This review first appeared in issue 359 of PC Pro.
Ruijie Networks isn’t very well known in the UK; this network infrastructure provider has traditionally focused on the enterprise and carrier markets. Its Reyee sub-brand aims to radically change this perception as it presents SMBs with a huge range of affordable networking switches and products.
The Reyee portfolio comprises modular and fixed-port switches, routers, firewalls and wireless APs, and a key feature is they can all be managed from Ruijie’s free cloud portal. UK supplier Broadbandbuyer takes this a stage further, as it offers a complete cloud provisioning service so you just plug them in and go.
On review is the RG-RAP2260(E) AX3200 Wi-Fi 6 access point (AP), which claims top speeds of 2,402Mbits/sec on its 5GHz radio and 800Mbits/sec on the 2.4GHz band. It doesn’t support the high-speed 160MHz channels but offers a 2.5GbE multi-gig LAN port, which requires a PoE+ power source, and its second gigabit LAN port can be used to network other wired devices.
To give us the full Ruijie cloud experience, Broadbandbuyer also supplied an RG-EG105G-P V2 five-port router and RG-ES206GS-P four-port gigabit PoE+ switch. Provisioning starts before you even see the products: we filled in a secure online questionnaire about our networking requirements, confirmed the product order numbers and received a link to our personal portal, which was prepared with a project ready and waiting.
The products duly arrived and, after connecting them together, they appeared online in our portal’s project workspace. The router was already configured with DHCP services on the LAN as per our request, and the AP started broadcasting our previously configured SSIDs.
To ensure there were no bottlenecks in our real-world speed tests, we temporarily hooked the AP up to the lab’s Zyxel XS1930-12HP 10GbE multi-gigabit PoE++ switch and used a Dell Windows 11 workstation with a TP-Link Archer TBE550 Wi-Fi 7 PCI-E adapter. Performance was good, with large file copies between the client and a 10GbE-connected Windows server returning average close-range speeds of 117MB/sec, dropping to 87MB/sec with the AP placed ten metres away in an adjoining room.
The Ruijie Cloud portal is easy to use and, unlike Netgear ’s Insight and Zyxel’s Nebula services, it doesn’t require any subscriptions or extra licence packs. Its home page lists all projects – essentially your sites – and selecting one takes you to a dashboard where the Workspace view shows all associated devices and topologies, with quick action icons for creating SSIDs.
Ruijie Reyee delivers top class cloud management (Image credit: Future)
Projects are clearly designed to handle large sites as they support up to 32 SSIDs. Each one can use one or both radios, enforce WPA2 or the stronger WPA3 encryption, apply client isolation so wireless users can’t see each other and set client and SSID upload and download rate limits.
For guest wireless networks, you can present custom captive portals with your own logos, background images and messages. A variety of authentication methods can be applied and if you opt for one-click logins, you can set limits on when and how often a guest can log in.
Monitoring services are outstanding, with the client view identifying devices and categorizing them as PCs, tablets, smartphones, IoT, cameras and more. The Smart Config feature helps create wired and wireless VLANs and apply access controls, while the AI Diagnostics service scans the network, highlights faults and provides root cause analysis.
Network HawkEye provides detailed Wi-Fi experience, load and channel health graphs and more for gateway and WAN status. The Data-Board delivers graphical network reports showing areas such as client summaries, traffic rates, AP loads and captive portal usage, and automated firmware upgrade services are also provided.
Ruijie Reyee clearly has an eye on value as the competitively priced RG-RAP2260(E) delivers plenty of business-class features and an impressive performance. The Ruijie Cloud adds extra appeal as this totally free service offers an incredible range of remote network management and monitoring tools, while Broadbandbuyer’s provisioning service does all the heavy lifting for you.
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