Regarding The Deco BE11000 Mesh Router (Costco)
Despite its promising specifications, the TP-Link Deco BE11000 Mesh Router falls short in several critical areas.
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Connection Stability: One of the most significant issues is the frequent connection drops, including the inability to maintain stable connections with the Deco satellites. This undermines the core function of a mesh router.
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App and Satellite Indicators: Although the app often indicates that satellites are connected, the physical devices frequently show a red light, signaling a disconnect. This discrepancy causes confusion and frustration.
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Setup Experience: Despite extensive experience with WiFi and network setups, I found the initial setup process notably difficult. The device struggled to connect to the internet for initial setup, hindering account authentication and further configuration.
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Configuration Limitations: The router does not support setup or configuration through a web interface, requiring the use of a mobile app. This app is overly simplistic, lacking advanced settings such as band channel selections, which many users expect.
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Wired vs. Wireless Backhaul: Even with a Cat 6A cable connection, the satellites default to a wireless backhaul with no option to force a wired connection. This limitation can negatively impact network performance and reliability.
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Customer Service: TP-Link's customer service is notably unhelpful. The support provided is subpar, making resolving issues a cumbersome and time-consuming process.
Overall, the TP-Link Deco BE11000 Mesh Router may appeal to some due to its price. Still, it fails to meet the needs of most users, offering poor reliability, limited configuration options, and inadequate customer support.
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In terms of support I would like to investigate the claims of poor customer service. Reviewing your registered email I found only one case. That case did not have any troubleshooting or even a request for troubleshoot. It simply called out your displeasure with the product and that you were returning it. If you have a case or ticket number where support did take place please provide that so I can review and address any support concerns that might be present
If you still have the product and would like to troubleshoot we can help with that as well.
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@Carl , hello, I have the same BE11000 3 pkt from Costco.
One simple and big issue is the ethernet backhaul.
When I disconnect the ethernet cable from main Deco to satellite Deco, the wireless backhaul works fine. I can ping the satellite Deco backhaul.
As soon as I connect a cat-6 cable between the two, after few seconds the ping starts to be lost, and in APP I see the satellite Deco offline.
I think there is a loop-back issue in the LAN. Would be nice to have a FW that allow to use ethernet backhaul only, or any other fix to get the issue resolved.
Thanks.
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@Feng-L @Carl I am 100% having the exact issue with loop back. With any switch in the network that routes to other BE11000 satellites, I will get forced to wireless backhaul. What I experimented on for hours yesterday was network branching. The BE11000 only allows 3 branches with no splitting at a switch and none of the Decos must be within "good signal" of the main.
I had x5700s setup in 5 locations prior to the upgrade without issue. I set up the new ones and hot swapped the one by one. If I only plug in 3 satellites directly to the main I will get wired backhaul, but then I lose reliability and the cost of Ethernet I ran for all these. It seems that wireless backhaul is taking to hard of a priority along with a bug in backhaul.
Test- plug 2 Decos directly to the main to get wired backhaul. Then:
1. If I try to plug to a Tplink switch and branch it to two Decos, it drops all of this branch to wireless.
2. If I put a Deco in for the switch and try to branch the to both Decos, it will drop to all wireless on this branch.
3. if I plug in one of the Decos to the switch, it keep wired backhaul.
4. If I use a Deco to one of the Decos, it will drop to wireless for the first one in the chain. ( this one didn't make sense to me, which was my belief that if it's remotely close (25ft through walls) it will defer to wireless.
I have 1 Deco on wireless right now that has Ethernet to it, which to be honest is pretty stupid overall. I will wait for a fix, but without it in a couple months, these are going back and I'm switching platforms after being on Tplink for 4 generations now. I also converted a great deal of people over to Decos when they just worked. Why do all these companies release beta products? What happened to quality testing?
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I had same stability issues after upgrading. Try reverting to firmware 1.0.4.
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I am having a LOT of issues with the TP-Link router. If I go into "Allow Access" mode it drops a number of clients and i have to add them back in. My biggest issue is connectivity. I use a NAS to stream to all my Smart TVs via DLNA clients. The problem I am encountering is when I am streaming a video from my NAS to my Smart TV, the video will often pause or completely freeze. I have tried different combinations of QoS and Beam Forming and still the issues persist. I even switched to my Blu-Ray player to receive the stream and it still freezes. I never had this problem with any of my Netgear routers or Orbis. It is just that ALL of my Netgear routers die after two years of use (I went through three Orbi Mesh routers in six years)
Other issues:
My Solar Inverter keeps assigning itself to the bedroom router even though I assign it to connect to the closer Hallway router. I cannot delete any added devices from the QoS list. The Smartphone app is klunky and poorly designed. I cannot access the router via a web interface user a PC browser.
If anyone has any ideas how I can fix this problem please let me know. Also, how does one revert to an older firmware?
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@jon96789 First try turning off QoS.
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@jzchen I did disable QoS as well as Beam Forming. I did all combinations of them as well, i,e, beam forming off, QoS on, QoS off, Beam forming on... It did not help. Responsiveness of my DLNA clients was still slow with intermittent freezing and pauses. I reverted back to firmware 1.0.4 and everything works! No hiccups in streaming and the responsiveness is notably quicker. When I press chapter skips in the clients, the video instantly jumps to the next chapter. With 1.0.5, when skippinmg chapters, there is a noticeable lag of about a second or two before the client jumps to the next chapter.
To prevent going to 1.0.5, I disabled auto-updates.
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EDIT- I'm afraid I went to the wrong product pages...
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You're absolutely right on all points!
I've spent 4 days attempting to troubleshoot the problems with this network. All devices except my Macs randomly drop with strong signal and FIVE devices spread throughout the home. It was a nightmare setting up the IoT network and it's just plain unusable. Sonos was unusable. I removed and added every single Sonos device only to find that they were dropping constantly. I even removed mesh from those devices to no avail. Meross switches bouncing all day. HomePods were worthless. Ring cameras refused to even join the primary network. There were literally devices a few feet from one of the end points that would just not get through wifi setup or even stay connected if they did.
This is my first ever TPLink device ever. My previous Orbi was rock solid but long in the tooth. I just reverted back to previous firmware to see if that helps but the fact that TPLink is willing to put out firmware like this is really surprising. I'm waiting for my network to stabilize right now and wondering if it was just a firmware issue all along.
What a waste of days and days and days...
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@Mango3000 I am still encountering issues with the BE11000. Some clients cannot connect even though the devices are in the client list. I have to remove the devices from the client list and have them log back in. One iPhone was having real difficulty logging back in... Even though we know the password was correct, it keeps getting login failed. The DECO app also shows the client trying to login and asks if we want to share the password with the client and when we do, it still gets login failed errors... After about 20 login attempts, it finally accepted the password. I am thinking the Allow Access mode is the cause of the issues. When running in Block Access mode, most of the problems go away, but this mode is not as secure as the Allow Access Mode.
I just switched from Spectrum 200 mbps to FiOptics 1Gbps. The speed is noticeable when running Speedtest but TBH, we do not sense any improvement in data transfers. The only reason we switched was that the price for the 1Gbps was $10 cheaper than Spectrum's 200 mbps rate.
I queried TP-Link's customer support but they have not responded to all all of my issues yet.
I tried using firmware 1.0.5 again with the faster 1 Gbps speed and it did not make any difference, I still get random freezes and slow responses from theDLNA clients, making the router useless.
I read online that newer routers do not last too long, lasting from 2-5 years because of thermal issues running 24x7. If you open the Orbi router, there are a couple of humongous heat sinks occupying almost all of the interior space of the router. These chips must get super hot...
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Helpful: 8
Views: 3259
Replies: 34