That’s no smoke detector. The Estate is now fully wired for wireless. Access points powered by PoE on the second floor and in the family room in the basement provide seamless handoffs of 1.4mb/s WiFi while roaming through the house.

The unit is the EnGenius EAP9550 Wireless N access point purchased from NCIX.com. It gets its power from what’s called a “Power over Ethernet” injector (NCIX link). This way you don’t have to run electrical to the unit and have an ugly power outlet and “wall wart” hanging off your wall. The PoE injector goes at the other end — where your router is. The cable coming out of your router goes into the PoE injector, and the cable coming out of your wall from the unit goes into the other end.

One of the neat things about the EnGenius line is that those glowing blue LEDs can be programmed to remain off so the unit doesn’t attract attention. Also, the antenna inside it can tell “where” you are in the house, and angles the power in that direction. Further, it supports VLAN, which means you can have a password protected network for you, and a “guest” network that doesn’t have access to your other computers so hackers wandering by can’t break into your home PC just ‘cos they’re parked out front of your house.

Protip: I assumed the (later to be delivered) access points would require a standard light fixture gang box but that wasn’t the case. This cover with its center-punch hole worked like a charm to cover the gang box. I then drilled the mounting bracket into it and it looks like it was always meant to be there.