TP-Link RE580D AC1900 Dual Band Wi-Fi Range Extender

Product extremely good. Carrie's wifi to all corners of the house. Probably best wifi extender available in market

Good Product.

While I used to love TP-LINK products, I stopped buying them after my miserable experience a few years ago with an Archer C7 V2 -- it was lacking power output, signal range, and compatibility with other brands of devices. After much research, I was pleasantly surprised that this device had all the features that I was seeking to replace my A/V media bridge. Since it was relatively inexpensive compared to the other brands on Amazon and Google shopping, I took a chance.This is not my first WiFi extender... I own numerous 802.11n range extender devices by Netgear and Belkin, as well as 802.11ac devices by Linksys and Edimax. While I have upgraded my routers and access points for more capacity over the years, these neglected range extenders have been a hodge-podge of devices that I mostly use as media bridges nowadays. While most new 802.11ac WiFi extenders are expensive, I found this one at less than 60USD. It has the ability to direct all extender traffic to a specific band (2.4G/5G) which is then wirelessly connected to your router or access point... this feature is called "FastLane" on Netgear devices and "CrossBand" on Linksys devices. This device also lets you choose to which band your attached ethernet devices' traffic is bound if you are attached to both bands on your router/access point. It also has automatic DHCP detection, which makes setup easy when the device is not yet installed or you have changed your WiFi network ID or access password.While it does not have USB (unlike some of the similar Netgear devices), it does have five Gigabit Ethernet ports, three detachable antennae, an LED off switch, a reset button, a recessed factory reset button (need to use a paperclip) and an on/off switch. While it could be setup with a web browser on a phone, an ethernet-cabled device is required for firmware updates and for disabling the WiFi repeating features. It does not support WPS and I consider this a feature as WPS has many security issues.Installation was relatively painless -- when logging on for the first time, it started the wizard auto-magically. Although I had to go back and change some settings afterwards, the wizard will be of great assistance to non-technical users. The signal strength in this setup location was poorer than other devices including other network extenders. After configuring all settings, I backed up the config to my laptop and then I downloaded newer firmware from the website (to address the KRACK vulnerabilities of WPA2), and upgraded it. (NOTE: This latest update is dated 2017, so updates seem rare and this can be a two-edged sword.) This went well, and I did not even need to restore my backup after verifying the config. After the update, the 5G signal strength improved, but still did not match other devices in this location. While I did not use the range extension features so I cannot comment on those, I would err on the side of caution though as signal strength and device compatibility were my previous issues with the TP-LINK Archer C7 V2.I moved the extender to its final destination... after installing the vertical stand. While the unit's rear layout for ports, power and option buttons is workable for horizontal usage, when positioned vertically one antenna is at the very bottom (bad for cable management), with power and option buttons before the next antenna (bad for cable management), followed by ethernet ports and finally the last antenna on the top. It will work, but be careful as the antennae will act like hooks and catch your power and ethernet cables.While advanced features such as device whitelists and blacklists are available, some expert users may want more features such as the ability to change the extended network passwords. You can change the names, but the passwords must match the original network. Also, the current version of the firmware does not allow you to choose the channels of the "crossband"/"fastlane"-like extended networks, so I have not tested it since the update. Also note that this is not a dual-mode device: it only extends WiFi to ethernet devices and optionally extends a WiFi signal to another WiFi network name -- nothing else.Overall, it is an attractive device which some nice touches and extra features that I did not have on my other network extenders. The major improvements that could be made (IMHO) are: (1) the port/power/button layout on the back of the device; (2) the signal strength; and, (3) the firmware update frequency.My A/V center seems to be more responsive now, streaming starts more quickly and online catalogue selection is more responsive... and as with all media hubs, placing all ethernet-capable devices on the device will improve WiFi speeds as fewer individual devices are trying to share WiFi bandwidth and airtime. Afterall, 1/4 of a pie is much larger than 1/8 of a pie.So far so good as a Media Bridge upgrade, but I will update if anything changes...I can safely recommend this particular TP-Link product for the average user without many reservations.Updated Notes:This is a network extender which does what it claims... it extends a WiFi connection by either ethernet or WiFi. If you are looking for an access point (which provides an WiFi signal from an ethernet connection) or for a mesh system (which is a mix) then this will NOT fit the bill. Most network extenders do not take an ethernet port and turn it into WiFi. Note that some routers also have an access point mode, but not many are network extenders nor mesh devices as these are special and more pricey.I am still using it daily for my family room media center without many issues. I have had to reboot it occasionally, but that maybe due to local power fluctuations or network disruptions. It typically goes for months without incident.

Pros: Nice appearance Easy setup Has timer to turn off blinding status lights so you can sleepCons: Creates RF interference zones that kill Wi-Fi performance Blinding status lights Mounting holes permit only vertical installation, interferes with antenna positioning Log is timestamped with time since reboot, no way to tell when something actually happenedThis product looks good in theory, but produces very poor real-world results. I installed this in a 3200 square foot two story house. The cable guys installed the modem on the second floor at the right end of the house. Even with a good router, the Mac on the first floor at the left end of the house has weak coverage. So, I bought this RE580D range extender to provide coverage for the Mac, as well as all my other wireless toys.The RE580D has five blindingly bright blue LED's for power, Ethernet, range extender (RE), and for the 2.4 and 5 GHz networks. You can literally read the quick install guide from twenty feet away in an otherwise pitch dark room by their light reflected off the ceiling. They are actually kind of ridiculous.The setup was quick and easy, and at first the result were great. I was able to get the cable modem's full bandwidth of 60 Mbps down to the Mac. I had never been able to get more about 10 Mbps before this, and more often it was in the 4 Mbps range. So this looked really good. Then I started adding more devices and the problems started. We have six IOS, two OS/X, and three Android WiFi devices. Once I started connecting them, strange things started happening.An hour or so after I configured all the wireless devices to use the new RE, I noticed that the portables were constantly hunting between the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz networks and between the AP's. They could not keep a connection, would not stream YouTube, and couldn't reliably load even relatively clean pages like the Google search page. A little later I checked the RE580D and found that the RE, 2.4, and 5GHz lights were out and that all devices were connected to the main router. Their performance was still very poor, though. I found through two weeks of intensive troubleshooting that whenever the RE580D was on, the performance of my Wi-Fi devices was awful, with one exception. If I turned off everything in the house except for the router, the RE580D, and the Mac, it still worked great. Bring any of the other devices online, and performance suffered on all of them, including the Mac.I had acceptable power levels from the router at the RE580D, the RE light was never orange indicating an inadequate signal level. It was always either blue or off. I measured the signal levels and the 2.4 GHz was around -65 dBm and 5 GHz was around -70 dBm at the RE. Those are perfectly adequate to operate the RE580D. The RE provided great signal strength all over the house, but the performance was far worse than the original router’s, even at the Mac.The RE's logs showed hundreds of disconnects per day per device. Nothing could stay connected to it for more than a few minutes. The RE580D could not even maintain its own connection to the router. When it lost that, it turned off the three lights and it had to be rebooted to get them back on. It never went more than a couple of days without requiring a reboot, and that was with no one at home during the day. When the house was occupied and the Wi-Fi devices in use, it rarely stayed up for more than a couple of hours. Even "up" is a relative term here. I don't consider a connection that can't load Google to be "up". I am defining "up" as having all five lights lit.I worked with their tech support for about a week and they gave up and suggested I return the unit for exchange. I gave up and just returned it for refund.The RE580D has a fundamental design problem the makes it almost useless in real world deployments - it uses the same channel as the primary router to extend the network. I had expected that it would function as a normal dual frequency network (DFN) repeater and extend the network on a separate (secondary) channel to avoid interfering with the primary channel from the router. That would have worked, but they opted to try for a single frequency design, and they fell far short of making a usable product. While it is possible to design a functional single frequency network (SFN), the radios must be locked to a master clock so that they all operate synchronously to ensure that no two transmitters are sending the same time. That is not possible on inexpensive consumer Wi-Fi radios.What they wanted was a single frequency repeater, what they built was a Wi-Fi jammer. When I started looking at the single quality, I found that it was abysmal. The radios were stepping all over each other. Even when the device was nominally down, that is, the three RF status lights were off, it kept its radios powered up and transmitting so that there was no lessening of the interference.I may have had excellent signal strength, but the signal quality as expressed by the signal to noise ratio was very low. The networks had very high packet loss and bit error rates because the undisciplined transmitters were essentially jamming each other.Instead of creating an expanded network, the RE580D created an overlapped dead zone between itself and the primary router where no device could maintain a connection to either network for more than a few minutes. The interference created by the RE580D itself made using Wi-Fi in this zone nearly impossible.The only place I could still get decent Wi-Fi service was in the same room as the router. That was not true for the room where the RE580D was – the unit also jams itself because it is using that same channel for backhaul.The only way this device will work is if all the devices connected to it are far enough away from the main router that there is minimal interference between the two radios. The signal strength from the primary router at the RE-connected devices should not exceed about -90 dBm. The RE then needs to be about 30-40 dB above that at the connected devices. Those devices then have to stay right where they are and not roam around into any area where the signals from the RE and router overlap and where either would be strong enough to use. This is not a real-world home use scenario. iPads and iPhones and MacBooks tend to move around.So, the RE580D went back to Amazon and I re-did this the right way – I created a Wi-Fi bridge using a spare router, then hooked another spare router to that and configured that one to use a different channel. Now I have full-house coverage without self-jamming.

After sieving through lots of reviews, I bought the TP-Link AC1900 wifi extender to upgrade from a Hawking Technology 2.4 GHz wifi extender. Since I upgraded my wireless router to an AC model, I wanted to be able to extend both my 2.4 GHz and less crowded 5 GHz networks. The Hawking worked well, but was a bit underpowered to transmiit a strong signal to the back corner of my backyard, about 40 feet away and through one wall.Setup was tirivial. Plug in the extender within range of your wireless router, then log into the extender by connecting to its setup SSID and using the supplied default admin credentials. You will need a wifi-enabled device to do this: a laptop, tablet, or phone with a browser, I used a laptop computer. Once logged into the web interface, choose a username and password to replace the default credentials, then enable either your 2.4 Ghz network, 5 Ghz network, or both. You can choose to echo your current SSIDs or choose new ones. I chose new ones so devices in my home, like Chromecast, would not accidentially access the extender rather than the primary router by adding "_ext" to the existing SSID. This way, you have to intentionally connect to the extended network when necessary, otherwise you stay on the faster direct wifi connection. When configurations is done, you reboot the extender from the web interface, and you are all set to go. Relocate the extender to a location that receives good wifi input (there is a blue LED to tell you if your location is OK) and arrange your antennas appropriately. (You want the antennnas perpindicular to the directions you wish to have coverage.) That's it. There is also a nice phone app to access the extender directly after it is set up. You can use the app to change the SSIDs or passwords, but not much more. To start over, you need to reset the extender and use the setup SSID, or log into it using a patch cable.I can get very usable 5 GHz and 2.4 Ghz coverage throughout my backyard, up to 40 feet away and through one wall. Since my wifi router is located at near the front wall of my home on the 2nd floor, the extender is necessary to get good coverage at ground level in the back yard. If you need good coverage, don't waste time with a small, low-power extender. You will need an extender witih a more powerful radio to get extended coverage. This unit has a stronger transmitter, and of course has the size to match. However, it can stand up vertically to save space. Mine is on a shelf in a laundry room.This is a two-channel extender. When you are on the extended 5G network, you will get nearly full 2.4 Ghz network speeds. (The 2.4 GHz radio is being used to communicate with your wireless router, and the 5 GHz radio takes care of communicating with your device, minimizing overhead.) When you are on the 2.4 GHz extended network, you will get no more than about half of the 2.4 GHz network speed, because the same radio has to relay information from your wireless router to the extender and then to your device. Here are my real-world examples of download speeds: 5G network (direct): 25 Mbps; 2.4G network (direct): 20 Mbps; 5G network (extended): 20 Mbps; 2.4G network (extended): 10 Mbps. My ISP is capped at 20-25 Mbps, so my 5G network is not that much faster than my 2.4G network, but it has less interference from neighbors. If possible, connect to your 5G extended network for the best performance, but of course 5G has less range and poorer penetration of obstacles. The radios are pretty strong, though.

The range extender itself feels like a well built product. The WIFI performance works very well. My only quirk with this product thus far is that the instruction manual isn't very detailed since they focus on "easy to setup".While I agree that this is very easy to get up and running for use as a Wi-Fi extender, setting up for use with the gigabit ethernet ports was a different story and the manual did not go into any specifics for using the gigabit ethernet ports.Granted, my purpose for purchasing this product in the first place was to wire up the PS4 gaming console in order to provide more stability to my wireless connection. In the console's current location, the wireless connection is very unstable and sometimes has difficulty connecting. Another reason was to be able to take advantage of the fast wireless AC connection provided by the router which is not supported by the PS4's built in wireless card.Following the "easy setup guide", by default you connect the range extender to both your existing wireless 2.4GHz connection and your existing wireless 5GHz connection (if supported by your router). This is all fine as the range extender will then extend both signals. In the manual it states that if you are to use the gigabit ethernet ports, they will automatically connect through the 5GHz wireless connection by default. This can be switched to use the 2.4GHz connection as well.With the PS4 console though, whenever I tried to connect to the internet using the LAN cable connected to the gigabit ethernet port on the range extender, the console would never be able to detect any sort of internet connection. I would say I'm a pretty tech savvy person, but I spent 2 nights trying to get this LAN connection to work on 2 different PS4 consoles, various ethernet cables and different internet settings such as static IP, various DNS settings, etc. all with no avail.After all of this frustration, the thought occurred to me to try and setup the range extender without connecting it to the 2.4GHz WIFI connection and ONLY use the 5GHz WIFI connection. To my surprise, as soon as I made this change, both PS4 consoles detected internet connections right away without any problems. This was NOT documented anywhere in the manuals and it was just out of luck that I thought to try this out and it worked. I don't know if this is only a problem specific to the Playstation 4 console or a fluke on the product that I received, but if you are having problems as described above with other game consoles or devices, try the solution I described above.With that said, so far the range extender appears to be performing well and providing stable internet connection to my devices.Would've given 5 stars if the setup manuals were better written.

First, let me preface and say that I am no networking expert. All I know is that I needed something for my house that can extend WiFi coverage. Yes, this unit may be overkill but it's working so far and working well.My setup:AT&T Uverse internet 45 mbps serviceTP-LINK Archer C7 AC1750 router TP-LINK Archer C7 AC1750 Dual Band Wireless AC Gigabit Router, 2.4GHz 450Mbps+5Ghz 1300Mbps, 2 USB Ports, IPv6, Guest Network All my devices are connected to the router even though AT&T provided a modem/router combo.I moved from a smaller space using Comcast service with the Archer C7 and it worked wonders. Moved to a larger home, had to settle for AT&T Uverse but still using the same router since all my devices were connected to it. Even though the router is located in a central location, most of my mobile devices were having trouble with signal strength at the far reaches of the house. Not a big deal as we can move with mobile devices, plop down on a couch closer to the router and away we go. That all changed when I purchased a new TV for the family room.Vizio M70-C3 was installed for the main entertainment space. They are equipped with both N and AC networking. I connected both N and AC to the router but it struggled to maintain decent stream on Netflix and other services. I upgraded service for 4k but that was a waste of money since we were lucky to get 1080p, mostly 720 or 480. Disconnected from router and tried connect directly to ATT provided modem/router; no difference.Thought about upgrading router but was worried that we'd still struggle with the far reaches through walls and floors. This extender was purchased, installed and TV connected to the AC signal. Thought that the extender would provide better flexibility. The result? Constant 4k (2160 says the TV) without a hitch. Load times on Netflix 4k shows is about 3 seconds compared to 10. We never got 4k using the old router or ATT router. Shows would immediately drop to 1080 or less after load, mostly 720, some fuzz, occasional drop offs. 7 episodes of Daredevil and 3 episodes of Jessica Jones, all 10 episodes maintained 4k stream without a hitch on the extender AC. What a difference!I don't know all the ins and outs when it comes to wireless networking. I placed the extender closer to the weak spots (where my TV is) but where my mobile devices still had a strong signal.Setup was fairly easy. Plug in the extender, push power button, connect the laptop to the device signal, open browser, type in address, use default login (admin, admin) and follow instructions. You can set up both N and AC signals without having to connect to each. Just connect to one and work through set up for both.I will say that I had to reset the router after my first set up. I didn't rename the extender's signals at first so the signal names were identical. I couldn't tell if the signal was coming from the router or the extender. Pushed the reset, redid the setup, put an Re (for repeat) in front of the original names and all set. TP-LINK Archer C7 AC1750 Dual Band Wireless AC Gigabit Router, 2.4GHz 450Mbps+5Ghz 1300Mbps, 2 USB Ports, IPv6, Guest Network