@Kevin_Z 

I play certain games competitively online, primarily FPS (First Person Shooter) titles in the eSports realm of games. This means that any minute amount of "delay" can change the outcome of nearly every round, and thus, every game. Milliseconds are everything in competitive eSports, especially when it comes to competing at the top 1% of players in competitive FPS.

Please do not take this wrong, I am not 12-year old XBOX gamer who plays Call of Duty for fun, and wants to blame their Router for their losses in-game.

I am a 25 year old who has competed in multiple tournaments with prize pools in the past 12 months. I would absolutely love to continue to compete in such events in the near future. As I have not won any such event thus far, I am no professional player by any means, of course. At this point I am simply a high solo queue player, who hasn't been able to win monetary prizes at this point. 

Regardless, this is the kind of situation that our router is used, for competitive gaming & for allowing WiFi access to other devices in the home. Due to the nature of eSports in general, it is much preferred to completely disable any kind of Antivirus or Firewall that could slow down traffic coming in or out.

Any kind of "filter" that adds even a small amounts of delay to "process, filter, and identify a threat" is definitely less than ideal. Not to mention, I always worry that such an Antivirus may erroneously block packets that could have an impact on gameplay. 

Beyond this, outside of everything I described above, I personally feel that is a violation of trust for the TP-Link AC5400x to force the Antivirus on us at all times. It's pretty worrisome to have a orced AV that is active 24/7 as a  consumer.

As consumers, we paid for the AC5400x (Archer C5400x) router from TP-Link, with good faith that it would allow us to have control over our home network. The AC5400x gives the appearance of being able to turn off the AV on the Router, so one would assume it should be completely possible to do, as other Router brands also allow users to disable any "firewall" or "AV features".

Yet, with the TP-Link AC54500x, somehow we have a no way to disable a built-in AV from running 24/7?

The built-in AV updates itself, using our bandwidth at home, and continually blocks websites that we may or may not even want blocked in the first place... and continues to run even while all the sliders are set to "disabled".

That's not really an acceptable practice, ethically nor morally, and I wouldn't have purchased a TP-Link Router if I had any inkling that this kind of policy may be considered "normal" or "acceptable" to TP-Link. From a Privacy standpoint, and from an Ethical standpoint, TP-Link has overstepped their boundairies. 

Noone but TP-Link would know if TP-Link or TREND Micro are logging our traffic, web browsing data, and so on to sell to outside 3rd party companies. 



If there is truly no way to disable the TREND Micro AV entirely on the AC5400x (Archer C5400x), I'd humbly ask for an update to the firmware which allows us to completely disable the AV entirely.

If there will be no firmware update to allow us to turn off the AV entirely, then I'd I wish for a refund of the $250 spent on a Router that has major privacy violations, or a replacement router that doesn't have a "24/7 active AV". 

At this point, I'm not sure that I'd ever purchase another TP-Link product again, if the company thinks it is acceptable to force a built-in AV that remains active even if we intentionally try to disable it. 

@Aeefy I don't think they care on this router anymore even it is considered as a high-end one. You should better refund it. I have the same model and so disappoint.