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Mitsubishi R100 Access Point Review

If you are in to wireless networking and haven’t tried a Mitsubishi R100 for yourself then your bloody mad. A friend and I recently purchased one each to play with – they cost $75.00 Australian from www.dealsdirect.com.au and represent the best $75.00 I have spent since I started out in wireless.

What makes these Access Points so good? The answer is FEATURES FEATURES & MORE FEATURES, coupled with really good radio performance. Here is a point form list of some of the things these puppies can do out of the box.

  • Print Server – USB and parallel
  • USB Camera Server, cascadable up to 6 cameras, with motion detector & logging & web publishing
  • Built in FTP server – just add USB hard drive, CDROM, or memory stick
  • Easy to use bridge mode for making wireless links
  • 4 port switch

 

What is more, the GUI that controls all of this pulls no punches – it is simple to use and it just works. Even the user manual that comes with it is written in good English and is actually useful.

In testing the Mitsubishi R100’s radio performance we set our two units up in bridge mode, plugged one in to my network and plugged in a WiFi-Tech Range Extender antenna. We took the other for a walk powered by a UPS in a backpack down my WiFi test range (The range extender antenna link above explains the test range in detail). We were able to remain connected at 802.11G right down to the waters edge on the beach – well beyond line of sight. This is a feet that no other access point has managed before. From our testing this AP has unparalleled radio performance. It remained connected whilst moving at walking pace beyond 200 metres, and it readily re-acquired connection quickly and reliably after dropouts even in very marginal signal conditions (Most AP’s crash at that point).

There is a down side – the Mitsubishi R100 is powered from a five volt rail, making it hard to power it from POE. I did take a look at the power supply section, and there is a voltage regulator straight after the power plug, so it probably will work of 12 volts, but I am just not game to try it as yet. Once I have tried it I will post the results.

The Mitsubishi R100 is actually made by Asus and re-badged to become the Mitsubishi R100. It’s RF section is a Mini PC slot that will operate with a Broadcom chipset. This makes the Mitsubishi R100 quite hackable as it can run two other firmware versions – Asus WL-500G firmware, and open WRT. We are evaluating each of these other firmware sets currently. The WL-500G firmware is spectacular for it’s feature richness and advanced GUI, whilst the open WRT firmware has a particularly poor GUI but is of course the most configurable. Stay tuned across the coming weeks as we will review and post a how-to for applying each of these firmwares.

Lastly, a plug to our major project that we will begin to document shortly – fitting a 900 MHz 1 Watt RF section to the R100 with open WRT firmware. We are hoping that 900 MHz links will be a major advantage for making long links, so once again stay tuned in the coming weeks.