Model : VR900 (AC1900)

Hardware Version : Archer VR900 v1 00000000

Firmware Version : 0.9.1 1.3 v004c.0 Build 151111 Rel.31301n

ISP : unimportant

Has anyone managed to successfully bring up the VR900 admin page using an internal DNS ALIAS? Works for all my other devices (no matter what they are) except this device.

(SEE ATTACHMENT.)

It seems the router security is only allowing pages to work if there is an IP address in the referrer (or some other weird security they have put in).

TP Link Support replied with something like "... is not available is due to our security mechanism. In order to protect customers from being attacked ,such kind of visiting is blocked."

Sounds like the wrong reason to me. If that is the case then they have some non-standard coding there - possible bug in their firmware/web server config?

Typical scenario:

- Router is being used only in wifi routing mode (not using the broadband).
- Router has a static IP of 192.168.0.253
- On my DNS server an alias of "router3" has been assigned. Just like any other router/repeater/pc/device on my intranet.
- The local domain is "local". So a ping to "router3" or "router3.local" works fine
- Admin pages on any devices i have with other routers (linksys, billion, etc) work fine eg. http://router1 is my Sky box, http://router2 is a Billion repeater
- http://router3 brings up the admin page but with broken assets...

Basically the tplink image is broken is the first thing you see. In Chrome debug the device is not able to serve assets properly. You see a series of:

GET http://router3/img/login/logo.png 403 (Forbidden)
GET http://router3/img/login/icons-01.png 403 (Forbidden)
GET http://router3/favicon.ico 403 (Forbidden)

The password input field is there however. Going past that gives a whole load of jquery errors.

A possible bug in the firmware or an "on purpose" security mechanism? The latter sounds nonsense to me.

thanks