@valathen 

Good luck with the replacement.

I personally made my mind. I already lost all faith in TP-Link as a company. Had previously buy only Linksys products. TP-Link ones are less expensive. The again, you get what you paid for.

About the senior engineer's remarks i think no matter what the cause are, or if they are the same or different, the product must work. If it does not the, a FIX should be released.

I remember when i got my first xbox360 from microsoft. It had a nasty bug (hardware one) that made the device shutdown itself in the middle of a game. They took care of all the blame and fixed it with me paying them nothing. The also gave me a gift card for the hassle. That's a company I will be buying from in the future (as I did, the Xbox One :D )

Anyway. This should be a lesson to all to stay away from a company that does not take responsability for their mistakes. I don't ask that they make no mistakes but just to amend them!

Again, good look with the replacement.

@Sinap 

Hello

Thanks for the wishes! I haven't received any information regarding the RMA yet and I am fairly certain it is not going to fix the issue. I agree with your statement regarding owning up to the bugs. I have spent a good amount of time in going over the issue multiple times and I even alluded to the senior engineer regarding the complaints about the range extender in th forum. I wanted to put up a review in the vendor site (Brandsmart) to warn people not to buy this product but the vendor has removed the ability to put reviews there. 

This extender was supposed to be the best in class by one of the product review magazine and I learned a big lesson not to trust those. I am truely amazed how much little support this company provides in solving the issue faced by so many people. Thanks for your help and time.

Valathen. 

@valathen 

Recently I found an article about the pros of setting a fixed WiFi channel for an Access Point. I went a configure my primary Access Point and changed the Channel from "Auto Select" to a fixed channel. I use a WiFi analizer app to find out the least congested channel in my house. Then I went and gave the RE450 a try and it worked. It has been almost two days without an issue. I even restarted the reouter, turned the WiFi 5Ghz off on it and then turned it on again to see if the RE450 got the signal again and it did. Maybe you can give it a try.

And as I bought the extender from Amazon, I gave it a review informing the bad Tech support from TP-Link. I still think than one thing is a workaorund to an issue and another one is to completrly fix a bad design. Witch clearly is the case here, a bad design and not a faulty router. Wich happens to be another TP-Link product, so they are basically blaming themselves.

Hope this info can help you with your case.

@Sinap 

Hello Sinap

I tried the method you outlined - Fixing the Router wireless Tx channel to a particular one. I didn't do a measurement with the wifi signal analyzer but I fixed the Tx to a particular channel suggested by the support engineer. The unit worked for 2 days and then crashed. Let me know how your testing results are.

I am waiting for the RMA to arrive and I am sure the results will be no different. I am amazed that this company is able to sell this product with such a fundamental design flaw. I work in the wireless industry too- the first paradigm is if you have to crash do it silently and make sure you come back up to operational mode.In this case the unit crashes and the only remedy is to physically remove the unit and put it back on. I got a lemon - a very expensive blue led lamp :) Good business case for the company to make few thousand units with a crappy design and make a killing. I wish there are more recourses for us....

Thanks for the update.

@valathen OH! I see. Not time for celebration yet. I will report back if the unit keep connected for more than two days.

One thing is certain. No more TP-Link products. I've been buying TP-Link products from years. But when a companny doesn't care for their customers, I personally think is time to move on. I was a big fan of Linksys products. Never dissapointed me. Not once. I started to buy TP-Link products based on price only. But sometimes you get what you pay for.

Goot luck whit the replacement (if that ever comes one day)

@valathen It has been 4 days the RE450 extender is up and running.  I may have been lucky or maybe the configuration in my network has something to do. I do have a scheduled reboot on the reouter every night. (3:30 AM). Maybe is this the key variable making the difference.

@Sinap 

Hello Sinap

How is your extender working? Is it holding up. I wanted to provide an update after I received the RMA repalcement. I set it up last Saturday and for the last 8 days it seems to be up!. I don't know whether it reset but from my phone I am able to connect to the internet through the extender for the last one week. This has been the longenst the extender was up!

I don't know whether the RMA did something or I am just lucky. I have a laptop at home to which I usually remote desktop., If I attach the wireless connection in the laptop to the extender and if I try remote desktop to that laptop from my other computer, usually I can't remote desktop but if I open the laptop it seems to be connected to the extender. This might be some other problem. 

I don't know what to make out of the extender and no one in my home will connect to that because of the uncertainty. I will update in a few days about how it goes.

Valathen

@valathen That's great. Here at home the extender has been up and running for 15 days. Since my first report it has never went down. I has like 19 devices atached to it without any noticable issues.

The Remote Desktop issue i'm also sure is someting else. Or maybe is some kind of "sleep" that goes away when you use the computer to check if is conencted. Maybe cheching the Extender or the router to find out if the computer is connected before checking the actuall computer may help.

Then again, I understand your device is working correctly with no configuration changes on your network. That's good. I havent tested going back to an automatic channel seleccion in the router. I don't think I need to anyway.

Best regards

@Yngvai 

Thanks for the response, since all the issues I a have decided to sell 2 of the 3 extenders I have. If i try to use one it knocks my computer offline all the time. My house is not very big and I am not sure I even need them, but if I use the last extender that I have I will try the channel advice that was given. 

Thanks