@David-TP 

Hi David,

I see the deco device being used by two main categories of users.

First, the obvious target market of "not-technical people who just want a mesh network that works" which is, understandably, the main use-case. I truly believe that TP-Link has done excellent things here. The deco is an affordable, easy-to-use mesh solution that covers probably 99% of this market's needs.  For that, I do congratulate you.

The second market however is a bit different. These are technically minded people who want mesh networking at an affordable price. Or, with for people with wired backhaul like me, an intelligent AP package that can help client handoff between devices at an affordable price. These are people competent enough with networking to know what DHCP scopes are, can setup VLAN tags, manage switches, and host their own DNS servers. These are also the kind of people who are usually most active on discussions forums like this because they a) know what to ask for and b) don't mind arguing with complete strangers about tech things.  Basically, a very vocal minority of your use base who, because they are very vocal on other forums and review websites, can probably negatively affect your overall sales a bit.

Anyway, this second market is most likely willing to saccrifice some "ease of use" and "black-box-features" for more control. Let's look at your list of features that would be lost in AP mode.

• parental control
  • This is not actually as useful as it sounds to those of us who understand tech. The deco does not seem to distinguish traffic type, so www(dot)msfconnecttest(dot)com shows up under "internet time" just like youtube does. If Windows is downloading a large update in the background off-hours, that counts against time limits set for that device. Much better to use an on-device manager that tracks actual user logged-in time.
  • Safe search enforcement, website blocking, content moderation, etc. If someone wants to use the deco in AP mode, they can easily setup their own FW device or DNS server to do the same thing. No need for the deco to handle it.  And actually, many of those network appliances that specialize in these things work better when they are also the DHCP servers because you can then tie those parental controls to MAC addresses instead of relying on IP assignment by another device.
• AntiVirus
  • Same thing as my second point above on the parental controls. I usually run a Sophos XG home install that probably does a better job of packet inspection than the deco does. This isn't a knock on the deco... it's just that the sophos device is a dedicated FW and that's what it's purpose built to do.
• QOS
  • Anyone running deco as an AP already has another router. If they want QOS, that's the place they will configure it.

Basically, by enabling the VLAN tagging in AP mode, all of these techy-type people will be able to go do what they like to do... tinker.

And David, I'll even one-up this.  Here is a screen-shot of the wireless configuration for a TP-Link TL-WA901ND V3 300mbs wireless N access point released 7 years ago.

If you guys could add multi-ssid with vlans to the deco in AP mode? Wow. You would absolutely kill the competition for having the absolute best mesh-capable AP package on the market for people like me. You would basically target both markets mentioned above with the same setup. Want ease of use with dummy-proof setup? Done already. Want to drop some of that hand-holding and use the deco for the absolute best bang-for-the-buck mesh capable AP setup in your existing managed network? Done.

Anyway, that's my take. Thanks for listening.

Gary

  @David-TP 

Just a follow-up on the above. Many of us more advanced users have networks that might look something like this...

In the above network, the go-to option is one of the prosumer vendors. However, their price point is what's driving lots of people towards your deco units. If you can convince whoever is in charge of deco feature development to give the deco the same functionality as a 7 year old TP-Link access point then you would absolutely crush the competition on this.

Again, my opinion so take it with however many grains of salt you deem necessary.

Thanks,

Gary

@David-TP I would personally love the ability to create additional SSIDs on the router that do nothing but bridge to a VLAN while providing an internet gateway to users if operating in router mode.

The most disappointing thing about the whole topic is that TP-LINK apparently decided to ignore those 100 threads about the VLAN issue or let's say request. I haven't seen a single reply on this.