Xclaim XI-3 Indoor AP - Your Next Wireless Access Point
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
1,921 words · ~9 min read
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when I installed a Ruckus r700 wireless
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access point in my house to replace my premium consumer wireless router my
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wife's immediate reaction was that she thought I had actually swapped out her
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phone for one that looked the same but was faster so as much fun as it is for
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us Hardware enthusiasts to blow the rent on a new graphics card a bunch of RAM or
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a fancy case I concluded at that time that we could probably actually get more
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value for our money by considering why
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less upgrades instead of some of that other stuff it's just too bad that the
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unit I showed off last time costs ,000 making it attainable only to folks
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who are out shopping for water blocks for their Titan X graphics cards but
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today that changes this is the xclaim
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xi3 your next wireless access point
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Kingston's KC 310 business class ssds deliver massive capacities firmware
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based power loss protection and enough performance that we're powering our
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brand new storage server with them click right here to learn
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more so when you open the box for an xi3
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the first thing you'll see is a gigantic QR code yes this business grade Wireless
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solution wants you to set it up with a mobile phone what oh and I guess there
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are also some accessories in there but I you know it took me a while to figure
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that out cuz my pick my jaw up off the floor so you get a power over Ethernet
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injector a $15 value some mounting hardware a little key for removing the
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unit from the aform mened mounting hardware and an Ethernet cable and then
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in most cases I guess probably also the xi3 Andor access point itself and let's
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talk about this sucker for a minute shall we the hardware actually looks
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pretty familiar but I guess it's not exactly a top secret that xclaim is a
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daughter company of ruckus the makers of the super awesome and Enterprise grade
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Wireless gear that you're most likely to find at an airport or University versus
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at the local Starbucks so let's see which one of ruckus's models got cut
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down a little to make it more price appropriate and user friendly for Wanda
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of Wanda's Diner to deploy in her restaurant raw specs wise the xi3 looks
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pretty darn similar to The Ruckus R500
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it's got the same 2x2 antenna config with the same power output it can handle
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the same N300 megabit speeds on 2.4 GHz
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and AC 867 on 5 GHz and even the power
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draw is rated exactly the same I mean sure the 500 client advertised capacity
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has been toned down to 100 and along with the other feature trimming very
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notably the removal of beam Flex plus ruckus's proprietary tech for punching
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through interference and barriers more easily there is no compatibility with
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rasist Zone director controllers for local or Remote Management of scores of
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access points across a large deployment although apparently a cloud option is
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coming soon no xclaim figures any more
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than 10 APS and you're probably overdoing it and you should move up to
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Ruckus so back to managing them then how are you supposed to do it right the app
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it starts with that QR code from before that basically brings up a how-to guide
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then you install the harmony for xclaim app password protect the app which by
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the way Touch ID support on iOS is a very nice touch then you go through a
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very basic AP setup that pretty much amounts to creating an SSID or a name
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for your network and a passphrase then you scan for access points on the
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network and that was the first stumbling block for me and one that I think xclaim
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could handle a bit better both of my units upgraded their own firmware once
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connected to the network with internet access but they didn't reboot on their
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own and I had to read a little error message in the app to discover that I
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needed to go manually hard reset the devices to a plug the firmware upgrade
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that should happen on its own with that out of the way though I got the AP
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configuration page fired up and there's
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basically nothing in there you can assign one or both of your radios to the
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ssids you create although I would recommend manually breaking out 2.4 and
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5 GHz if you intend to use this at home so you can manually reserve the faster 5
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GHz band for devices that matter and leave 2.4 GHz to non-performance
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sensitive ones instead of relying on the ap's band steering to decide for you and
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muck up your game stream performance potentially you can choose a particular
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Channel and Channel width for each radio or leave it on auto to let ruckus's
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Channel fly technology hop around
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according to whichever has the least congestion a feature uh whose
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functionality I was surprised to discover when I cracked open my wipy and
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saw it flopping around like a Mexican jumping bean in our crowded 2.4 GHz
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environment and one that I'm not 100% sure how I feel about since not being on
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one six or 11 is not really a recommended configuration when you ask
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most Wireless Experts there are a few other little things you can tune in
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there on a per SSID basis you can set bandwidth limits and you can control
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whether or not clients can see the rest of the wired devices on the network but
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that's pretty much it I covered the whole thing Wireless for dummies which
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doesn't mean that it sucks it lacks a central controller so with multiple APS
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clients are left to decide which one to
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connect to but the xi3 delivers great
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wall and floor penetration power even on 5 GHz new settings from the app are
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applied nearly immediately clients connect almost instantly compared to
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that horrendous leg that's typical of consumer grade gear and range was
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absolutely freaking awesome I don't
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really know what to say other than this is really good stuff and you're getting
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it for less than a third of the price if you're willing to give up some of those
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Ruckus features that if we're being honest with ourselves we'd never be
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dinking around with in the first place if the bloody Wi-Fi just worked but it's
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not perfect either I think Ruckus is getting pulled in a couple different
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directions right now they've got a great idea here making deploying a great
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reliable Wi-Fi solution so easy that any
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small business or home user can do it but their users you know Wi-Fi Tech
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heads who manag to Employments for their customers are inherently hardcore and
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asking for things that Wanda of Wanda's Diner will never understand so Ruckus
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needs to decide once and for all what xclaim is personally I'm glad that they
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caved and added a web-based management tool even if I only poked around in it
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after I'd set everything up through the app but Wanda actually needs things
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simplified even further even if that
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means hiding terms like 20 mahz or
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client isolation behind friendly sliders
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that say I'm in a busy area with lots of other Wi-Fi or I'm in an isolated area
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and want more performance and they it needs like a OneTouch guest network
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setup for example that does everything for Wanda and while we're at it the
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navigation of the app does need some Polish too like the grade out actions
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button in the iOS app that's actually clickable to access some pretty critical
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settings or the unclear difference between the Wireless symbol and the Cog
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from the dashboard which is called statistics instead of I don't know
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dashboard for some reason and while we're at it why does the statistics page
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contain information about how many packets have been sent instead of pretty
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graphs of use over time or alert heavy user leeching bandwidth off the network
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or something like that I mean wand doesn't care about packets unless they're catchup but of course I don't
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think any of this stuff is a deal breaker not even the odd crash of the
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app because I did have it happen if I did think that I wouldn't have told you
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this is your next access point now to be clear it's not for everyone for a single
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or even a couple of Wireless clients a similarly priced consumer device will
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deliver higher speeds but the fastest individual link speed is not the be all
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and end all of Wi-Fi performance
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especially as you start to load up more clients and I'll take ruckus's PoE
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deployment making better positioning much more possible since you're not
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reliant on a power jack nearby and
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ruckus's ability to not have the hardware fold like a cheap suit once a
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couple of video streams start flying around over a fancy looking enclosure
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and big strongl looking external
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anime fans they offer the most current episodes of new shows straight from
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the content on their site is professionally subtitled so head over to
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30 okay whatever 30 is 30-day free trial
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of crunchy roll premium with our link giving you that whole month of free
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anime completely ad free then if you enjoy the many benefits of Premium like
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tablet or game console you can continue your premium membership to crunchy roll
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for only $6.95 per month you know what's funny I actually just got this recently
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crunchy roll it's like a it's like a roll like Japanese I totally didn't
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think of that anyway I thought roll like video like like video rolling like film
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anyway don't worry too much about that head to crunchyroll.com Linus and check
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them out so I think that's pretty much it guys like this video if you liked it
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dislike it if you thought it sucked leave a comment preferably at the link to our Forum in the video description if
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a contribution if you like our work and you want us to keep doing it and a place
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where you can change your Amazon bookmark to one with our affiliate code
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so whenever you buy access points or Ethernet cables or whatever else it is
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and you buy on Amazon we get a small Kickback that helps us out a lot thanks
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again for watching and as always don't forget to subscribe
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he