@MisterW 

Thank you very much.  I had previously gone to the only computer store in my area that carried wired routers (50 miles one way) and they at that time had no TP-Link routers in stock,  so I had to buy another more expensive brand.   A week later and despite all of my research,  I had only been able to get it working for 10 minutes before it stopped and then back to square one.   I found 5 year old videos of a similar model and their manuals were not written with a casual networker in mind. And I could not find ANY online help.   Mind you as a retired chemist I had built many computers and even did some simple networking in the past (mainly because we could not afford to simply buy computers from the vendors... those were often unupgradable and using proprietary operating system software that were later abandoned with no support decades before the analytical instrumentation that needed the computers became obsolete).

So I made a return 100 mile round trip after checking to make sure they actually had the wired tp-link routers in stock this time -- they usually carried them,  it is where I usually buy my components,  and exchanged the balky expensive unit for the cheaper and easier to install TP-Link unit.

System up and working in minutes,  but I wanted to make sure I had the latest firmware...  and I could not locate the upgrade procedure on the forums.  Without the forums I would have eventually found the information...  but my eyes tend to hurt worse when I am reading black text on a white computer screen background for long periods of time,  so it would have taken me several days of reading.