ARRIS Surfboard Access Point W6U

I have to say that the various reviews I read here, before buying this access point, were 100% correct in several areas! Sure enough, the setup is stupid-simple. Comes with a *long enough* Ethernet cable and a power adapter with a *long enough* (most are not) cord. If your home Ethernet is set up with DHCP (where it automatically assigns an IP to connected devices) just plug those in and give it about 5 minutes to grab the IP, connect to the net, and do some checks. Then check your Wi-Fi 6E capable device (a Galaxy S21 Ultra phone in my case) Wi-Fi AP list, and there it is, "W6U-335D". Then the "quick start" card it comes with has the Wi-Fi password on the back. Enter that and voila, you are online! Even uses the new WPA-3. And WOW, I've been using Wi-Fi of all types for 20 years. This is the fastest I've ever seen. No so much on throughput, I'm not transferring that much data so can't say on that, but response time. Much quicker than the "regular" 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz access points in the AT&T fiber router and a Netgear access point here. I don't know why, technically! But it is fast. One guess is a complete lack of other signals from the neighbors on that new 6 GHz band, which was one of the goals! I haven't gone into the manual settings yet to hide the SSID, change the password, and such so can't comment on that. But using Advanced IP Scanner (free) on the network, the device shows right up as W6UAB335D. Going to that IP shown, using the browser, brings up the expected admin page to log in. AS FOR RANGE, pretty much as expected. The higher the radio signal frequency the less able Wi-Fi can go through walls. So anywhere your 5 GHz is weak, 6 GHz will be weaker (unless the 5 GHz weakness is due to conflicts with the neighbor's Wi-Fi signal and they don't have 6E). BUT! This is good if your goal, as is mine, is to put these in several rooms in a large house. The 6E signals are less likely to conflict since they are pretty much limited to each room and some/all of the rooms on the other side of that room's walls. Line of sight through air even in large room is full bars, using the S21 phone for the test. Signal going through a glass window or glass sliding door will be full strength or down 1 bar, depending on how far you are away. Going through a brick + wood wall you loose 2 bars on the other side, then all bars a bit further away. I unfortunately can't say what the typical drywall-on-wood_stud wall does to the signal because we don't have any, but I'll take a guess at least 1 bar down. You may be OK in the surrounding rooms with that, but just a guess. All is all I would rate this access point AWESOME! Takes advantage of that 6E Wi-Fi feature on your phone that you've never used. :)