PS to everyone subscribed:

I submitted a ticket for this as well - whatever I hear back I'll share with the community 

I'm really hoping we get good news back.  The price and features of the Omada line are great.

I really want to be sure before ordering 50+ of them.

It seems like other vendors have been able to make this work on WPA2 devices much older than the Omada line (and with less powerful processors and less RAM)... Figers crossed this can be done!

JSchnee21 wrote

Hi @WirelessForEver,

 

FYI, there may not be a lot of advantage to using the EAP245 vs the EAP225.  Granted the 245 has 3x3 radios on the 5Ghz side -- so faster speeds, if you have any 3x3 clients (which are usually pretty rare), and potentially better capacity/MU-MIMO if you have a high STA density per AP.  Though I've not seen very many positive reviews of MU-MIMO (for any vendor's product) out in the wild.

 

But otherwise the 245's are almost twice the price ($90 vs $58) on Amazon.  Also the 245's don't currently support wireless MESH (at the moment, unless you use Beta firmware) but it sounds like you're probably hard wiring each AP. 

 

Don't forget to get an OC200 -- these are great.  And check the total aggregate wattage of your PoE switch(es) to make sure you have enough depending on how many EAP's you're planning to connect per switch.  If you do go with the 245's, I think the consensus is that the 2nd Ethernet port does not pass PoE, as I recall.  I assume you'll be setting up a management VLAN, etc. for your larger deployment.

 

It seems like the EAP620/660's will be delayed (and many new products from every vendor often have a few bugs to work out).  So it might make more sense to deploy the 225's now, and then plan to replace them in a year or two when the Wifi 6 AP's and Clients (and WPA3) are more prevalent.

 

All the best,

Jonathan

@JSchnee21 

Those are very, very good points about the EAP225...  I didn't think about going with the EAP225 and upgrading sooner to 802.11ax / WPA3 in a few year's time.

Any vendor with a WPA3 updrage on WPA2 hardware isn't going to have a perfect implementation at first either.

The EAP225 is a very attractive pricepoint.

You are right on the money with the mgmt VLAN, etc.

Although I don't need it, it would be nice if the 2nd Ethernet port could be used for LACP... (I bet we will see 2.5, 5 or 10GBASE-T before LCAP is common on this pricepoint of APs).

Thanks again for giving me more food for thought!

PS: If I don't hear anything back from support you get best solution.