ASUS ExpertWiFi EBP15 PoE+ Switch w/ Smart App

The EBP15 is essential if you are invested in the Expert wifi ecosystem. Using these switches to control wifi access points with one cable for data and power is a perfect solution for a professional wifi system. Never will I go back to regular consumer wifi/mesh setups.

Quality product from ASUS.

I use it to power cameras and an access point. It has been in service for almost one and has been faultless.

Not too expensive and it gives PoE when needed. The metal design also shows its quality

built well, combo white metal and white plastic. Setup easy with web interface fan-less with no noticeable noise; so far running cool

Let's start with I have always been extremely pleased with Asus products. And, the business Expert WIFI products would be no exception other than the administration GUI is so arduously SLOW that it renders these devices almost unusable. The devices work great, but if you need to perform admin tasks on your network very often, this is going to be very aggravating.

It's generous calling this a managed switch. While it is true it has a web interface, and there are some items you can access via browser, that's about the limit of "managed". 1. You can only access the web interface if you plug your uplink cable into port 4. There are 5 ports. Ports 1-4 are POE, and port 5 is not POE. Guess which port that I would use for my uplink port? Yeah, not port 4. But you can ONLY use port 4. So this is really only a 3 port POE switch. 2. You can only use a single IP address that is preassigned in RFC space for the web interface. You cannot change it. You cannot override it with DHCP MAC assigned addressing. It is bound to this default IP address even though the web interface will tell you it is pulling the other IP address - it only occupies the pre-bound RFC IP address. 3. The interface and orchestration options for port counters are weaker than any of the netgear / d-link / SOHO type switches I have used for identifying broadcast issues / cable issues / retransmit issues / vlan issues. It's very basic. No counters. No error indicators. No management. No integration with the Asus app that I use to control an Asus wifi mesh network. 4. There is an updated firmware package from ASUS for the switch, but of course, installing it does not seem to correctly enumerate the version of the firmware in the web gui, there are multiple files of which one refuses to install, and there are no real instructions provided for how to effectively upload it via SSH or a utility or anything to possibly improve the web GUI, or the port restriction. For right now I'm kind of stuck with this thing, and throughput seems to be adequate enough, but where I had intended for it to be a primary subswitch to multiple POE APs, it doesn't have the managed switch functionality that I require for that level of delegation and trust. It supposedly does VLAN assignment, but only by port delegation (so you could logically separate your POE AP devices, but not much else). I can't speak to the power capacity of it, but seeing as it's only a 3 port POE device (as the uplink cable must use a POE port to access the management) it's probably sufficient for 3 ports.