For some time we have been relying on a SonicWALL SonicPoint for provisioning wireless access to our visiting users however I took the plunge recently to replace this with a HP ProCurve MSM410 Access Point.  The primary reason for this is that the antenna on the SonicWALL snapped and users were having a little difficulty connecting to it. So, off I went to order a J9427A HP ProCurve MSM410 WW Access Point and it arrived a few days later.

The MSM410 is much smaller than the SonicPoint and its antenna does not protrude – everything is kept inside the wall mountable panel – the wall mount pad is also included in the box which helps. The MSM410 includes an integrated 802.11n Draft 2 compliant radio with a three-element dual band MIMO antenna.

The first thing I needed to add was a Gigabit compatible Power Over Ethernet (PoE) injector as one is not supplied – I opted for the J9407A HP ProCurve 1 Port Power Injector which, when it arrived, ended up being a different make (presumably HP just buy them in). Configuration of the device is using either the Ethernet Port or the Console Port – this needs to be a serial console port with an RJ-45 connector (not supplied) – I don’t have one (actually I thought I had an old 3Com one but it didn’t work) so I opted to install using a network cross-over cable (again not supplied).

I opted to run the unit in Autonomous Mode – to run in Controlled Mode you need a central controller device such as a the MSM765, however autonomous mode should be fine with a single unit. Also, I am not keen to place any wireless access points directly on the LAN so, instead, I created a new interface on the firewall and placed the device into a DMZ. In the DMZ I can restrict the services available on the LAN (whilst still providing WAN access) and lock down connecting devices by MAC address – I can also lock down the MSM410 by MAC address as an added security mechanism. Configuring the MSM required the creation of a virtual service community (VSC) profile under which the wireless settings (e.g. WPA), the number of connecting clients, the MAC or IP filter, and a few other related settings are defined.

The next step was to configure the bridge connection to the network – the DMZ in this case. This is done by assigning a bridge port and a static IP address, a DNS server address can also be configured. One thing I would like to see on these devices would be a mini DNS server so I could define a few useful addresses and not have to implement a dedicated DNS server. I tried upgrading the shipped firmware from 5.2.6 to 5.3.1 but the HP download page isn’t working at the moment, maybe later.

So far the HP device is working well, I will post an update when I have run it in for a while.

Learn more about the device on the HP site at HP ProCurve MSM410 WW Access Point (J9427A) – Specifications.