D-Link Unified Wireless Controller

ORIGINAL REVIEW 2012-Jun:I was looking for a commercial-grade wireless solution for my townhouse. As a former software engineer, I've wanted a solid wireless network that would be distributed well throughout the house, including the rooftop decks. I came across the Cisco offerings, which started at around $1200 plus the need to purchase licenses for the AP's and I'd have to get a book on IOS so that I could learn how to configure it.Then I came across D-Link's DWC-1000, which seemed to offer a similar solution for half the price, did not require the purchase of any additional liceses when using less than 6 AP's, and with a GUI to boot. I contacted D-link's technical support, and once the call center finally routed me out of India and to a technical support person, was able to confirm that this product would be a good solution for me.Once configured, it appears to work well, and I'm getting great coverage and speeds throughout the house with 2 DWL-6600AP access points. I have both access points plugged into the LAN part of the DWC-1000, rather than my switch, although D-link's technical support rep said that it would work either way. (Cisco's product says you're supposed to connect the AP's directly to the switch, rather than their controller.)I didn't take a star off for it, because I did manage to eventually figure it out, but the GUI is not the most intuitive process. You need to set up things in the Advanced menu, then go back to Setup, etc. And early in the process I got a "Server Error" when using the web-based GUI on the DWC-1000 with a laptop hard-wired directly to the unit. Simply unplugging it and plugging it in again solved that and I haven't seen it since. Hopefully D-Link will listen and provide a future firmware update that will be more user-friendly and have a better process flow to it. It took me a couple hours of trial and error to figure out how to get rid of the default SSID of "dlink1" and replace it with my own, and even now I'm not 100% sure what I did to accomplish it. (UPDATE 2012-NOV: It turns out that I tried to delete all of the dlink1-16 default SSIDs to replace them with my own. Don't bother. Simply add your own and leave the default dlink1-16 SSID's unchecked.)Perhaps there is another way, but I found that to get the controller to recognize the AP's as manageable, I needed to open up each AP's GUI separately to find their MAC address, and copied and pasted it into one of the screens on the controller. I think that (very basic and essential) process might have been made a little easier and clearer. Which brings me to another point on this same theme: The user manual is not helpful, as it simply has a short blurb on each sub-menu that exists. What is missing is the overall theme of how to accomplish different types of networks, and strategies for using the controller's features. (Are you listening here D-Link?) I acknowledge that some of this is my lack of formal wireless network training or experience beyond configuring a wireless router that I've flashed with DD-WRT, but for a product that's positioned potentially for entry-level business (or, in my case, advanced amateur residential) use, it should be easily configurable by someone with a only a rudimentary knowledge of wireless netowrks.My other gripe is the lack of PoE built in to the controller. Considering that most people using this controller will be using PoE for their AP's, why not simply build PoE into the controller and allow the AP's to be run off it? I got the D-Link gigabit PoE injectors and they work well, but I would have gladly paid the extra price I paid for the separate injectors to get it built in to the controller.Overall, though, the system works well, and I did manage to get it running by myself, so I'll round up the true 4.5/5 star rating to 5/5 given the performance for the price, but D-Link would do well to streamline the GUI and the documentation. If they do that, then this product and the associated access points will potentially fit the small/cash-strapped business niche better than Cisco, and would represent a true 5/5 rating.UPDATE 2012-Nov-20: After nearly 5 months with a D-link wireless system (the DWC-1000 in conjunction with 3 DWL-6600AP access points), I finally have it working as it should. It's taken a significant amount of trial and error to figure out how to get it to this point, as the non-existent documentation and couple calls to D-link's technical support haven't been overly useful.Here is what you need to know to get this system working (replace BLAHBLAH with your name of choice):1) Configure your DWC-1000 initially with items from the Setup menu such as the controller's IP address, using the controller's DHCP server or not, etc. Find the access points on your network and set them to be managed.2) (Assuming you're using 2-radio, 2.4Ghz AND 5 Ghz access points): Go to Advanced->SSIDs and create two additional SSID's (ignore the 16 default Dlink SSID's). Call one of them BLAHBLAH24 and one of them BLAHBLAH5, or something like that. For the Security type, choose WPA/WPA2 and put in your WPA Key (password to connect tot the wireless network). Accept the other defaults, and choose Save Settings.3) Go to Advanced->AP Profile and create THREE access point profiles. To do this, go to Advanced->AP Profile->Add, and call the first BlahBlahProfile24.4) Now to edit this profile, you need to go to Advanced->AP Profile->click on the button to the left of BlahBlahProfile24, then click on Configure Radio. Click on the 802.11a/n radio button, and turn it off (State to Off). Then Click on Save Settings, as these changes don't persist if you choose the other radio. (Don't get me started here.) Then click on the 802.11b/g/n radio button, make sure it's on, and accept the defaults.5) Go back to Advanced->AP Profile->Checkbox to left of BlahBlahProfile24, now click on Configure SSID. Again, you will see the two radio buttons for the two different radios, 802.11a/n (5 Ghz) (which we disabled), and 802.11b/g/n (2.4 Ghz) (which is enabled). Click on the 802.11b/g/n button, then select your BLAHBLAH24 SSID in the list of SSID's for that radio, and then click on Save Settings.6) Do the same process for creating and configuring two other profiles. Create BlahBlahProfile5, enable only the 5 Ghz (802.11a/n) radio, and keep the 2.4 Ghz (802.11b/g/n) radio disabled. Put the BLAHBLAH5 SSID on the 5 Ghz radio. Create and edit one last profile, BlahBlahProfile24AND5. This time, enable both radios. When it comes to selecting SSID's for each radio, put the BLAHBLAH24 SSID ONLY ON THE 802.11b/g/n RADIO, and put the BLAHBLAH5 SSID ONLY ON THE 802.11a/n RADIO. DO NOT USE THE SAME SSID FOR BOTH RADIOS (ie, don't have the same SSID on each frequency, 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz). THIS WAS MY MAJOR STUMBLING BLOCK, AND CAUSED ALL OF MY CLIENT DEVICES TO BE VERY UNRELIABLE.7) Now the fun begins. It's time to associate these profiles with the various access points. Since 2.4 Ghz has a little longer range than 5 Ghz signals, it's likely that you won't need as many of your access points to have the 2.4 Ghz radio enabled. So let's say you have 4 access points, evenly distributed throughout your house, with AP1 and AP4 on the opposite sides of the house. Let's have all of them use 5 Ghz, and the end ones (AP1 and AP4) also use 2.4 Ghz. Go to Setup->AP Management->Valid Access Points (Yes, counterintuitive!), and check the box to the left of the access point corresponding to AP1. Click on Edit, and under Profile choose the BlahBlahProfile24AND5 profile. Ensure that Radio 1 and 2, below, are set to Auto for channel and Profile for power. Click on Save Settings. It will ask you if you want to reset the access point. Click on Yes. It will now take a couple minutes before that access point is functional again.8) Now repeat the process for AP4, and do exactly the same thing.9) Repeat the process now for AP2 and AP3, which are going to get only the 5 Ghz radio enabled for my example. This time do the same routine to associate a profile with the access points, except choose the BlahBlahProfile5 profile. This will ensure that those access points only use the 5 Ghz radio and its corresponding SSID, BLAHBLAH5.Whew! A lot of effort went into to configure the system, and we haven't included guest access, VLAN's, RADIUS configuration, or anything complicated. This is just to make the network work OK. My huge stumbling block was in choosing the same SSID for both the 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz radios, which resulted in unpredictable and frequent inabilities of the client devices to even connect to the network. This happened with both my iPad and laptop. After separating the SSID's on their respective frequencies, the wireless network now performs as it should. Just default to using choosing BLAHBLAH5 SSID on your client device (assuming it supports the 5 Ghz frequencies). If the signal is too poor, then just switch to the BLAHBLAH24 SSID, which uses the 2.4 Ghz spectrum.I will stand by my original 4.5/5 star rating, but with some reservations. The product line is 5/5 stars for performance for the price (once properly configured). But the GUI is 1.5/5 stars at best, and a perfect match for the documentation. D-link needs to provide a much more streamlined and intuitive process for configuring their systems if they are to compete with Cisco. At least Cisco has lots of books and classes devoted to learning IOS commands. D-Link has NOTHING out there. It's sad when an Amazon.com review explains more of how to use a wireless controller than anything on the web. I truly hope that D-Link puts some effort into fixing this with future firmware updates.