tpplc (blue interface) was and is a struggle

tpplc (blue interface) was and is a struggle

tpplc (blue interface) was and is a struggle
tpplc (blue interface) was and is a struggle
a week ago
Model: TL-WPA8635P KIT  
Hardware Version: V4
Firmware Version: (fr) 4.0.2

this is regarding tpplc  2.3.4751.12

 

 

withoout doubt people have been working hard on this tool, i found it nigh unusable when setting up a tl-wpa8635p-kit.

and since the pl8015p does not have a web interface i had to fight with it for several hours.


first off: this is a new fresh install of the 8635p-kit. it's will be used as a point to point link, wifi & dhcp are off. on the same network segment, but not on the same power grid, there's a 2 adapter g.hn running as well. passwords & network names are different ofcourse.

 

first off, it's painfully slow. half the time i'm looking at the swirly icon "refressing". the program is 100% unresponsive at this time. looking at my packet captures it seems to be able to work 5-7 seconds, the hangs 5-7 seconds. the hang seems to be when it tries to connect to the g.hn devices, which are a different vendor. is tpplc intended to manage all devices or only tp-link? if it's just tp-link might i suggest limiting outgoing communication to the oui (mac address) blocks assigned to tp-link? the g.hn part has a different network name & password but got detected when starting the app, also no way to get it to not show up.

 

another thing i keep running into is that naming adapters & networks is forgotten when you shut down the app. the biggest annoyance is the network name. i had manually set it on the wpa8635p before even starting the app, but it detected the default name instead. a tried several times, gave up & started with the pa8015p adapter instead.
created a network with the right name in tpplc, added the wpa8635p key in the app, configured the pa8015p, then finally plugged in the wpa8635p. it failed to show up... quit the app, powercycled both adapters & ran tpplc again. several "refreshing" cycles later i could switch from the g.hn network which it detects first to the one i created.
which now had the default network name of the pa8015p...


now, the powerline network works, data passes. but when i look in the app it keeps giving me the default network name and the wpa8635p shows the name i entered.

i also noticed that when tpplc is active the web interface of wpa8635p can't keep up. it's the static page templates, but it can take up to 5 seconds before the actual data show up. the happens most on the powerline settings. these tend to be empty in the webinterface when tpplc is running.

the web interface i need to use since after a few hours tpplc stopped accepting the password to change 8635 settings. no clue what happened there since it still works on the web interface.


and the last one: tpplc can't use passwords that start with "!"

i had entered:
!9ZZWperlow
(well , not really, but it started with a ! the a digit, 3 capital 6 lowercase)

 

fine for web, but tpplc kept on refusing to accept it. changed the password via web to drop the "!"
9ZZWperlow

tpplc accepted it the first try.


i saw the article about using the 2018 version instead, but it installs winpcap. which not only is long out of support, it also interferes with my npcap installation. since npcap offers a compat interface i declined to install winpcap,

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Re:tpplc (blue interface) was and is a struggle
a week ago

found that some pla's offered tpplc version 2.3.5114.15, so tried that just now.

 

seems to be more responsive overall as the previous version,but still does not detect the correct powerline network name. it also still does some strange things like trying to find pla adapters on a wsl2 hyper-v switch, but if needed could try to come up with an valid reason for doing so :)

 

still refused to accept the 8635 password in one of my tests - noticed it trying to use different mac addresses then but forgot to save the pcap.

 

 

also not sure why the wpa8635p uses the same mac on it's wifi 2.4ghz & ethernet...

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