Stayed up 5 days, In middle of day during light use It stopped responding again like all previous firmwares. User interface would not respond and a power cycle brought it back to functionality. I've really put effort into this little box hoping to coax reliable service out of it patiently for months testing firmware after firmware. I will test this further but I am realizing this is likely a lost cause. It's on a top quality APC pro ups and for 12 years prior I had run Netgear FVS 318's then a FVS338's and never had to power cycle either in years of use. Their VPN's were rock solid if not slow. I retired them because the FVS338 only passed max 60 mbits wan to lan and TPLink claimed the TL-ER604w passed a lot more. In my experience it passes less than 150 Mbits Wan to Lan using online speedtests like speakeasy. Anyone else tried this firmware? Any tips TPLink?

2centsworth wrote

Stayed up 5 days, In middle of day during light use It stopped responding again like all previous firmwares. User interface would not respond and a power cycle brought it back to functionality. I've really put effort into this little box hoping to coax reliable service out of it patiently for months testing firmware after firmware. I will test this further but I am realizing this is likely a lost cause. It's on a top quality APC pro ups and for 12 years prior I had run Netgear FVS 318's then a FVS338's and never had to power cycle either in years of use. Their VPN's were rock solid if not slow. I retired them because the FVS338 only passed max 60 mbits wan to lan and TPLink claimed the TL-ER604w passed a lot more. In my experience it passes less than 150 Mbits Wan to Lan using online speedtests like speakeasy. Anyone else tried this firmware? Any tips TPLink?

I just flashed today and will keep you posted.

From what I've read online people who use VPN functions on these devices get lockups. I don't know if it was just coincidence or what, but after setting "Online Detection" to inactive under Maintenance>Diagnostics>Online Detection, I've had to power cycle the unit much less. Maybe the whole issue has to do with memory or processor management issues? VPN uses a decent chunk of the hardware especially the higher you turn up the encryption.

Also from time to time, my Wireless would lock up and I would have to log into the UI and disable it and re-enable to get it to work again. I'm hoping this firmware combined with the thing mentioned above resolve all of these issues!

Lasted 3 days uptime and again same pattern. Traffic gets slower and slower as per speakeasy speedtest, comcast speedtest, etc. Some webpages don't load completely. Power cycle router and all is perfect again. I have wifi disabled and NO VPN setup at all yet. This new firmware has the same problems as the others. Why was the first version reasonably stable but no newer versions. Hey TPLink is it safe to downgrade to the original firmware? Do you have additional versions in the pipeline like another beta I can try before I give up on TPLink and go back to Netgear?

sheergenious wrote

I just flashed today and will keep you posted.

From what I've read online people who use VPN functions on these devices get lockups. I don't know if it was just coincidence or what, but after setting "Online Detection" to inactive under Maintenance>Diagnostics>Online Detection, I've had to power cycle the unit much less. Maybe the whole issue has to do with memory or processor management issues? VPN uses a decent chunk of the hardware especially the higher you turn up the encryption.

Also from time to time, my Wireless would lock up and I would have to log into the UI and disable it and re-enable to get it to work again. I'm hoping this firmware combined with the thing mentioned above resolve all of these issues!

Have you attempted resetting the device back to factory? Your issue is much more severe than any of the other common ones I've seen.

Sometimes with Firmware upgrades, something in the configs doesn't port over perfectly, so with other routers, I've been able to backup the config, reset, and upload the config.

Hope you get it figured out!

Yes. I've been working with open source firmware for routers since before ddwrt and sveasoft project and tried every trick flashing the firmware In case that was the solution. I give up. The last two rounds lasted 5 days uptime then 2 days. TPLINK please place a link to the original firmware so I can try flashing back to it and test stability.
Out of frustration and the fact I've been wasting many months trying to make this unit stable with any firmware other than the original and I NEED a reliable VPN router, I threw in the towel and purchased a FVS3336G V3 and right off the bat it's more powerful processor shows in fast routing of traffic.....and even it's kind of dated single core CPU.

update: you cannot downgrade back to the original firmware version TL-ER604W_V1_130116 from 2013 as I suspected. I tried and it failed. Unless TPLink has more firmware to try, I am walking away from TPLink products. Costs me too much time compared to the minor initial cost savings over more mature products at the consumer level.

Hi there,

I too have been having problems maintaining a stable connection (WiFi/Ethernet drops out without warning) - A reboot is the only way to get the router up and running again.
At first the router could be running for more than a year without problems - Now I have to reboot about ones every two month (not a BIG problem, but still).
I don't think it's the firmware that's causing the problems - I think it's the hardware that's starting to give up.

Any how - I tried updating the firmware anyway.. My problem is that I just upgraded with the wrong firmware :(
I just upgraded to the "1.2.0 Build 20160825 Rel.45884s" firmware on my v1 EU model. I didn't notice that I was on the US web site instead of the Danish web site (both in english).

I know that I can't go back to the beta firmware I was using before (solved a VPN issue with android 6.0.1 and above).
The router seems to be running fine - But I'm not sure for how long.

Will my current firmware end up killing my routers hardware (or something else that will put my network at risk)??

Kind regards

[edit]
My router also thinks it has v2 hardware now...

I have same problem! Updated to wrong US v2 firmware version, and cannot back to v1. Also router have slow wi-fi and is getting slower and slower until reboot. This is not cheap router, but so slow and buggy? Same problem was with correct firmware, before update, but fast wi-fi was much longer until drop. Where is TP-Link support now?

For now, best thing you can do(like me), is to flash router with previous US firmware version - TL-ER604W(US)_V1_151021. (this firmware will report that router hardware is version 1.0. Only bad think there is- Wi-fi will be more slow than original EU firmware, but router will work great.)

It's better than TL-ER604W(US)_V1_160825. (this firmware will report that router hardware is version 2.0)

Or if someone still want to get back to EU version, there are always have one choice to try to force flash EU firmware though USB-TTL device. But in this way, i do not guarantee that, router will boot after this. But it's likely will be boot with success. Use that with you'r own risk :)
This is almost direct hardware/chip flash the router ROM. Also there is devices which can attach direct to router ROM and flash it with no prompt. But don't ask me where to get this.. I don't know. But USB to TTL device, you can get from everywhere, and it's cheap.

I've tried flashing backward, looks like major changes to the prom layout prevent downgrading to original firmware....the only stable version of firmware for this device.
I am stuck with the latest firmware stated above and the routers not reliable or stable running it for long (even in a LAN test env.). Since the first (original) version runs pretty reliably (30 days at time or more) but every version following it needs power cycling after time, I speculate it is the firmware and hope TP Links stll working on it.

I purchased 4 of these originally and the 3 still running stock original firmware stay up pretty reliably for weeks or months without needing a reboot (but they have a few quirks). The one I upgraded firmware on is not reliable any longer.


HEY TPLINK IS THERE A SOLUTION TO DOWNGRADE TO THE ORIGINAL FIRMWARE???.....I see no jtag/serial port on the PCB and the cpu is covered by heatsink.