no answers???? wth nice customer service!

@Siniestro 

Please anyone correct me if I am wrong, but here is my take on the "clients connected" issues.

Old fashioned signal/range extenders used to connect to the main router just like any other client device, without the main router actually knowing that the signal extender distributes the network connection to further clients that are connected to it. That's why the clients connected to the signal extender don't show up on your main router. (Well, at least not at the same time. The IP address under which the signal extender shows up on the router could actually change every time a new client device connects to the signal extender, because when a new device is connected, then it would ask the router's DHCP server to hand out a new IP address.)

For that reason techniques like WDS (and nowadays all the different variants of MESH) were developed. These techniques implement ways for the router and the extender device to talk to each other and exchange information about connected devices.

I have no insight in TP-Link's software, but my guess is that on the main configuration page you see all the clients that are actively connected to the router at the time you look at that page (or the last time you refreshed the page).

You connect a device and it shows up, you disconnect the device and it disappears.

On the other hand, what you see in the DHCP Client List under Advanced/Network is the list of active DHCP leases.
By default the lease time is set to 120 minutes (= 2 hours).
So, if you were to connect a new client device to the router, then the DHCP server would "lease" a new IP address to it for a period of 2 hours. Even if you disconnect the client device after 10 minutes, the device would still keep showing up in the DHCP Client List for another 1 hour 50 minutes until the 2 hours lease time is over.

hello @woozle i will answer as best as i can.

Old fashioned signal/range extenders used to connect to the main router...

that's WDS mode 1 that clones the mac of the repeater and if any clients connect to that repeater they will share the connection under the same name. (as far as i know) the thing is... i come from an old wr4300 connected the same way and yet the clients show no mater where they are connected. also, under advanced/dhcp it shows clients that are connected yet on the basic tab they don't show, and on the app it shows some clients that aren't even in the configuration site (main page)... like i said... i had an old wr4300 before this (AX50) and that one had more functionalities than this one and it coast less than half... i can't understand why tplink still has such a GREEN software to manage this type of router being that its one of the most expensive they have (at least here where i live). not even mention that i had my wr4300 with DDWRT that is a more mature and robust firmware but i can't put a custom firmware in the AX50 ........ also, i have the repeater configured to WDS 1 because "auto" and WDS 2 (that i what i need to cheeck WHO is connected to my network) doesn't work.

i mean, i have 3 networks and there are clientes that connect only to the repeaters but... i can't know who is connected.

@Siniestro 

Ok, in that case it appears the AX50 is the one that is missing the WDS mode that would be needed. Since the AX50 doesn't support any sort of MESH either, it looks like it is not really suited for anyone requiring range-extending via wireless.

Ivaylo wrote

I believe this thread's last post is a good explanation of what WDS1 and WDS2 are.

Sometimes these options are hidden, which forces the users to search for a workaround.

@Ivaylo the thing is... WDS 1 clones the connection and WDS 2 doesn't... but the AX50 doesn't support WDS 2 mode... unbelievably. 

@Siniestro 

I had the same issue with iOS devices and fixed by turning off Provate Address in the wifi setting in iOS, because I do not want the MAC Randomization anyway. I also turned off the Smart Connect on my AX-50 because it does not seem to do much.