One single console for the switch, the Wi-Fi and the router.

Omada is TP-Link's range for business, and its central idea is that everything is administered from the same place: the switches, the Wi-Fi access points and the gateway that goes out to the internet. That controller can be a small device that stays in the cabinet, a program installed on a computer or a service in the manufacturer's cloud.

The difference from buying separate equipment is one of work, not of performance. A new device is adopted and inherits the site's configuration. The separation of networks is changed once and comes down to all of them. The power each port is drawing is seen on the same screen where you see how many people are on the Wi-Fi. In a small installation where one person runs everything, that convenience is the whole argument.

And it has to be said for what it is: an entry range. That does not mean bad; it means sized for small and medium installations with normal use, and that when you go beyond there it shows. Where that edge sits is what the rest of the page tells.

When the Wi-Fi and the cameras are the same project and the same person runs them, which happens constantly: a small hotel, a clinic, a school, a restaurant, an industrial unit with an office, a residential block. There, having a single console for the guests' Wi-Fi, the computers' network and the cameras' network saves time every week.

When there are several small sites with the same configuration —a chain of premises, several branch offices—, because the cloud controller lets you keep them in view and replicate the configuration instead of reinventing it at each one.

And when the budget is tight and the real alternative is not better equipment: it is fewer cameras or an unmanaged network. Between a box that shares out and tells you nothing and a switch of this range with separated networks and visibility per port, the second is a better network for a little more money, and that has to be said just as the limits are said.

If it is switched off or the connection to it is lost, the switches carry on passing traffic and the access points carry on giving Wi-Fi: the network does not go down. What is lost is the governing —nothing is changed centrally and you stop seeing what is going on—. It is bearable, but it has to be decided in advance.

Out of that come two decisions we always take. Where the controller lives and who backs it up: if it is a program on somebody's computer, that computer is part of the security installation, and that is almost never written down anywhere. And the important one: the controller is not published on the internet. It is the piece that governs the whole network, and in this range it is where we have most often found consoles reachable from outside with a mediocre password, out of the hurry to be able to get in and look. If it has to be reached from outside, it is reached through an encrypted tunnel. And the camera is not published, ever.

And in the entry range there is a third matter, one of hygiene: the rhythm at which the equipment is updated. These devices receive corrections, and a camera network with equipment left un-updated for years is the easiest way into an installation. Updating is a procedure with a window and with a way back, not something done when there is a spare moment.

The switch has a power total to share out among all its ports, and that total runs out before all of them give their maximum; when it runs out, it leaves ports unpowered according to a priority nobody has configured. And the cameras' consumption on a frosty night is a good deal higher than on the afternoon of the tests: hence the restarts before dawn that leave no trace by morning.

The peculiarity is that the Wi-Fi access points are also powered over the network cable and also come out of the same total. And they are the first thing to be extended, because the Wi-Fi never reaches everywhere in the first year. So the sum has to be done counting the access points that are not there yet, or the Wi-Fi extension will switch off a camera without anybody connecting the two things.

On throughput, the same as in any access range plus a note of its own: here the traffic of a hotel's guests or a school's laptops comes in through the same ports as the video. Separating the networks does not create capacity and neither does priority: they only decide who is left out when not everything fits. The cabinet's outbound port has to be faster than the access ports, and with a lot of cameras, considerably faster.

In the panel of an industrial unit, in a street cabinet or anywhere with heat, dust or vibration. It is not industrial equipment and it does not claim to be, and putting it there produces the fault that never gets found.

Where a cut cable cannot cost seconds of recording: this range makes alternative paths with the generic mechanism, which takes seconds, and in video that means gaps and alerts in an avalanche.

Where the video is the business: a large installation, with many cameras per cabinet and a staffed control centre. There you need the internal capacity, the redundancy and the support contract of another range, and the spare cannot depend on a delivery.

And where there is already an IT department with its network house, its access policy and its trained people. Turning up there with a second console governing a piece of the network is the quickest way to jam the project, and besides they are right: a network with two governments is a network with two culprits. If what they have takes the video, it is built on theirs.

The console is made to be run by a person who has other things to do, and it does the job. The day to day —seeing ports and power draw, restarting a camera by switching its port off, registering an access point, changing the guest Wi-Fi password, adding a camera to its network— is run by the customer with a one-hour session and a short procedure. We hand over their administrator account with their password, the configuration exported and the inventory of what is on each port.

The boundary is in three places. The separation of networks and the rules on who talks to what, because a quick change there leaves the network working with the boundary open. Access from outside, for the same reason and more. And the power sum when it is extended, which is arithmetic: every new access point and every new camera come out of the same pot.

And if your house already has an IT team with its brand and its way of working, we adapt to that. This range makes sense when it simplifies the life of whoever is going to look after the network; if whoever is going to look after it already has their console, adding a second one simplifies nothing, it complicates it. What we bring then is the sum worked out of how much video we are going to put on their network and what we are never going to ask of it, and if their equipment does not stretch to that, it is said with the numbers on the table and before signing.