Cudy AX3000 Review - The Setup

 

Based on some limited research, I picked up a "Cudy AX3000 Multi Gigabit Dual Band WiFi 6 Mesh Router" from amazon.

https://www.cudy.com/en-us

I wont bore you with the whole 'unboxing' speech, but there's a lot to be said for a company that packages a product that doesn't

require a class in vendor unpackaging to get to the product.

It came with an installation card, ethernet cable and power supply.

Keeping in the spirit of your typical IT install, I chose to ignore the instructions and wanted to see how far I can get without having to resort to reading the manual. ;)

 

I connected the unit's internet port to my cable modem using the provided cable and plugged my laptop into the LAN port. After about a minute, I checked my and my address was on a 192.168.10.0/24 subnet with a default gateway of 192.168.10.1.

I figured I will try to access the internet and was a little disappointed that it it didn't work and I noticed the globe with the circle/line through it. 

This is important for me to know in case i consider this for some of my clients and friends who are further than a short drive away.

I figured I will just type the router IP address into my browser to see if I can access the router, or if I will be forced to download an app.  Cool, the browser loaded this page.

Its nice to see the vendor forcing you to change/create an admin password with some suggestions on creating a strong password.

I created my new password and was then prompted with a setup/captive portal.

Again, its important to me to know that until you create your password and go through the install screens, you will not have internet access.

Since my set up was DHCP based, I basically clicked by about half a dozen screens and completed the install.

As a side note, I found it interesting that the router had a few setup options that could help me out in the future.

Wireless access point in particular would be cool.  Currently, if I need a wireless access point and only have a residential router available, I disable DHCP and use the Lan port to connect to the current network.

After the install, I ran a quick Wireshark capture and noticed it was sending out IGMP packets.

I've seen IGMP enabled on a lot of residential routers and get annoyed when there isn't a way to disable IGMP. I figured "what the heck" lets see if Cudy allows me to disable it. I was pleasantly surprised when I quickly found the setting and disabled it.

The only other thing I did was change the SSID's and passwords.

Here's an interesting note: I chose to disable auto firmware updates so I could do it myself. I intentionally downloaded the incorrect firmware and was impressed that it did not blindly accept it. 

 The only thing worth noting was that after the firmware upgrade the password for my 2.4ghz SSID was a series of randomized characters, so I simply changed it back.  I only noticed because some IOT devices reported being offline after the firmware upgrade.

As far as WiFi performance goes, it did outperform my previous lab wireless router by 50 Mbps up and down as well as added some solid coverage to 2 spotty areas.

I tried to keep the first write up short and plan to do more based on different features and scenarios, so let me know if you like this format.  

For example, the next thing I want to set up is the various flavors of VPN server, VPN client and VPN tunneling, bandwidth control...

amazon.com link: https://amzn.to/3N7pooH

amazon.ca link: https://amzn.to/3YZoCg5

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