I would say this is the key line in the headline and why I’m going to read the article: “but ban keeps it out of US market”. Yet nothing in the article tells me why it’s banned and instead I have to click a link in the article to find out? Is this article only meant for people who have been following the wireless router market for the last 6 months?
After bouncing from linksys to tp link and finally landing on unifi im really very very happy with unifi. Just an absolute pleasure to use my router now. Nice and stable and a ui that doesn’t actively hate me
Yeah, I’ve ran the gamut from Linksys (started with the WRT-54gl, legendary), to TP-Link and Asus, moving to Syonology and finally landing on Ubiquity. I agree - by far the most capable and reliable of all these. Especially since I’ve gotten into setting up a homelab with VLANs and such. The synology has support for this but it’s not the greatest.
It’ll reach end-of-service before hitting store shelves and have unpatched security vulnerabilities anyway.
First things first. Can it run OpenWRT?
Asking the real questions
I have a TP-Link router.
It’s great, but the first one I got was broken right out of the factory, so this is a warranty replacement for the first one that I got.
considering tp-links response to firmware updates on supported hardware was “get fucked”, my only response to them is
Oh no…
Anyway.
While all my access points support WiFi 7, I have exactly one WiFi 7 device in my house. I upgraded from like WiFi 5 and there’s about a decade between those two ratification dates. WiFi 7 is overkill for my home as I get ~1.5gb/s to my phone. I feel like a lot of the newer features in the later WiFi standards are for convention center scenarios where WiFi always slows to a crawl.
first Wi-Fi 8 router
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_8
The standard is projected to be finalized in May 2028.
Anything that anyone is selling now as being “Wi-Fi 8” is at best a guess as to what Wi-Fi 8 will be along with (hopefully) later firmware updates.
(hopefully) firmware updates
yeah about that
There’s already a lot of issues on how each manufacturer is implementing WiFi 7. And several of the issues are a hardware level, so I very much doubt they’ll be able to implement anything via firmware for wifi 8.
That’s how it usually is. At this point the hardware necessary is figured out. The specs are not finalized but very u likely to change at this point. Any changes to the protocol are handled with firmware.
It’s really not a big deal.
If they maintain and update their firmware, which they’re notoriously bad about doing.
“pre-orders”
We don’t even have proper consumer Wi-Fi 7 routers, why the hell do we need Wi-Fi 8? Wi-Fi 7 is supposed to support simultaneous multi-band connections per device and not a single consumer one does this. The most expensive ones out there will do this weird thing where it’ll communicate in a rapid alternating signal, but that’s still not proper. Even if they support 2.4, 5, and 6 GHz, and include multiple radio chips, they are giving us the shittiest Wi-Fi 7 experience.
And that’s not even to talk about how “Wi-Fi 7” is the actual standard and some makes are skirting this by calling what they do “WiFi 7” simply so they can avoid false advertisement.
And that’s not even to talk about how “Wi-Fi 7” is the actual standard and some makes are skirting this by calling what they do “WiFi 7” simply so they can avoid false advertisement.
I would argue that that is still false advertising, because most people can’t tell the difference between “WiFi” and “Wi-Fi”. 😔
Oh I completely agree, but in legal terms it actually works. Ridiculously stupid loophole.
That would not fly in Canadian courts, I honestly doubt it would in American one either.
I wonder if also works in the EU market. 🤔
Because people don’t upgrade routers like they upgrade their phones? If wifi8 router is available, then people buying a new one would likely go with the newest protocol, supporting adaptation to better technology.
Oh I’m not even arguing that the typical consumer with the means to buy them aren’t thinking “mo’ numba, mo’ betta”, just that we haven’t actually gotten into effective use of what we have available in the current Wi-Fi 7 spec. I mean the current theoretical speed of home applications is 4gbps with 46gbps as a max ceiling speed of we develop it more. So really, why Wi-Fi 8 yet, other than mindlessly buying a bigger number?
Well then, you will be glad to learn something.
That is great we’re finally getting something other than promised speeds. My point stands though on not even getting proper Wi-Fi 7, so getting proper Wi-Fi 8 is also very unlikely. I do hope they prove me wrong on that, but I think I have reason enough to feel skeptical.
I can barely find home devices that even support a 6ghz band. Why do we have these fancy routers if the receivers are capping out at 5ghz?
My iPhone can do 6ghz. But the AP can’t use it any full power and speed without phoning home to regulators every 24 hours so fuck it.
I should just run fiber all over my house.
I will wait for Wi-Fi X.
I recently got a tplink wifi AP. I needed just a little more punch for wifi to reach the porch and my old netgear wax620 was becoming temperamental. I got a wifi 7 AP.
Looking around, everything at microcenter was leaning heavily into ubiquity but I won’t trust something that needs a controller on a seperate device in my network. I also don’t like how it’s push so heavily, and has been found in Russian warfare repeatedly. It feels like “the only backdoors are the one the US approves of. Here ya go!” I don’t trust it.
So I get the TP link and it’s as janky as I remember and unstable and fuck I likely will have to install an omada controller on my network somewhere anyways and holy fuck is that Java? And the range improvements lasted a week before it gave up on the back porch again so I likely will have to get an outdoor AP anyway or put the old netgear in the garage and dig a line to that.
Fuck I hate tech anymore.
I manage an omada network at work and hadan omada at home (controllers and APs).
Work is okay-ish. Multiple hardware models (and versions - wtf, tplink?) make firmware updates a PITA).
Home was always a wreck, unstable AF, and required regular reboots. That one was full-stack - router, switches, controller, APs. Thankfully, it’s in an e-recycle bin now.
What did you switch to?
I’m trialing a few different small/remote office cloud-managed firewall / AP products (that work is paying for, fortunately). Unfortunately, not the usual prosumer grade stuff, meaning if I ever separate from the company, I gotta find something else.
I’m running Omada switches, APs, and controller at home with an OpnSense router and haven’t had too much trouble aside from an Iot device drop issue with the APs that has since been fixed. But I have all cloud stuff turned off, everything is local. If I drop Omada I need to find another SDN ecosystem that can work entirely offline
Yeah, well, they’re shit anyway
I know nothing about TP-Link issues, but pretty sure I have 2 of their routers 😔
Updates are non existent, basic functionality locked behind a subscription, iffy support, lousy documentation. They suck. I have one, and the only reason I haven’t replaced it is monetary I have too many other things eating into my budget to replace something that is working, if not to my preferences
Check if it can run OpenWRT
I have 3. Unfortunately I’ve learned they’re awful about maintaining and updating their firmware. They’re functionally pretty good, but they stop providing updates to older models quickly. I won’t buy again.
Yeah, the ban on TP-Link is for good reasons.
What about Mikrotik? An European brand that mostly focuses on servers and advanced routers. I got one for 600 (by now it’s around 300-400, Mikrotik Chateau 17ax) and damn it’s the most advanced, feature rich router I have ever seen in my life. You can try out the demo at demo.mt.lv
Makes no sense why it’s banned.
whataboutism
this is a post about tp-link.
It impacted gl.inet also. I can’t wait for The Day, it needs to come soon.
Didn’t they reclassify TP Link as US based since the company is, ya know, US based?
Anyway. Glad I got the devices when I did. They’re banger.
Didn’t read the article. They opened an office in California, but this doesn’t make a Chinese company American and it’s assertion is being challenged.
Oh, I thought HQ is in Cali? I know, I know… “HQ”.
The parts are almost certainly Chinese in origin.
Yes they are… it was mostly a facetious comment. I think it’s two brothers and one handle California and sales and the other handles China and production.
