- Supports 802.11ad
- Runs three separate Wi-Fi bands, 60 GHz (4600 Mbps), 5 GHz (1733 Mbps), and 2.4 GHz (800 Mbps)
- Creates superior Wi-Fi coverage with eight external antennas, beam forming, and beam-steering
- MU-MIMO
- 1.4 GHz dual-core processor
- 4-Stream
- Dual USB 3.0 ports
- Makes it easy to manage your Wi-Fi settings anywhere with the free TP-LINK Tether app (Android, iOS)
Easy-to-use, full featured router, but too many wireless disconnections and packets lost
07/28/2016
This review is from: TP-LINK Talon AD7200 Multi-Band Wi-Fi MU-MIMO Gigabit Router
Pros:
As with most wireless routers now, the initial configuration is a snap: just connect a computer to the wired network, or to one of the wireless networks using the stickered PIN and SSIDs. The router's configuration is accessible at http://tplink.wifi.net or http://192.168.0.1 with the usual “admin / admin” username and password. The first time you connect to the router, it prompts you to create a new username and password, and walks you through the selection of internet connection type and wireless radio settings. TP-Link routers generally have an excellent user interface and this one is no exception. The default settings are sane and the SPI firewall is enabled by default. For enhanced security you may wish to disable WPS if you don't use it; this is buried under Advanced -> System Tools -> System Parameters.
There are separate status LEDs for each of the 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 60 GHz frequency bands, although these LEDs do not indicate activity. There are also separate status LEDs for each of the two USB 3.0 ports. There is a feature called “Night Mode” that lets you set a start and end time for turning off all the status LEDs; this is nice if the router is located in a bedroom.
There is a real power switch on the back, and three momentary push-button switches on the front to toggle the wifi on and off, start a WPS connection, and turn the status LEDs on and off.
This router shipped with firmware version 1.0.6. The web interface supports an online firmware upgrade; it found version 1.0.9 and installed it. The upgrade went smoothly, and no settings were lost or changed as far as I could tell.
The two USB 3.0 ports can be used with storage devices (per the user guide, FAT32 or NTFS only) and/or printers. My printers have wireless built-in so I tested the router as a file server using an NTFS-formatted 32 GB USB 3.0 Kingston DataTraveler, with the router configured as a Samba server (aka “Network Neighborhood”) and FTP server. Once the router was configured to act as a file server, it immediately appeared in my Windows laptop's network neighborhood as an available drive. Performance was very good. When using the DataTraveler on a desktop computer's USB 3.0 port, I measured 10.9 MB/s write and 33 MB/s read. On the router as a Windows share, I measured 9.4 MB/s write and 28 MB/s read; as an FTP server, 9.8 MB/s write and 32 MB/s read. However, when I created a user/password pair and attempted to restrict access to that user only, the router would never let me authenticate to the Windows share, and there was nothing in the system log regarding these failed attempts. The credentials worked as expected with the FTP server.
One new feature is called “offline download,” the idea being that you tell the router to download something large, and you can take your computer offline while the router continues to download the file. At first I thought this would be of limited use, especially where broadband is fast and electricity is cheap, but I can see a security benefit – for example, I can download and share the latest Debian image by BitTorrent without exposing my computer to hundreds of random connections, and that can run 24/7 regardless of my computer's state. It supports download by BitTorrent, aMule, or http. I downloaded a Debian DVD image by BitTorrent and a Knoppix DVD image by http, and verified that the configurable bandwidth limits were respected. The interface is definitely bare-bones (no seeding ratio is shown, no peer details are available, and there's no legend for the icons it shows) and the download status doesn't update very often, sometimes seeming to hang and then jumping forward to catch up. However, by the next morning my files had been downloaded, so it did work.
The guest network access behaves as you'd expect, unlike the Linksys WRT1900ACS that required guests to authenticate using a web form. You just give someone the guest network's SSID and pre-shared key, and it works. You can separate the guest network from your main network, and you can separate guest clients from each other.
Cons:
When I evaluate a new router's wireless performance, I always connect it in parallel with my existing router, apply updates and configure it to my liking, and then replace my existing router with the new one in the exact same physical location. This lets me perform a true apples-to-apples comparison of signal strength and transfer speed between the two routers, as measured at the same positions around my home. I use a fast computer with a gigabit wired connection as an iperf3 server, then measure the wireless throughput with a client running iperf3 at various location, repeating the test for each frequency band. (Since 802.11ad is so new – in fact, this is the only 802.11ad router currently for sale at Newegg – I have no 802.11ad client devices and thus no way to evaluate this router's performance in the 60 GHz frequency band.)
I've reviewed several routers over the past few years, and so far the D-Link DIR-868L has had the best wireless range and throughput, so that's the one I'm using for comparison. The measurement details are posted below under “Other Thoughts,” but in summary: this router bested the DIR-868L in wireless throughput in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands in one location only, which was at the outer limit of the DIR-868L's range. At all other measurement locations, the DIR-868L had consistently better wireless throughput. With eight antennas on this router, and at over 3X the cost, I expected better or at least equal wireless performance.
To make matters worse, while using this router my wireless clients would regularly drop connections on the 2.4 GHz band. While running performance tests on this router with iperf3, I observed several periods of 1 to 4 seconds with zero throughput, and this occurred on both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands. I tried multiple client devices, enabling and disabling various radio features, moving the router to a different location, and performing a factory reset: these intermittent drop-outs persisted. The router's system log showed nothing at all during these events. I wrote to ussupportteam@tp-link.com and received a case number, then held this review for a week to see if they would follow up in that time. They did not.
This router is wall-mountable, but the documentation says that a horizonal orientation is preferred, presumably because of the orientation of the antennas. I think a vertical mounting would work if the antennas could open 180 degrees, but they can only open to 90 degrees.
Overall Review:
The router provides a feature TP-Link calls “Mu-MIMO” which is supposed to allow for point-to-point communication with up to 3 clients, providing greater throughput. This is enabled by default. With no more than two clients at a time, I didn't see a difference in my measurements with this feature enabled or disabled.
Measured signal strength and throughput at various locations, vs. D-Link DIR-868L:
Adjacent to the router, for maximum performance:
2.4 GHz: -20 dBm, 67.9 Mbit/s
5 GHz: -28 dBm, 187 Mbit/s
Five feet away from the router:
2.4 GHz: -30 dBm, 20.1 to 41.7 Mbit/s (DIR-868L: -38 dBm, 45.8 Mbit/s)
5 GHz: -49 dBm, 135 to 169 Mbit/s (DIR-868L: -49 dBm, 186 Mbit/s)
Two rooms away from the router:
2.4 GHz: -70 dBm , 14.9 to 19.5 Mbit/s (DIR-868L: -67 dBm, 25 Mbit/s)
5 GHz: -74 dBm, 43 to 65 Mbit/s (DIR-868L: -76 dBm, 90 to 118 Mbit/s)
A near outbuilding, approximately equivalent to 4-5 rooms away:
2.4 GHz: -78 dBm, 8.6 to 11.1 Mbit/s (DIR-868L: -79 dBm, 1.1 to 16 Mbit/s)
5 GHz: -76 dBm, 7.2 to 12.1 Mbit/s (DIR-868L : -86 dBm, 1.7 to 5.7 Mbit/s)
The router and power adapter stayed cool to the touch. I measured 7 W and 17 VA power consumption at the outlet.
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