@Riley_S

Thanks, Riley.  The 64 limit for the AX would work for  today but it won't work for long.  I have many CCTV cameras ln my network as well as networked home automation devices.  As I mentioned in the OP, I have 45 devices connected at the moment, but  not everything is turned on.  There's probably between 10 and 15 more that aren't turned on. 

 

I built my home automation system 5 years ago using zigbee as my primary/preferred protocol but finding zigbee devices is getting more and more difficult.  As I have to replace existing devices or add new, even just light bulbs, the number of devices on the network is going to escalate quickly.  I can see it going over 128 inside of a year or two.

 

In most cases, but not all, there is the option to use fixed IP addresses, configured on the device.  That's a real pain though.  It's much easier if all of the address management is in one place.   Can you imagine the work it would take to change the mapping scheme one device at a time? 

 

I recently had to move a couple of dozen network devices from another residence because the place is being demolished and a new home built in it's place.  Since I wanted to use them in my other home, I was able to just drop most of those devices on the other network without issues because they're all configured to use DHCP.  The network they came from uses 192.168.87.*.  The network they went to uses 192.168.1.*.  Without DHCP, I would have had to set up a separate network, change my PC adapter to use the 192.168.1.87 addresses, change all of those moved devices one at a time, and then restore the connection on my PC.  With DHCP, all of the moved devices worked when I plugged them in. 

 

All I had to do, technically optional just for this move, was configure the address reservations.  It was in configuring them for address reservations in the router when I came across this 32 reservation limit.

 

So, I appreciate you asking how many would be enough.  Ideally, the limit would match the scope of the subnet mask.  For most home networks, that's going to be 254 devices.  It is possible that some home networks use a CIDR larger than 24 (smaller number, larger network) that would have thousands of potential hosts so it may not be practical, from a memory perspective, for a home network router to allow every potential host regardless of network size but, even trying to understand from TP-Link's perspective, allowing 255 reservations would cover most home networks, I believe, for the next few years. 

 

As home automation and IoT grows, software vendors, networking such as routers, and device manufacturers, will have to partner to come up with a strategy that keeps things working reliably and easily.  Old technical folks like me, totally used to doing DHCP reservations and using protocols and technology from the 60s, are going to have to adapt and accept that we won't necessarily have the control, at least to the degree we have had in the past, over how our devices find each other. 

 

For now, I'd just  like to get to 128 or even 254 reservations.  I did see a thread on NetGear's community site about a user who ran into a limit at 114 reservations.  Netgear support took the thread private but it appeared that they saw that as a bug and that the limit should have been more than 113.  I only point that out to show that other vendors are working to solve this as well.  Hopefully TP-Link can do something, too.  I don't expect you'll patch my decade old C50 but I'll take what I can get and be happy to buy a new TP-Link router, if needed, but not an AX for 64 addresses; it's just too few and I'll be out of room too soon.

 

Thanks.

Riley, any updates on this? Were you able to get the limit for the BE series routers? I'm pretty anxious to get a new router coming.

  @Riley_S 

  @Riley_S, I purchased a new AX1500 from Amazon.  I don't know if that's even a real current product for TP-Link but it was new sold by Amazon, themselves.  I know it's not the same as a $400+ BE but, other than some good basic features, I don't need a $400 router, or even a $250 rou ter - so this AX1500 (almost) works for me.

 

I tried to submit some feedback on your website but it wanted to talk to me in Romanian which is really wierd since even my location would say Sweden (due to VPN) and I'm actually in the US.  And no option to select a country.  But the translate page got me through posting the message but it failed on send with a messge of only "send failed".

 

So, long story long, I came here to add the feedback to this thread since the feedback is still about address reservation shortcomings (sorry; I meant to say: opportunities) in TP-Link routers.  To save a bunch more typing, I'll copy/paste what I tried to send to your feedback system:

 

In my old Archer C50, I could reserve any address I chose, not just those in the DHCP range.  I just bought a new AX1500, (I know it's still an old product but I just purchased it brand new from Amazon because I don't need a $400 BE router). 

 

In my new router, I can only reserve addresses in the DHCP range.  What I want is for all of my devices to use DHCP but those that have reservations are grouped in various blocks of IP addresses while the range of addresses leased by DHCP is a different block.  That way I can easily see which devices don't have reservations; anything in the DHCP lease range is getting the address from DHCP.  Everything else is getting it from reservation.  This is a very handy thing in managing a network with many (from a home network perspective) devices on the network.

 

In actuality, I'm able to bypass the range limitation to add reservations by disabling DHCP services, changing the range to start at x.x.x.2 to x.x.x.254 and then add my reservations and save.  Then I can change the range back to something like x.x.x.201 to x.x.x.225 - plenty large for me since most of my devices require fixed IP addresses, and re-enable DHCP services.  They get those fixed addresses using DHCP so that if I have to change my IP address plan I don't have to log into each and every device to update the addresses; I simply change the reservations from one place - my TP-Link router.  That's a good thing.

 

So, considering that your "in-range" reservation rule doesn't really force what it tries to force, and considering that it's a bad idea anyway, please provide a software patch to remove that restriction.   And, while you're at it, please provide patches to increase the number of reservations available for address reservations.

 

Regards,

A (want to be and want to continue to be) Loyal TP-Link Customer

 

 

And, as long as I'm giving feedback here in the forum, the other thing I might have problems with, since I did with my C50, is UPnP ports.  As I mentioned, I have a lot of IP cameras.  The cameras set up UPnP and it uses about 5 ports per camera.  As UPnP gets even more pervasive and IoT objects more pervasive, please consider changing to allow far more ports for services through the router.