WiFi Access Point is abbreviated as AP below.

AP management styles

In terms of management style alone, APs can be split into Fat AP / Fit (Thin AP) / Cloud AP.

  • Fat AP: more like a traditional AP with a built-in management page for configuring the AP in various ways. For example, ASUS’s interface lets you switch directly between Router mode and Access Point mode.
  • Fit (Thin AP): needs to be configured with an Access Controller. The AP itself provides almost no convenient management interface and must be managed and configured through the controller. The upside is you can manage many APs at scale — once a new device joins the network it can apply the previous settings — and you can monitor APs through the dashboard the controller provides.
    • This kind of setup is also called AC+AP (access controller + access point).
  • Cloud AP: similar to Fit (Thin AP), except the device connects directly to the cloud for convenient management, without needing to set up a separate controller.

A few points I personally weigh when choosing an AP:

  • A solution for homes and small businesses, with good stability
  • A long lifecycle with continued firmware updates — some devices stop getting updates not long after release, and a lot of Fat APs are exactly like that
  • An emphasis on security, and diligence in patching vulnerabilities
  • Let the AP focus on providing WiFi and manage it via a controller, which makes it easy to expand devices later. Without running a web server (for managing the AP), the AP is more stable and frees up more CPU and RAM. Some firmware in the past hurt the hardware to a truly miserable degree… so the fewer unnecessary things, the better — improving network quality matters more.

AP brands

Below are some brands I’ve collected. You can refer to Gartner’s Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure rankings to get to know some brands; I recommend the McCann Tech Blog, which has fairly in-depth comparisons of some of them.

Each brand has different strengths depending on price, management style, granularity of AP settings, controller UI, hardware performance and stability. Take a look at each one’s spec sheet and check out the interface on YouTube.

Most of the below support WiFi 6 and Mesh; choose according to your own needs.

Reference:

https://evanmccann.net/

https://www.mbreviews.com/best-wireless-access-points/