Puddleglum wrote

TPLinkwifi.net is a CN registered domain, that  currently points to an Amazon AWS ip, 3.224.42.34.

This means that TP-Link China has full access to logs showing EVERY time you log into your router,

and WHAT your external IP is each time. And I know, from my own work in years past in network

security, just how much information can be often be accessed with nothing more than a

time-stamped IP address.

@Puddleglum as far as I can tell this is not what's actually happening.

If you are connected to your home network, the domain tplinkwifi.net resolves directly to your router's IP address. Since your router is usually also acting as DNS resolver for all devices inside your network, it can "intercept" the normal DNS resolving request and directly provide you the correct address. But your connection to the router is completely local. It is basically doing the same as the "workaround" with the hosts file.

If you are not connected to your home network however, the domain resolves to a webpage that points out that you are not connected to the local network and provides some instructions how to resolve the issue.

In the end, this just seems to be an attempt to provide a consistent way to access your router without having to know the actual IP address. I can't see anything malicious going on. After all, the router is your gateway and usually has unrestricted access to the internet anyway (unless you have a separate firewall between the router and your internet connection).

@Coriander While I also think this is the case, there is a real possibility TP-Link devices collect some information and send it to their servers. I mean, they could be collecting literally anything related to the router and info about connected devices without our knowledge. They are chinese company and China isn't exactly known as a country where privacy is respected.

  @BallistiX09 I have DNS over TLS on my android and DNS over HTTPS on laptops and computer. This redirection is very annoying and useless feature by TPLINK. If I go to the gateway IP then I want the interface to be available via the IP address, this useless redirection doesn't solve a single problem 

@Sunshine @Kevin_Z 

@user30 it's a router, so it's usually directly connected to the internet and could send all your data to chinese servers without redirecting the web interface or DNS interference. You probably wouldn't even notice.

If you are concerned about this, you should probably switch to a different brand. Especially for a device like a router, which is an integral part of the network and has unrestricted internet access.

This has been going on for over 3 years now.  They are never going to change it.  They obviously want as many people as possible to use their connection cloud service.  The fact that it redirects the first time and not right after is a clear indication that the tplinkwifi.net error page is an advertisment for them.