@Ivaylo 

Where are you seeing this "End of Life" warning? I checked the US site (https://www.tp-link.com/us/support/download/archer-c2300/v1/) and also the Brazilian site (where I live and purchased it  - https://www.tp-link.com/br/support/download/archer-c2300/) and none is showing the End of Live message.

Anyway I have in fact already moved on -  I have already replaced the C2300 by a Synology RT2600ac. While this router was lauched more than 3 years ago, Synology keeps updating its firmware, not only with security patches but new features as well (such as WPA3 support). Something that TP-Link should do, at least for its mid-range/high-end routers.

I only hoped that TP-Link would habe a similar firmware support to its devices.

Anyway, lesson learned.In the future will only buy TP-Link devices that are supported by the OpenWRT community, since TP-Link firmware support seems to stop in one year or less.

@terziyski 

Yes, but even in AP mode this router keeps flooding the network with a DHCP request every 30 seconds. See below:

https://community.tp-link.com/en/home/forum/topic/105793

https://community.tp-link.com/en/home/forum/topic/156045

https://community.tp-link.com/en/home/forum/topic/183706

https://community.tp-link.com/en/home/forum/topic/98158

This issue was fixed in v2 but never in v1. This is clearly a firmware defect and by simply abandoning v1 with unfixed defects TP-Link is leaving a lot to be desired regarding the quality of its products (regardless if v1 is EOL now since this issue was first reported in 2017 when this was a current product).

I even tried to download the source code from TP-Link website (which is a modified version of OpenWRT) but it is not compilable since the drivers TP-Link uses are closed source and are missing from the source code package.

@terziyski 

Thanks, but I have already tried every possible solution I was able to find. I even tried decrypting the configuration file (see https://github.com/acc-/tplink-archer-c2300/wiki/Backup-Restore-config-files) and manually changed some internal configurations without success.

With this method (decrypting and changing the configuration file) I was able, for example, to configure the default gateway and DNS server which are not available in the access point mode in V1 (but they are in V2).

But I was unable to solve the DHCP issues. Some solutions does work temporarily but do not survive a reboot.

The only other solution I still have to try is to enable SSH root access and messing around the DHCPD configuration files  (I already have limited SSH access), but this would require a serial adapter (https://github.com/acc-/tplink-archer-c2300/wiki/Serial-UART and below) which I don't have.

Once again thanks for trying to help, but the right answer would be TP-Link to fix this issue and release a firmware update.

@terziyski by chance do you own a C2300 v2?

I am asking this because if so, I would like to ask a favor to export the config file.

With this I would be able do decript and compare the configuration files of a v1 and v2 to try to find out if there is any configuration I could change to fix the DHCP issue.

Be ware that wifi and router passwords are part of the configuration file, so if you or anyone here could do this, please before doing so change the passwords to something temporary before sharing the config file.

Thanks!

BTW, attached is the XML file from my C2300 v1 configured in Access Point mode (decrypted from the bin file and with passwords removed).

I've already searched for any obvious configurations to solve the DHCP flooding, but without success. Any suggestion is welcome!

@terziyski Right, even before reading your post that's how I am using C2300 now (as an access point but configured as a router).

Thanks!