@Npallavi 

COVID much?  
 

supply chain shortage?

where were you the past 4 years?

under a rock?

  @Npallavi 

Bruh, just trolling you... relax 

In all seriousness, though, I've worked for TP-Links competitor.  TP-Link and or anyone else in this game will do what they want to do.  Regardless of how much you all post and try to smear them.  Life moves on.  You all are wasting your breath here.  Eat the cost and move on and or move on to another vendor.  Point Blank Period.  

You're sitting behind a keyboard venting your frustration, I get it.  It will do nothing.  Clive can't do anything about this.  Like Clive is going to print this thread out, march up to the CEO's desk, and demand change.  

Bruh, the CEO of the vendor I worked for would tell you go F yourself and probably fire you.  

Let's be realistic here.  A multi-billion $$ company can give 2 flips about this thread.  Again, they're going to do what they're going to do regardless.  

  @NinjaMonkey 

I 100% agree with you... and completely understand. 

I switched from 2 vendors to Omada since 2020 due to frustrations.  I have my personal likes about omada, I'm willing to accept the dislikes to continue with it.  No vendor will be perfect.  Not saying you all said that, but I'm just saying.  

Personally, do I think TP-Link has had some hiccups, yes, they have.  I think I associate hiccups with slow firmware releases.  Which is my own personal issue for being impatient. I know how timelines works for Devs and fixes, been there and done that.  

Engenuis, GrandStream, UI all have HAD and or currently having a rocky road.  It happens, it's the name of the game.  Cisco even has had a bumpy road with their SMB line.  Just recently, within the last 4 years.  They dropped support on all their SMB router, of which a few were less than a 1–2 years old.  Poof gone!  Questionable releases on the Cisco SMB APs... And they're the big dogs.  

With that said, I can't hold TP-Link to a higher standard when the BIG DOG in the game does it too.  Every one else does it too.  You just have to pick how much crazy you want to put up with. 

Hi @dsj 

Thanks for posting in our business forum.

dsj wrote

  @Clive_A

Clive_A wrote

Hello @Npallavi 

Do you use iOS? Android? Windows?

So iOS17 stopped supporting iPhone X and the previous gen because of hardware limits.

Android stopped supporting 32-bit apps because of system design and migrating to better hardware 64-bit would be the choice.

Windows 10 Ver 22H2 will be the last upgrade of Windows 10 (in 2022) and MS will stop providing any security patches and bug fixes by 2025.

 

Is there any possibility of revamping the latest system to adapt to the old hardware? Yes. Everything's possible. Is it worth all the effort to optimize and adapt iOS17 to work smoothly on iPhone X or previous models even if the hardware may not support them well? Same applies to other systems. If the new features are gonna take many hardware resources and the old hardware cannot support them well, why do you push it? You are free to adjust the codes yourself by voiding the warranty to make it better if you can code them into a better version.

 

TP-Link's handling of the ER605 V1 product and its customers for the entire product's lifespan has been downright embarrassing. Continuing to acknowledge their missteps with this product or offer any apology/humility/recourse puts into question those customers' future trust and investment in the platform.

 

It's hard to pinpoint the exact hardware problem, but the main limitation is that ER605 V1 is stuck on Linux Kernel 3.x (which means an older OpenWrt and TP-Link firmware base). The ER605 V2 and later products are on Linux Kernel 4.x (with slightly newer OpenWrt and the in development TP-Link firmware base). It would be nice for TP-Link to demonstrate some transparency and openly acknowledge this problem (or whatever significant hardware shortfall the ER605 V1 has) so that customers can better understand the reasons to leave it behind and that the shortcomings may not have been known or was overlooked during hardware selection in the pre-2020 years.

Some details are here: https://community.tp-link.com/en/business/forum/topic/582922

 

1. Early adopters of the ER605 V1 had to USE very buggy firmware and REPORT/WORKAROUND many issues to patiently let TP-Link IMPROVE the firmware over time - all of this work and customer collaboration resulted in better future firmware for the ER605 V2 and all other ongoing newer router models.
2. While hardware upgrades are necessary over time, people are right to point out the short and abrupt lifespan of the ER605 V1 for what is marketed as an SMB product.
   The warranty for ER605 V1 is advertised as "Limited Lifetime" in both the old and new warranty language which I don't think anyone would interpret as 3 years or less. I had personally assumed around 5-7 years since lifetime can never actually be indefinite.

   https://www.tp-link.com/us/support/faq/3698/

   https://www.tp-link.com/us/support/replacement-warranty/

3. The examples above of other industry hardware upgrades/lifecycles comes off as out of touch or uninformed since those products were all better and longer supported than the ER605 V1.
   iPhone XS released on 9/21/2018 is still supported in iOS 17 released on 9/18/2023 (5 years)
   Windows 10 released on 7/29/2015 was feature supported until 10/18/2022 (22H2 - 7 years) and security supported until 10/14/2025 (10 years)
   Google required Android apps to include a 32-bit version starting from August 2019. Google/Android still supports 32-bit apps today (4 years). They are starting to release 64-bit only images for some phone models but it is still not fully rolled out with the recent Android 14 and it has been already 4 years of support/notice of their intent to end 32-bit.

I explained the reason why ER605 was limited on the forum before. To be more specific than just a "hardware limit", it is not enough hardware resources to maintain or keep the services up.

You should understand that every employee is required to sign the NDA with your employer. Not everything I know can be told on the forum.

Like the link you posted. We don't silence people when they dismantle our product. Even if you posted every hardware specs, we don't have to.

1. ER605 was originally called R605 which we were not part of the Omada. Omada SDN(different from Omada) was almost aborted. At that time, the whole system was a WIFI solution. No gateway or switch is involved.

If you can understand what I am trying to say.

2. Then people are really into the SDN concept and we get more and more models and add more features to compete in the market.

Also, note that the lifetime warranty has been changed recently. The subject of the limited lifetime warranty has been changed.

I don't manage the technical support team anymore so I am not sure how the warranty works afterwards. But it did change and I was CC-ed when they discussed the warranty policy change from lifetime to limited time. 

3. The hardware determines how long the software lifespan. So the ER605 V1 is quite weak for now when the controller is added with more and more features.

iPhone XS with iOS17, does it work flawlessly like the previous system? As far as I can tell, that's the reason why I changed my last iPhone. My second to last iPhone was iPhone X, the system does not work well and I regret I upgraded the system to iOS16.

That might be not a proper way to say the WindowsOS. It does not add that many new features and it is easy to upgrade DIY or add RAM to the Win-based PC except for LDDR RAM. Consider the macOS? Every new macOS would increasingly eat the hardware resources. I also have an entry-level MacBook Air 2018 with new macOS12 (Monterey). Basically, the system eats the whole system.

If it eats the system resources, you basically cannot run anything well. That would be a problem. So, you accept this? I iterated this many times before. It runs out of resources and cannot be added with new features.

This is the ER7206, its big brother was later released with better hardware specs and the last update to the V1.4.0 increased that amount of firmware size. ER7206 and ER605 1.3.0 firmware was basically the same in features update. Here's the question, is the ER605 V1 capable of running that many new features on V1.4.0? What if, if we add it without any stability or hardware consideration, ER605 V1 becomes so slow to respond or unstable, who's to blame?

Hi @NinjaMonkey 

NinjaMonkey wrote

  @Clive_A  Thank you for the detailed reply, it is very insightful into the problem, which seems to be the common low flash / lor ram reason.

while the 605v1 has 16MB flash, the 7206 has 8 times more. together with 4x RAM size as well. (according to some wiki sites)

so adding features to the 7206 is easier than the 605v1, it makes sense.

 

but the bigger sense of abandonment by 605v1 users is felt not by lack of new features like ids/ips/wireguard, but by "refusal" to fix existing bugs before sending the product to the graveyard.

as small example, DDNS fix, tcp-syn log fix, dhcp options 66,67 fix, these are not new features that will require flash space or ram to fix,

the current situation is that those issues will remain open forever, because it was retired due to low flash... 

 

its easy to accept lack of DPI+IDS+IPS+LACL on a 16MB flash device, but it is hard to digest lack of fixes for the same reason.

 

the common user would expect that a device is bug-free before it gets EOL/EOS/retired, as much as possible..

 

DDNS fix, what do you mean? I recall that you talked about this once before and V1 supports custom DDNS and can sync correctly. What would be the issue? I can do the test if you let me know the steps to reproduce the issue.

TCP-SYN log, which is not a bug in our opinion. What do you expect it to be? We remove this log? If remove the logs, that means we need to apply this to the controller and will affect all other models. Or any better ideas?

DHCP Option has been answered under the thread of the request. It is not sure if this one will be available on V1.