@Riley_S

 

Hi Riley,

 

Could you expound upon TP-Link's commitment to long-term support by way of firmware updates (specifically what are the expected years of commitment to delivering firmware updates (security patches, performance improvements, new features, etc.) across product lines)?  I have an Archer AX11000 and it seems to receive infrequent firmware updates with each new product that is released per Wi-Fi technology (Wi-Fi 6 (my router), Wi-Fi 6E, Wi-Fi 7, etc.), it seems as though (people) resources are going to be stretched to provide ongoing support for these range of devices.

 

It would be great if TP-Link would publish a table detailing the years of long-term support per product (or product range) as well as the expected timeline of firmware updates.

 

This will help reinforce customer confidence that their investments will be supported for YEARS (5+) to come!.

 

Thank you!

I'd agree strongly. I picked up an AX3200 a while back because it was one of the only recent models that didn't require cloud accounts for setup of basic features. It hasn't had an update since last January, and I know there have been multiple vulnerabilities in some of the code it's running because it's the same as old versions of other routers that have had 4 updates since then. Probably more importantly is the bizarre support of WiFi 6 on it. It supports 1024-QAM... but only on 5G_SSID1 for unstated reasons. The specs list HT160 / 160MHz channel support on 5G_SSID2, but none of the DFS or low power channels show up on either SSID as selectable and 160MHz isn't a selectable width, so at this point it was a falsely advertised feature (to kinda get around that there's fine print on the specs page saying that some features may require a software udpate, but I'm pretty sure you have to actually provide said update for that to hold up in court). It may be irrelevant since 802.11ac seems to have 200-300MB/s faster real world speeds from the room 20 feet away down the hall than ax from the same modem. The ZyXel was still faster than that, there wasn't much speed drop from same room to anywhere in the house until it was having to go through at least 4 walls. I can get even higher speeds if I just turn the fancy Wifi 6 router into a dumb switch and move the ZyXel 802.11AC router my internet provider gave me to the internet facing spot. It had better coverage and supported every channel that the FCC allowed. With that thing in the back corner of my house in an even worse position at the time my phone could remain connected up until around 3 houses down, across a street, and 150 feet into a nearby parking lot. It had no external antennas and only two internal I believe. I could pull nearly gigabit (my full connection speed) from the same room. Also can't block specific ports on the firewall of the TP-Link, it's just "SPI Firewall" "On/Off". Sometimes I need to block things in more than just Windows firewall which I only trust to work for the brief period until software randomly tells it to add a new allow rule without asking. The old router allowed blacklisting entire port ranges from specific IPs (or whitelisting them). I severely doubt speeds will be a single bit better on Wifi 7; comcast had trouble achieving 1024-QAM modulation all the time on a brand new run of coax to the neighborhood and a new install with perfect connection strength, and that's a vastly stronger and cleaner signal than Wifi can dream of emitting. It'll likely be dropping to 64-QAM or the slow variant 265-QAM further than 10 feet in with LoS just like Wifi 6 does. Wifi keeps promising better things then using technologies that effectively require direct coax links under a foot long or whatever insane test conditions they base things on now to achieve them. Just a hint to anyone who still has a spare PCIe 3.0 x16 slot in two computers and good memory bandwidth, if you're willing to go to the extreme non-trouble of running Cat 8 between machines, you can have a 40Gb/s RDMA over converged ethernet / Infiniband connection for ~$110 and not worry about where you're going to get $400 for a next gen WiFi router that will disappoint you and shame its ancestors. Or you can go up a bit and still keep under WiFi 7 prices and get 100GBASE (those are running $100 to $150 per card depending on model, datacenter stuff is using 400Gb so it's junk to them already) for the near-equal non-trouble of buying fiber with SR modules on both ends and running that instead of CAT8. Both of those things will run at their advertised speed if your computer will cope, which it almost certainly will if it's not a dual memory channel consumer chip, those lack the extra lanes required. The best thing I can say about 7 is that at least it wasn't 60Ghz like there was talk of. If being absorbed by drywall hurts just wait until your broadcast is absorbed by oxygen in the air, too.