power supply for the ECW230. The other ECW230 was connected to a EnGenius ECS2512FP 2.5Gb PoE switch my desktop was also connected to this switch at 10Gb using a SPF+ twinax cable.

I setup a hidden SSID on the EnGenius cloud and deployed it to both ECW230’s. This way there are no client devices connected and we will get full throughput. I used iPerf on both computers to test speed.

I first tested at 5 feet and was able to maintain close to 1Gbps.

Next I tested at 50 feet with multiple walls in between the AP’s I was able to maintain 350Mbps.

So another advantage of Wi-Fi 6 access points is they make a great bridge. You could also use the outdoor ECW260‘s to bridge between two buildings at fast speeds. More information on the ECW230 here

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How To Reset An EnGenius Switch Via The Console Port

Sometimes you need to start fresh and reset your switches to factory default maybe because you forgot the IP address or password or maybe the switch will not boot the current firmware. You can try using the hardware factory reset button on the front of the switch but it can be tricky to hold the button for the correct amount of time.

The old school console reset method will always work and lets you see exactly what is happening on the switch. I tried this on the ECS2512FP Cloud managed switch but all the current EnGenius switches should be similar. Every EnGenius switch ships with a white console cable in the box. You will need a 9 pin rs232 serial port to connect it to I used this one https://amzn.to/3nyp7JN. Next download puTTY and use the following settings replacing COM3 with your serial port.

Next login to the switch with username admin and the password you set (default is password) and issue the following command

This will reset your switch to factory default.

You can also use the console to troubleshoot boot issues and load new firmware if your image is corrupt.