Hands on: Ruijie Reyee RG-RAP2260(E) review
This review first appeared in Issue 359 PC Professional Edition.
Ruijie Networks is not well known in the UK; the network infrastructure provider has traditionally focused on the enterprise and carrier markets. Its Reyee sub-brand aims to fundamentally change this perception as it offers a range of affordable products for small and medium-sized businesses network switch and products.
The Reyee product portfolio includes modular and fixed-port switches, routers, firewalls and wireless APs, and a key feature is that they can all be managed through Ruijie’s free cloud portal. UK provider Broadbandbuyer goes a step further as it offers a full cloud provisioning service so you can just plug it in and go.
Under review is the RG-RAP2260(E) AX3200 Wi-Fi 6 The access point (AP) claims a top speed of 2,402Mbits/sec on its 5GHz radio and 800Mbits/sec on the 2.4GHz band. It doesn’t support high-speed 160MHz channels, but it does offer a 2.5GbE multi-gigabit LAN port that requires PoE+ power, and its second gigabit LAN port can be used for networking with other wired devices.
To give us a complete Ruijie Cloud experience, Broadbandbuyer also provides the RG-EG105G-P V2 five-port router and RG-ES206GS-P four-port Gigabit PoE+ switch. Configuration begins before you see the product: We filled out a secure online questionnaire about our network requirements, confirmed the product order number and received a link to our personal portal, which was ready and waiting for the project.
The products arrived as expected and after connecting them together they appeared online in the project workspace of our portal. this router The DHCP service has been configured on the LAN as per our request, and the AP has started broadcasting the SSID we configured earlier.
To ensure there were no bottlenecks in our actual speed tests, we temporarily connected the AP to the lab’s Zyxel XS1930-12HP 10GbE Multi-Gigabit PoE++ switch and used Dell Windows 11 Workstation with TP-Link Archer TBE550 Wi-Fi 7 PCI-E Adapter. Performance was good, with large file copies between clients and a 10GbE connected Windows server returning average close range speeds of 117MB/sec, which dropped to 87MB/sec when the AP was placed in an adjacent room 10 meters away.
Ruijie Cloud Portal is easy to use and is compatible with NetgearInsight and Zyxel’s Nebula service, which does not require any subscriptions or additional license packages. Its homepage lists all projects (essentially your sites), selecting a project takes you to a dashboard with a workspace view showing all associated devices and topologies, as well as quick action icons for creating SSIDs .
The projects are obviously designed to handle large sites, as they support up to 32 SSIDs. Each user can use one or two radios, enforce WPA2 or stronger WPA3 encryption, apply client isolation so wireless users cannot see each other, and set client and SSID upload and download rate limits.
For guest wireless networks, you can present a custom captive portal with your own logo, background image, and message. Multiple authentication methods can be applied, and if you choose one-click login, you can set time and frequency limits for guest logins.
The monitoring service is excellent and customers can identify and classify devices as pieces, tablet, smart phone, IoT, cameras, etc. Intelligent configuration capabilities help create wired and wireless VLANs and apply access control, while AI Diagnostic services scan the network, highlight failures, and provide root cause analysis.
Network HawkEye provides detailed Wi-Fi experience, load and channel health graphs, and additional information on gateway and WAN status. The databoard provides graphical network reports showing areas such as client summary, traffic rate, AP load, and captive portal usage, and also offers automated firmware upgrades.
Reyee clearly focuses on value, as the competitively priced RG-RAP2260(E) offers a host of enterprise-grade features and impressive performance. Ruijie Cloud adds an extra layer of appeal, as this completely free service offers an incredible array of remote network management and monitoring tools, while Broadbandbuyer’s configuration service does all the heavy lifting for you.
