TP-LINK TL-WR841ND Wireless N300 Home Router, 300Mbps, IP QoS, WPS Button, 2 detachable antennas TP-LINK TL-WR841ND Wireless N300 Home Router, 300Mbps, IP QoS, WPS Button, 2 detachable antennas

Pros: Affordable
Detachable antennas
Stock firmware pretty good

Cons: v8 not good for OpenWRT yet. Well...for a repeater at least. Will drop connections

Other Thoughts: I have been getting these routers for awhile now. For the money, they are really hard to beat. Mainly just wanted to write the review to let anyone interested know the deal with v8

Pros: It WAS very fast... for the first two months of ownership.

Cons: After the second month of ownership, I'm getting a mere fraction of the throughput I used to get. My ISP modem offers up D/U speeds of 50/8Mbps, which, when directly connected to my PC via wired connection, I can count on getting - on or very close to speeds. Through the router, I used to be able to count on getting ~30 (sometimes 35)/8 wirelessly, but now, I get only 14 [at best]/(can't even get a successful read on upload)... All testing done via speedtest[dot]net.

Other Thoughts: I tried to do a 30/30/30 reset, but to no avail, either.

Manufacturer Response:

Hi G S,
We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this router.

May I provide you some suggestions?

1. Upgrade the firmware to the latest.
You may find the latest firmware here:
http://www.tp-link.com/en/support/download/?model=TL-WR841ND

2. Change the Wireless Channel on the router.
Use a free software "inSSIDer" to find out which channel is best channel in your environment and use it in the router;

If it still doesn't work, please feel free to let me know for further solution.
My email is:

howard.he@tp-link.com

We really appreciate you taking the time to check out our TP-Link products and we hope that you will be able to check out more in the future.

Best Regards!

TP-LINK Support Team
support@tp-link.com
(866) 225-8139
http://www.tp-link.com/us/support
http://www.facebook.com/TPLINK

Pros: Excellent signal. It covers areas of the house I needed a range extender for with previous routers. It connects at high speeds too - N150 adapters actually connect at 150.

Simple, straightforward web interface. Good home router.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: Some nice features for the price: WDS wireless bridge capability, a physical on/off switch for the wireless radio, detachable antennae. Got it on special but still worth it at full price.

Pros: Great price, works great (now).

Cons: tech support did not help at all

Other Thoughts: Does not state anywhere I noticed that to get above 54mbps you must use wpa2 encryption. I was ready to return it when I found a web page that said you have to use wpa2. My old router was either wep or wpa and so my whole network was a little behind the times but still, the product should have made this clear during the cd-rom install. I was only getting 24 to 48 mbps initially & when I called tech support, they told me the numbers are lying and that I am getting a faster speed than my old Lynksis (which was putting out 54mbps). After later discovering about using WPA2, my laptop now was getting 150mpbs. Same with my netbook as well as another older netbook that now is flying on the net. I'm so glad I found out about the WPA2 as I was literally moments away from packing this little router up and sending it back. I'm glad I persevered. Router is working great and I took away 1 egg due to the useless tech support from TP-Link.

Pros: Cheap, easy setup, strong signal, detachable antennae, power button

Cons: Slooooooow

Other Thoughts: I've had this setup for a few weeks now and I'm about to put my old router back in. Problem is that web pages often take about 10+ seconds to load (versus ~1sec or less on my old router) and often time out. I received model 8.1. The wireless seems strong enough and setup was easy, just can't live with the laggy web page loading times. I looked for a firmware update but didn't find one. Might try DD-WRT to see if it can help...

Manufacturer Response:

Dear customer,
Thank you for supporting TP-LINK and we're happy to hear the router is cheap, easy to setup, and has strong signal.

Actually the Web page should response fast.
Could you please change another PC to try it again? Or even using a smart phone, its browser can test the response speed of the web management page.
If it doesn't work, I would like to work with you for further troubleshooting.
Please feel free to contact me:
howard.he@tp-link.com

We really appreciate you taking the time to check out our TP-Link products and we hope that you will be able to check out more in the future.

Best Regards!

TP-LINK Support Team
support@tp-link.com
(866) 225-8139
http://www.tp-link.com/us/support
http://www.facebook.com/TPLINK

Pros: Cheap

Cons: Its speed is very slow. My network is 5mpb. With this router, the speed is only 0.5 mpb. And frequently dropped signal.

Other Thoughts: Newegg.com customer service was good. One phone call to explain the situation, return and get refund in one week (shipping was covered by Newegg)

Manufacturer Response:

Dear customer,
We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this router.
We did the speedtest on the same router but the speed is as fast as usual.
The WAN2LAN/LAN2WAN throughput are both 94Mbps+.

If you didn't return the router back yet, could you please give it another chance?
1. Change the MTU to 1400 (Management Page --> Network --> WAN)
2. Change the DNS Server Addresses to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 (Management Page --> Network --> WAN)

For further info, please feel free to contact me:
howard.he@tp-link.com

We really appreciate you taking the time to check out our TP-Link products and we hope that you will be able to check out more in the future.

Best Regards!

TP-LINK Support Team
support@tp-link.com
(866) 225-8139
http://www.tp-link.com/us/support
http://www.facebook.com/TPLINK

Pros: Bought this on sale for twenty bucks and it works well with good range. Set up was very simple using the Easy Setup CD and the unit came with the latest firmware so nothing to update.

Don't have an iPhone to configure, but set up security across 3 PC's, Nexus 7, and some Powerline adapters in a few minutes and everything has been working since. Native firmware is straightforward and easy to traverse.

the 5 dB antennas provide good strong signal even on second floor.

Cons: None.

Other Thoughts: For a budget friendly router it is working quite well. Some have complained that it isn't compatible with DD-WRT, though the manufacturer doesn't claim it to be, and that might be a bit much to expect from this price range.

The less expensive TL-WR841N is identical except this one has removable antennas, though not sure that makes much difference as it is unlikely I'd spend more than what this cost to buy higher gain antennas for this.

I added extra thick feet to the bottom as the factory ones only raised the unit about 1/16" and now it is over 1/4" and runs cool with improved airflow.

Buy this because of the price and it works pretty well. The unknown is if you really can get a $20 router and have it still running well in a couple of years from now.

Pros: Worked fine out of the box. Easy to configure, took me 5 minutes. My other wirless N router that serves as a bridge works at 300mbps both in reception and emission with this router as the AP. My laptop can reach only 72mbps but It is an issue with the wireless controller. For $20, what to ask more?

Cons: Does not support DD-WRT (as far as I can tell).

Pros: Super cheap at the sale price, less than twenty bucks & free s/h. Transfers files across my LAN much faster (on wifi) than my venerable old Cisco Linksys WRT54GL.

Cons: After much research, it appears these are newer v8.x that do not accept much in the way of open-source firmware. I originally purchased this with the intent of loading DD-WRT, but this version is unsupported and looks to be that way for some time. Tomato does not support this. OpenWRT apparently does, but there are issues (read their forums for more info).

Did not have as much range as my WRT54GL on wifi in a 3300sq ft home. It reached everything fine, but several speed-tests revealed a lower throughput and lesser signal. I did have the transmit power turned up slightly in the older router (Tomato firmware) but not much.

Many wireless devices simply refused to connect - mainly my many IPCAMS. This meant I would have to go and pull each down and manually connect with a cable to reconfigure. I duplicated ALL settings from old router to new and many devices did not have any issue at all. Blame it on the cameras maybe, I dunno.

Other Thoughts: I switched back to my WRT54GL. It isn't that I do not like this router, but the lack of an open source firmware does not suit my needs. Along with the fact that I would have spent a great deal of time reconfiguring my IPCAMS was just a dealbreaker for me. The OEM firmware was fine I guess, and will probably suit most peoples needs. If you have many wireless devices (I have over a dozen, including cell phones, rokus, sony streamers, bluray streamer, 4 PCs, 4 IPCAMS, PS3, etc.) you may want to set aside a full day for reconfiguring all your devices with this router. I will probably do this one day when there is open source firmware available, but until then the old Linksys is back in business.

Manufacturer Response:

Hello Bob,

We're glad to see that the speeds are faster for you than your previous Router and that everything seems to be functioning normally.

You are correct as our Hardware Version 8 will not support DD/OpenWRT due to software and hardware limitations in this particular Router. However we do have many other Routers that support these 3rd party firmware - none of our Routers will support Tomatoe.

It looks like the cameras remember the BSSID (MAC) address of your Old router, and they won't try to connect to the New Router until they get the New routers BSSID. If you power on both the Cisco and TP-Link, then you can tell the cameras to connect to the TP-Link while being wirelessly connected to the Cisco. This should prevent you from having to change each camera one-by-one.

We really appreciate you checking out TP-Link and hope that you will be able to check out more of our devices in the future. If you have any issues then feel free to contact our Technical support, or you may contact me directly at howard.he@tp-link.com.



Best Regards!
TP-LINK Support Team
support@tp-link.com
(866) 225-8139
http://www.tp-link.com/us/support
http://www.facebook.com/TPLINK

Pros: The hardware is stable and the stock firmware is not bad at all. It only took me few minutes to configure the stock firmware and I am accessing the internet without any issue. I had the stock firmware running for about 2 weeks before switching to DD-WRT (another bonus). No error in wireless signal. I just love it. I noticed the stock firmware actually performs better on DHPC IP assignment than DD-WRT. I have been using DD-WRT and Tomato for years on various wireless routers - most of them are 802.11g. This one is the most cost effective and has the best wireless throughput overall.

Cons: Not really a con. I wish it has 8MB flash ram but I knew it before hand.

Other Thoughts: For $20 while it is on sale, you can't go wrong with it. Even if you don't flush it with DD-WRT, the stock firmware (v.7) is still great for most of us.