EnGenius ECW220S 2x2 Cloud Access Point review - Management and UI

Management and UI

With this switch you'll get a handful of control (UI) based. The regular Layer 2 web interface, as well as Engenius Cloud-based operation. We'll first look at the classic web-based management interface.

Web-Based Management

The web-based GUI offers just some basics and pales as to what the cloud-based management function can actually achieve.

Cloud based operation

Cloud based features are going to be great if you've worked with networks before. The dashboard for example is one of the most useful things. Apps that use a lot of network resources are tracked by this engine, and it shows you how many resources each app is using. You can see which apps, like Netflix and Spotify, are taking up the most space on your phone. And you don't have to buy extra hardware or put a traffic jam in your network to do this. If that's not enough, you can also see how much data each device is using. If a certain device is taking up a lot of bandwidth, you'll be able to figure out what's wrong.

You get all the security features you'll need as well including wireless systems that can detect and protect against intrusions. It will automatically shut down the attack if your network gets hacked, so you don't have to do anything.

The Access point also has is a built-in RF analyzer that can tell if there are devices with fake SSIDs. All this is free. If you want the most security features, you'll need to buy a "Pro" license (for example, the Network Activities under the Diag tool will remain available only for a minute at a time on the basic license). There are, however, a lot of new things.

 A thing of beauty. The Diag tool. When you hover your mouse over the access point, this tool will show up next to the access point. There is a button that says "click here." You will be taken to a new window that has three tabs: Network Activities, Spectrum, and Live Clients. You can see the live activity of the access point in the Network Activities. This includes the access point's CPU, Memory, Throughput, and Channel Use.

The AirGuard suite of security tools has moved into a license model. Such a shame. Cloud management is as simple as adding the device to your EnGenius Cloud account and you are ready to go. 

Once in the cloud interface, you can and should immediately upgrade your firmware and from here onwards a plethora of options become available.