Forgetting security issues, what is in their favor? I'm still using old Linksys WRT G54. No need for mesh. Get reception several hundred feet away outside. Are Archer routers from TP Link? any concern about them?
TP-Link routers may be banned due to national security concerns
- Thread starter OVERKILL
- Start date
They generally have the lowest cost consumer-grade equipment on the market. That's basically what they have in their favor.
The problem with TP-Link is they do not support there product very long and new firmware is something they clearly don't care about. That's why they are a huge target for exploit. Cheap routers with very little end user support. I would just stay away.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
That's how they established their brand, before moving into higher segments.
For consumer grade stuff, I have my issues with the current state of Asus' software, but they recently had a massive update spree to patch some vulnerabilities, even for some of the EOLed models.
Linksys was started by Taiwanese expats in the U.S., but has passed through multiple hands, including Cisco, then Belkin, which itself became part of Foxconn.
Regardless of the level of paranoia one harbors, almost all tech products have to pass through China.
It's not like the U.S. doesn't play that game either; Cisco's equipment has been found to have received NSA "upgrades."
And it would be incredibly naive to think that data mining doesn't occur domestically, both for security, and profit, both open secrets.
Netgear seems to avoid Chinese manufacturing other than the power adapters. It would be a near trick to rig a power adapter to do any kind of data snooping, but I’ve heard of that possibility with USB cables and devices.
AX5400 or Archer AX73. Not sure why TP Link uses different designations like this.... I might have looked it up wrong on OpenWRT's website too.
Apparently it has to do with this router using a Broadcom chipset.
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I guess my kids appreciate the SSIDs I've come up with the years. My son's WiFi is "Rivendell" and while I don't remember what my daughter set hers as, she did ask me if they could change it so it's not just "stupid random letters and numbers".
At home, ours has been
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft
100 Acre Woods
Ice Planet Hoth
etc
Oh gosh, that brings back memories.... Not sure I'd EVER hear a reference to "PPPoE" ever again, that's for sure ! First DSL was "Mindspring Max" and it was provided by Covad. That was even before they merged with Earthlink. I was "online" friends with a high-level tech of theirs named Ray. He had my line re-provisioned by the local telco more than once in order to get me the best copper line available and one time, he had control of their switch and cranked my speed from 1.5 Mb/s up to the technical max of 8 Mb/s. He had me run a speed test and it did it (well, close, 'cause DSL had 10-15% overhead loss and this was before everyone switched to over-provisioning our speeds to that we would be able to reach the speed we paid for).
I could plug it straight into a computer where the PPPoE settings were pretty simple. I think when I first got a Wi-Fi box, it was basically just one desktop computer with wired Ethernet and one laptop computer. This was well before connecting a refrigerator to the internet was common.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Yeah, just checked and found the same explanation, a lack of open source code/support for that processor.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Oh, it's actually quite common still with ISP's that migrate from DSL to fibre. Both Bell and a local ISP, both of who were of course POTS telcos and used PPoE due to their use of xDSL, still use it for their fibre. I have PPoE setup on my UDM SE for that reason.
I got DSL internet around Fall 2000, based on my Amazon purchase of a Linksys BEFSR41 (wired) router. We kept that original service for a number of years until the local telco started offering higher speeds for less $$$ than what Mindspring/Earthlink could offer. Later switched to cable internet after 5-6 years and still have that.
Yeah, I vaguely recall that you just entered your login details, spec'd it used PPPoE, and it handled the rest. I haven't used it in forever but I'm pretty sure modern WiFi routers still have this authentication option.
I see it in my network options. I don't see old fashioned PPP for dialup as an option any more. The last computer I got with a dial-up modem was maybe 2005. I recall there was one setup with the dial-up number and the login info. The last time I did it was when I had something like 20 hours of dial-up per month with Earthlink DSL service and used it on vacation. Before I left I looked up their dialup service numbers there and used it when my phone calls were free at our hotel. I think back then a lot of hotel phones had a port to connect a dialup modem.
My google-fu is bad apparently. I tried searching for it and couldn't find it.
Going to see if I have the right HW version and what it can do for me.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Looks like the news has folks (unsurprisingly) switching. This guy moved to Unifi:
My old Wi-Fi router died recently so I got a TP-Link unit out of my parts bin and swapped it in. I'm not worried, though, as it sits behind a Linux based firewall distro and is not exposed to the Internet and has everything turned off except for Wi-Fi.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Can you load it with OpenWRT or something less sketchy than the TP-Link firmware?
Just checked... It's listed as unsupported in the OpenWRT db.
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