Anyone used the GRANDSTREAM GWN7003

Forums › LAN (ethernet/Wifi/routers/Bluetooth) › Anyone used the GRANDSTREAM GWN7003

phrozenpenguin

842 posts

Ultimate Geek

#309381 13-Oct-2023 15:37

I'm looking at the GRANDSTREAM GWN7003 as an interesting potential upgrade option for the Ubiquiti Edgerouter X SFP. Has anybody used them or got any thoughts?

It has 2x PoE out so can power a couple of APs without needing bricks, it has 9 ethernet ports which is a good few more than other devices, and it does load balancing/failover alongside VPN bits. Its also reasonably priced. However, its also fairly new and not many reviews online. The 7000 model (reviewed here) looks a bit different, although it might just be port/poe config bits.

I'm not sure the equivilant Mikrotik, but suspect it would be a lot more advanced to setup.

mrgsm021

1472 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#3147271 13-Oct-2023 15:54

Not used Grandstream but the ER-X SFP equivalent on the Mikrotik I'd say would be the RB760iGS, which also has 5 Gigabit ports and a 1.25Gigabit SFP port.

CamH

569 posts

Ultimate Geek

#3147272 13-Oct-2023 15:58

I haven't tried this model specifically, but I've been quite impressed with the Grandstream line up of routers and switching. We're typically a Mikrotik/Ubiquiti (and sometimes Ruckus) place, but the GS stuff has really matured as of late and the price point is great.

snowfly

543 posts

Ultimate Geek

#3147284 13-Oct-2023 16:32

Yes I have 2 x GWN7003's, been in use for approx 1 month.

One for primary home office (gigabit fibre), second for remote location (secondary office on 4g data), and an OpenVPN connection between the two.
I run multiple GWN AP's in both locations (mixture of 7630, 7615, 7610, 7602).

There are a couple of things to note, one is if you turn on features like traffic management / content management (filtering) / app monitoring, then hardware acceleration is turned off and you can't get max performance.
I don't use those features, and get full speed, approx 940 down / 540 up on fibre.

Also some budget limits with the PoE in/out, I run mine with PoE in, and you can configure each of the 2 PoE out ports but only with a limited budget.
Where as if you power with a 24v 1.5A power supply (you'll need to buy one, as only a 24V 1A supply is included) then you have up to 24.8W poe out budget.

Best to read manual, which covers the PoE configuration: https://documentation.grandstream.com/knowledge-base/gwn700x-user-guide/

I've also tried some 2.5G SFP RJ45 modules in them, and they work fine, ran a test connection successfully between 2.5G NIC on PC to QNAP NAS (2.5G).

GWN.cloud management has been good to, can access my remote gwn7003 even without vpn (using GWN.cloud proxy remote access).
And already been 2 firmware upgrades, so fingers crossed hopefully better updates than the old GWN7000 I previously used.

Let me know if there is anything else you want to know?

Also keep an eye on Grandstream forums: https://forums.grandstream.com

RunningMan

8961 posts

Uber Geek

#3147286 13-Oct-2023 16:41

Thanks @snowfly

Are you using DHCP or PPPoE WAN?

snowfly

543 posts

Ultimate Geek

#3147287 13-Oct-2023 16:54

RunningMan:

Thanks @snowfly

Are you using DHCP or PPPoE WAN?

Tested both working, I'm with 2degrees and with recent network migration, both PPPoE and DHCP are supported, although I've stayed on PPPoE for now.
I didn't notice any significant speedtest differences between the two.

phrozenpenguin

842 posts

Ultimate Geek

#3147916 16-Oct-2023 00:10

@snowfly thanks that is super helpful. I will checkout the PoE budget side of things...and plan on a replacement power adaptor!