TRENDnet TEW-638APB N300 Wireless Access Point

Pros: Price, size, good security options, supports most wireless clients and AP's (b, g, n,... no support for "a" but no one uses that anyway), the simple interface will benefit the inexperienced installer. Covers all major deployment options... AP with WDS, wireless bridge/wireless client. Seems like a great AP for a home or small business network.

Cons: As others have stated it does seem to require the CD for initial config, although it seems like it will work without it, I just couldn't get mine to retain the static IP the first time without the CD. Should be wall mountable, especially with it's support for WDS, it's the perfect size to wall mount, but no option too. Documentation is poor if you need it, but anyone with a little experience should be able to install without any documentation, it's pretty much plug and play. I haven't pushed it yet, but I doubt it would support more that a handful of clients efficiently, defiantly not a commercial product, but fine for most home or small business networks.

Overall Review: I bought 2 of these, using as AP's with WDS and cover my entire 1/4 acer property inside and out with no problem. I plan to order a 3rd to use as a wireless client for my DVR. Don't let the 100Mbps Ethernet interface discourage your purchase; others have reviewed it poorly because of this. Anyone with a good understanding of wireless and wired networks would know the difference between the latency, bandwidth, throughput and duplex technologies as it relates to the wireless and wired network worlds. This is not a bottleneck!! It's apples and oranges. Comparing 100Mbps wired Ethernet to 100Mbps (or 300Mbps for that matter) wireless is like comparing a 400 horsepower corvette to a to a 600 horsepower tractor, the corvette is going to win the race every time!

Pros: Size is great, nice and small. The price is great for the features you get. If you have a router that has wps then the connection is a snap (My router doesn't have it). I've got it connected to my xbox 360 so the price is nice compared to the more expensive microsoft product and this one gives you some flexibility of placement.

Cons: The only way I could get into the web interface was to connect the thing straight to my PC and change the IP address settings on my NIC to 192.168.10.50 as IP. For me there was no other way to get into it. Even now that I have it connected to my router I still can't get into the web browser. My guess is that when it is in bridge mode the only way to access the interface and connected straight to the PC. If it's configured as a true AP then you'll probably be able to get in.

Overall Review: The easiest way to get it working on the 360 was configure the trendnet on my pc as a bridge and connect it to my router. Then I plugged the xbox straight into the router first to let it assign the IP address to the xbox, then I plugged the trendnet into the xbox and I was able to connect to live.

Pros: Adds Bridge capability over TEW-637AP. Major improvements over TEW-637AP. Easy to set up. Works great as bridge or AP. Bought a second one to replace the old TEW-637AP connected to the Firewall.

Cons: Default web admin address is nowhere to be found in the documentation. Same issue with the TEW-637AP.

Overall Review: Bridge connected to a 10/100Mb switch. All devices on bridge able to get DHCP Address from Firewall. Default Web Admin IP Address is: 192.168.10.100

Pros: Affordable wireless b/g/n access point with WPA2. After getting the new firmware out of TrendNet it is rock solid 24/7, at least for the last few weeks it has been running the new firmware. Also, the right angle wall wart is a nice touch, you really don't think about it much, but it's nice that it only takes up one outlet space instead of 3.

Cons: Getting the firmware out of trendnet, which they still don't list on their website was somewhat of a pain. I understand the support desk probably deals with hundreds of requests per day, but when it's obviously a known issue with the device there's no need to brush people off.

Overall Review: Here's the URL for the updated firmware for those having problems with it needing constant power cycling. http://trendnet.com/_uploads/helpdesk/FW_TEW-638APB_V2(1_1_10).zip Hopefully, they'll post it as an official firmware so that people will stop having trouble with an otherwise great access point. If that URL goes dead I've got a copy on my personal website I could post the URL of as well.

Pros: Very affordable and easy to setup. Great performance for the price you pay. The comments about the device only having a 100mbps ethernet connection is true but is not relevant since real world 300mbps wireless N speed can rarely maintain a constant speed faster then 100mbps. I get a solid 8 meg/sec transfer speed of a 1 gig file compared to 2.5 meg/sec transfer speed on my old dlink wireless G gaming router with my macbook pro. Signal is also significantly better in far reach areas compared to G.

Cons: Initial setup is weird since you must use the cd installer to set the ip address of the device. Once the ip address is set, you can maintain it like any other brand device from the web interface.

Overall Review: A 300mbps wireless link does not equal a 300 mbps ethernet, the overhead for wireless is significantly higher with security protocols and interference/distance from the ap. Also the wireless link is half duplex and you have to share the bandwidth with other clients. Thus the 100mpbs ethernet connection will almost never bottleneck the 300mbps wireless link in real world applications.

Pros: I initially tried to set this up manually through the web interface, but couldnt get it to connect to my wireless network. Used the provided CD and everything worked flawlessly (it doesnt actually install on your computer either, which is nice). Data speeds were decent, ~4 MB/sec download and ~7 MB/sec upload to a PC which was wired to the router. I also had an issue updating the firmware using Google Chrome, but it worked like a charm in Firefox. Connection quality is good, reaches from the back of our house through several walls to the front and has had no issues connecting or dropping out. Once I had it configured I was able to move it to the living room and once plugged in, our xbox connected to Live no problem.

Cons: Only 10/100 wired connection, which is why I gave it four eggs. A bit more pricey than the TEW-637-AP, just because it has the bridge function.

Overall Review: I bought this as a wireless alternative for Vista 64. I have tried several internal wireless cards and have not found any that work consistently for Vista64. This is a great alternative because it the connection is not managed by the OS. Plus it is cheaper than a lot of internal wireless cards and gets better reception since you can move it around.

Pros: Works well and much better range than previous Linksys WRT-330N router that it replaced. Easy to set-up.

Cons: As others have posted, I have had to power cycle it a few times. In the month or so that I have owned it, maybe three times. No known reason why. Better logging would be nice and better help or tech documents as to all the different settings. This isn't just for Trendnet, but seems to be with every vendor of wireless products. There are many settings that can you can change and no real explanation as to what they do. <Climb on soapbox>More and more vendors seem to be using their forums for tech support to answer questions. Another strange thing is the >100mbps connection potential of wireless-n devices ( my laptop typically connects at 130mbps) but the lan port is only 100mbps. Again, this is typical for all vendors at this price point but seems stupid. I know that "overhead" on the wireless side will reduce the actual transfer speeds, but would it really cost that much more to include it?

Pros: wireless N bridge for less than $50. Works well with my wireless N DSL router.

Cons: No build-in switch, only a single 100MB port.

Overall Review: This is a very good product if you're comfortable with TCP/IP. You do not need a CD to set it up. The default IP out of the box is 192.168.10.100/24, so if you put your NIC on the same subnet you can configure it entirely via the web site and never have to worry about the CD.