@joh.khz How do you propose to get in contact with a Tp Link programmer?  That sounds like wishful thinking!

Yes there are a lot of more minor features that are also very disapointing. SNMP works and I've managed to graph it with LibreNMS, but there's no published MIB for this model so there's nothing better than guesswork and snmpwalk to figure out what graphs related to which interfaces etc. Nothing is documented properly.

I can understand a lot of the minor features are probably not considered important in a consumer/home-office product. But dropping wifi connections is widely reported for this device for quite some time and that's not been solved. Sadly I'm not hugely confident that there will be a solution found if one hasn't been found by now. 

If I'd not bought this device in a hurry and not had time to research in advance, there's no way I would have bought this based on the reviews. 

@gsmitheidw "Wishful thinking" hehehe.

Well, we try to get some TP Link employee can read this and send this thread to the engineers so they can do their tests.

Although, in my opinion, for the years that this TD W9970 model has been on the market, I doubt they will take the trouble to correct those errors.

Without a doubt, a "wishful thinking"

I think the same as you. If I had known this model it had that "detail" of operation (so annoying), I would not have bought it

I'm experiencing the same issues with my TD-W9970 v3. 

Did you guys find any solution to this problem? Cable works perfectly. WiFi devices being disconnected and unable to connect unless the modem is rebooted.

It was mentioned that it could be related to some sort of bottleneck when data is being uploaded. So, could it be possible that you guys are using bandwidth control and the total upstream bandwidth doesn't match with the real upload speed?

@Izaro Hello. @gsmitheidw @sand87 

What is your internet plan?

My internet plan contracted with my ISP is 6 mbps down and 0.76 up:

Is that this should not be a problem, because at most, if the upload bandwidth is low, the most that could happen is that the connections of the devices connected to the wif network become slower. Not that the devices completely lose the connection/disconnect to the Wi-Fi network. The problem seems to be the router and its "strange programming" that makes it have the behavior of expelling the devices from the Wi-Fi network and that the only way to reconnect them is by reboot the router. That's not normal. In my case, I have used other routers with the same bandwidth (I have a plan of 6 mbps download and 0.7mbps upload as I've said before) and this has never happened to me, but with this TD W9970 model.

I have contacted TpLink Support and they argue that "due to having a connection with a low upload speed, it can happen that the connections become slow". It is obvious they will slow down; What is not right is the behavior of the router to leave all devices connected to the Wi-Fi network outside the wireless network as several users have reported in this forum.

@Sunshine please, i want to know too. Experiencing the same issues and it's getting frustrating.

Hi, @sand87, @Alanh02, @gsmitheidw @Izaro @Kevin_Z @Sunshine could be this the problem? Maximum number of client connections to TD-W9970 That there is a (wrong) maximum limit of simultaneous connections to the WiFi network that is causing the device disconnection problem (bottleneck) and that the router must be constantly rebooting to fix it?

I've used the TL WR841 which is a much older model that this TD W9970 and I never had this problem :/

I have exactly the same problem.

In case it's relevant, I did enable Bandwidth Control to get around the 'bufferbloat' problem but I didn't expect this to prevent devices from connecting to the WiFi.

For now I've connected a different router via ethernet to use as an access point and I've disabled the WiFi on my TP-Link router, but this is a very disappointing fault.

I'm seeing this information in the web interface:

Firmware Version:0.9.1 0.2 v0076.0 Build 170919 Rel.61201n

Hardware Version:TD-W9970 v2 00000000

It seems to be something that has happened recently, in the last week or so as I don't recall this behaviour before that.

@Sunshine Is there any known solution or workaround for this problem? So far the only thing that fixes it is rebooting the router, and even that only seems to work for a day or so until I have to do it again.

@Sunshine Thanks very much for following up.

1. Yes the issue happens only on WiFi. I have temporarily plugged in a different router to the ethernet port on the TD-W9970 to use as an access point until this gets resolved.

2. I believe which ISP I am with, and certainly the bandwidth of the ISP is irrelevant as when the problem happens the computer can't connect to the WiFi at all (timeout whilst waiting for authentication; though I've also tried temporarily disabling all security options on the WiFi and it still times out whilst trying to connect).

Nevertheless, I am with Direct Save Telecom, who supplied the router. Downstream bandwidth is approximately 10Mbps (8Mbps 'real world' taking into account TCP/IP overheads). Upload bandwidth is up to 1Mbps.

3. Firmware Version:0.9.1 0.2 v0076.0 Build 170919 Rel.61201n

Hardware Version:TD-W9970 v2 00000000

4. I have up to 6 devices connected at any one time (Windows, Mac and Linux laptops, and 3 x Android phones/tablet). The problem seems to affect some of the devices, but each time it happens it affects different ones, so it's nothing to do with those devices.

5. The only way to fix the problem is rebooting the router or power off and power on again. After doing this, all six devices can connect, for the next day or so until the problem happens again

I have tried various WiFi modes, but once the problem happens it doesn't matter which WiFi modes I select, some of my devices fail to connect to the WiFi and cannot reconnect until the router is rebooted.

I hope this helps