TP-Link Omada ER605

As a retired network engineer, and as the admin for a home based network, I was in need of upgrading my ever increasing network. After reading and watching numerous reviews of competing network platforms for advanced home and small business solutions, I decided upon and acquired a full suite of TPLink Omada equipment, including hardware controller OC200(H1), VPN router ER605(H1), 6 x EAP615 wifi access points running in a mesh mode, and a TL-SG2428P POE switch, which provides power to the OC200 and the 6 access points. I also acquired a non Omada compliant TL-SG1218MPE switch, which I use in a purely standalone, off-net, testbed environment.

Anyway, I purchased most of this equipment in Jan 2022, and overall, the equipment has run effortlessly and seemlessly in all respects, so much so, that I let my administration of the network slip for some time, mainly because of extended hospital absences and ill health.

I ordered the Omada platform to not only upgrade from rather outdated legacy environment, mainly Cisco for which I am qualified on, but also because of the feature rich GUI environment as provided through the OC200. I particularly did so, because I needed the VPN capabilities to cater for future client range extention that I had envisaged I would need in outer years.

However, recently, and the reason for writing this review, is because I ran into major problems when trying to engineer the VPN capability in for two clients, and for a remote router that is yet to be deployed. In particular, I needed to ensure clients connected in "full" tunnel mode that connected not only PC enabled clients, but android and apple VPN client devices also.

However, I discovered that there were limitations with what my hardware versions of the OC 200 Controller and ER605 Router, which were only hardware version one (1), which placed significant limitations on the VPN capabilities Ilthat I had desparately wanted when purchasing the equipment.

Through no fault of TPLink, during the ensuing time since purchasing, Android and Apple had ceased supporting Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP), and so the only other option left open to me was OpenVPN. However, I had problems with the Controller not initially providing "full" tunnel mode support, and where the client profile certificates being generated by the ER605 router were not allowing any clients to connect.

After about 2 and half weeks of trying everything in the book, including isolating the router in standalone mode, I just couldn't get the clients to connect. It was at this point that I then contacted TPLink support, where Lucie initially, and then Skyler L., and other TPLink's 3rd Tier support team staff went above and beyond the call of duty to assist me in finding viable solutions to enable full OpenVPN connections for my clients. Some of these solutions required file modifications and enhanced firmware upgrades, some of which were found and applied because I had failed in my own administration duties.

Importantly, support staff analysed a rather complex situation and found viable solutions for the equipment I had purchased, as opposed to just gas lighting me with any suggestion that I just needed to upgrade to newer hardware versions of the equipment.

With the foregoing in mind, overall I feel TPLink not only sells great equipment, but with a professional and courteous attitude, they provide great backup support for their TPLink equipment also.

I do hope TPLink senior management will look after Lucie, Skyler and the 3rd Tier support team that helped me, and that management seriously considers giving them all a pay rise that recognises them all for their commitment in providing excellence in customer service.

TPLink Omada System - Various Products & Thoughts. ER605 / OC200 – So I bought a ER605 TPLink Router to try, it was cheap and at the time I was an IT Specialist doing onsites for business and home users on a daily basis. It was a simple router, VPN...... nothing special no wifi etc. I found the VPN hard to setup even for me but I then decided to buy the OC200 which is another box essentially to manage all the TP Link products via web one panel that support Omada.

This worked pretty well, not perfectly designed as you need POE or USB Power when the ER605 doesn't have any POE ports etc.....

But moving on. The VPN Setup under Omada was much simpler and works pretty well.........

NOW........ Here we are a year or so later and I have a rather different opinion.

1. TPLink ....... I really don't know who's employed there but it's a mess, the firmware updates released always have issues, the Omada (OC200 in my case) and the ER605 firmware never line up so you never get the new features they claim unless it's supported on both which are normally like 6 months apart! 2. Due to the failure to fix the firmware and have standard featuers alot of cheaper routers have, their modems are unstable, on me ER605 randomly rebooting, loosing connection with the Omada Controller.... 3. They take 5+ minutes to startup commonly longer if it's just messed up and you don't know whats happened. 4. They drop net anytime you change a firewall rule, a nat port forward..... etc etc etc. Very annoying if you got kids. 5. It does not support adding a custom DNS entry for Static IP's set in DHCP.... 6. It's TERRIBLE at managing traffic....... they've added some knock off QoS system and a bandwidth control depending on your firmware.......... that MAY work or may not. 7. It has latency issues........... it seems to struggle very badly with even a moderate amount of connections.

I ended up actually buying another ASUS AX3000 I had issues with again to try once more as it had great features. It's improved and is stable now, wifi is a bit of a struggle on that still with lots of devices but it has Adaptive QoS which is A MAJOR HELP with online gaming and network loads.

The TPLink and Omada system is a great IDEA in what it's purpose is/wants to be as you can just buy omada supported hardware and have one thing manage it all. No seperate configs etc. Makes it quick to replace something if it fails etc. And it is great for that reason but it's so far apart between firmwares, they are all beta's, alot get pulled and the company doesn't want to look at even fixing the net drop etc when you add/edit a port forward or firewall rule etc.

Their Omada Forums are handled by some gaslighting staff that really haven't a clue half the time. And in TP Links own words essentially they've told me fixing their products isn't a top priority as they are more focused on adding features other people want who will buy in mass.

There's a number of peope I know that have these at customers sites and yeah just don't update the firmware once they are working leave them as it is.......... cause even applying one setting you might find yourself resetting a device and have to readd it/adopt it again......

It's all a bit of a mess really.

I'm hoping they step up and fix it........... so far not much luck.