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Introduction
| At a glance | |
| Product | TP-LINK TL-WR1043ND Ultimate Wireless N Gigabit Router [Website] |
| Summary | Bargain-priced Gigabit-port 2.4 GHz N router based on Atheros chipset with FTP/UPnP USB drive sharing. |
| Pros | • Relatively inexpensive for a Gigabit four port router • In and outbound bandwidth limiting • Upgradeable antennas • WDS support |
| Cons | • No SMB drive sharing • Unimpressive wireless uplink performance • No Guest WLAN |
Typical Price: $44 Compare Prices Check Amazon |
If you’re thinking of purchasing a wireless router, the brand names most likely to come to mind would include Cisco/Linksys, D-Link and NETGEAR. But there’s a relative newcomer that is targeting budget-conscious consumers with feature-rich products at budget-friendly prices: TP-Link.
For this review, I’ll be looking at TP-LINK’sTL-TL-WR1043ND Ultimate Wireless N Gigabit Router. While the TP-LINK brand may not be a familiar household name, it does have limited distribution in U.S. retail outlets and a much broader online distribution. Click here to see where you can find TP-LINK branded products. Tim covered the design and performance of the TL-TL-WR1043ND in his article. Be sure to read it too for the whole story – it contains a lot of valuable content that I won’t be duplicating.
The image above shows the front panel of the TL-WR1043ND. If you like lots of indicator lights, this could be the device for you. There are indicators for: Power; system; Wireless Network; WAN; four LAN indicators and a so-called QSS indicator. TP-LINK has apparently coined their own term, Quick Secure Setup, for what the rest of us know as Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS). While I’m a big fan of front-panel status indicators, I was disappointed that the WAN and LAN indicators didn’t indicate the link connect speed. Nor is there any place in the browser-based management interface to indicate link speed on any of the ports. Many competitive routers use multi-color LEDs to indicate either a 10/100 or Gigabit connection.
Figure 1 shows the rear panel detail. While I was pleased to see that the ports were color-coded, unfortunately, neither the quick start guide, the easy setup wizard, nor the instruction manual took advantage of mentioning the port colors in the setup instructions. I recently reviewed the NETGEAR WNDR3800, and like the TL-WR1043ND, it also has color-coded ports. But NETGEAR took setup one step further by including a yellow “WAN” cable to correspond to the yellow WAN port, and even labeled both ends of the cable to help the consumer properly connect the device. Though it’s a small detail, in a market that’s increasingly becoming commoditized, attention to detail makes a difference.
Figure 1: TL-WR1043ND rear panel
Feature Summary
Before delving into the setup and user interface, here’s a summary of the TL-WR1043ND's features that I compiled from its data sheet and admin interface.
Routing
- Static and Dynamic IP, PPPoE , PPTP, L2TP and BigPond Cable WAN connections
- MTU Adjust
- DHCP Server, lease time setting, default domain and primary/secondary DNS
- DHCP Client list
- DHCP reservation
- Virtual Server entry for single or multiple ports with TCP, UDP or all protocols forwarded. Enable/disable for each entry. 10 preconfigured common service ports
- Port triggering – can set individual or range of incoming ports. 10 preconfigured common applications
- DMZ Host
- UPnP enable/disable with list of current UPnP applications, settings, protocols, internal port and status
- IPv4 Static Routes
- DDNS support for Dyndns (www.dyndns.org), Comexe (www.comexe.cn) and No-IP (www.no-ip.com)
Security
- SPI firewall enable/disable
- VPN Passthrough enable/disable for PPTP, L2TP and IPSec
- Application Layer Gateway enable/disable for FTP, TFPT, H323 and RTSP
- DoS (denial of service) enable/disable
- Enable UDP Flood filtering (with settable threshold)
- Enable TCP-SYN Flood attack filtering (with settable threshold)
- Ignore Ping Packet from WAN port
- Ignore Ping Packet from LAN port
- Limit/allow LAN-based PCs access to router UI
- Remote Management with user configurable port
- Internet access control - Rule based access control for host (domain name or IP address) and target lists(domain name or IP address) using user-defined schedules
- Enable/disable bandwidth control with user settable egress/ingress (upload/download) speeds.
- Bandwidth rules list based on IP address (or IP range), port range and protocol
Wireless features
- WEP, WPA / WPA2 Personal and Enterprise (RADIUS) support
- Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) support, pushbutton and PIN (called QSS – Quick Secure Setup by TP-Link)
- Auto and manual channel set
- Transmission rate set
- SSID broadcast enable/disable
- Enable/disable wireless
- Enable WDS Bridging
- Beacon period, RTS threshold, DTIM interval, Fragmentation Threshold adjusts
- Wireless client isolation (from each other)
- Wireless MAC address filtering (allow or deny based on MAC address)
- WMM disable
- Short GI disable
- Wireless modes: b-only, g-only, n-only, mixed b/g, mixed b/g/n (default)
- High / medium / low transmit power adjust
- Beacon period, RTS threshold, DTIM interval, Fragmentation Threshold adjusts
- Wireless client isolation (from each other)
- WMM disable
- Short GI disable
Despite the list above, there are some missing features that might make a big difference to you:
- IPv6 support
- Ability to populate DHCP reservation from existing client list
- HTTPS (secure) remote management
- Automatic internet bandwidth measurement
- Scheduled wireless enable/disable
- AP/router mode switch
- Guest network
User reviews
View all user reviewsAverage user rating from: 6 user(s)
NOTE! Please post product reviews from actual experience only.
Questions, review comments and opinions about products not based on actual use will not be published.
What a Deal
Bought two of these so that I could set one up in WDS bridge mode. The documentation is a little lacking for the inexperienced regarding some of the advanced features. Figured it out without any problems and got one of the routers set up as a bridge using the most up to date stock firmware. It has been stable so far. The range is much better than the router it's replacing, a Linksys 2500 modified with external antennas. I only have one device that can use the 5 Ghz channel so no big loss in going back to a single channel router, especially given the increased range and signal. The only thing I wish it had would be an access point mode with the stock firmware. I paid less than $45 each in Sept '12 making the two less than a lot of routers on the market.
FTP not the only way to share the USB storage
Perhaps the review above need to be updated. As far as I know, even with the original factory firmware (back in 2010), out of the box you could map a network drive from your Windows PC to the USB storage, so SMB sharing *IS* possible and supported.
I have been using this router since 2010 when I first bought it. Though it may need a reboot every month or so, it's not such a big deal to me as the reboot can be done from the web interface. Besides, I have a habit of rebooting my devices if they have been "on" too long in the first place so it's not a problem for me.
Other than that, it has been performing like a champ... no dropped connections or whatever.
Meh.
I have two of them, one at home, one at work, and they both need to be rebooted a few times a month. New firmware doesn't help. I guess they're cheap but I am tired of losing my internet connection and having to reboot.
Information required!
this is a very good router. no hikups in over 2.5 years.
very good home router
"Relatively inexpensive.." on the first page deserves word "relatively" to be removed. I threw away the recognized Netgear WNDR3700 router and got this instead. I'm much happier. Router runs nonstop trouble free. It's got much better signal around the whole flat, it can have high speed even when signal drops below -90dB. This is what I want, not the "impressive benchmarks" which in reality make up to terrible performance. Netgear, with its simple antennas, was ways weaker in giving me basic thing - wireless connection in my flat.
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