Introduction

At a glance | |
Product | TP-LINK Ultimate Wireless N Gigabit Router (TL-WR1043ND) [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: $307 Buy From 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