Legit Reviews

TP-Link TL-WDR4300 N750 Dual-Band Wireless Router

Today we take a look at a dual band router from a relatively new name in small office/home office networking. The TL-WDR4300 is a performance optimized simultaneous dual band wireless router combining the blazing fast speeds of 450Mbps using the crystal clear 5GHz band and 300Mbps using the traditional 2.4GHz band. The WDR4300 also carries an inexpensive price tag but looks to have all the same bells and whistles that routers double the cost have. Read on to see what we thought.

The wireless performance of the TP-Link TL-WDR4300 N750 router turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Even though the router is less than half the cost of some of the other routers we have tested, there is no lacking of performance whatsoever. Many of you may not like the look of a router with external antennas (we sure didn't), but there is no doubt that the TP-Link N750 router utilizes this design well.

Article Title: TP-Link TL-WDR4300 N750 Dual-Band Wireless Router
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1983/1/
Pricing At Time of Print: $89.95 plus shipping

Gigabit dual band router for $90 is a hell of a deal. Many moons ago I bought a 5 port D-Link gigabit switch for $40. My sister's house is running an older TP-Link Wireless N 300 model and the range is more than acceptable. Then top it off as far as I know it needs to be rebooted less often than my Cisco E2500.

I've heard nothing but good things about TP-Link routers as of late.

Does the router ship with WPS enabled / available by default?

WPS is broken/hackable.
It should ship disabled by default, but this negates the reason for having it.

kenc51 wrote:I've heard nothing but good things about TP-Link routers as of late.

Does the router ship with WPS enabled / available by default?

WPS is broken/hackable.
It should ship disabled by default, but this negates the reason for having it.

WPS is available but out of the box, WPS is not enabled. Of course, you can configure it to work with either one of the radios, but for our review we left off security settings to get the fastest wireless performance.

How does it do going through concrete walls and thick floors? because the wireless router I have here does not do to well when confronted with these rather large obstacles. If I do get a signal it is only 1-2 bars and it is slower then molasses in the middle of winter while at the south pole.

DragonFury wrote:How does it do going through concrete walls and thick floors? because the wireless router I have here does not do to well when confronted with these rather large obstacles. If I do get a signal it is only 1-2 bars and it is slower then molasses in the middle of winter while at the south pole.

No doubt your mileage may vary...we tested the unit in two locations: a fairly open office and a house made mostly of wood/plaster. Not sure either one of these environments help you with your question. :shrug:

Have you tried repositioning your current router? We found that just by rotating a router by 90-degrees can have significant affects on speeds.

yep, unfortunately I cannot move it to another location because it is also cable modem and the cable only comes in one spot in the house...

Major_A wrote:Gigabit dual band router for $90 is a hell of a deal. Many moons ago I bought a 5 port D-Link gigabit switch for $40.

I was lucky grabbing a Belkin "Play Max" (F7D4301, an older model) for 35€, which has almost the same (hardware) features as the TP-Link reviewed (simultaneous dual-band, although "just" N300 on 5 GHz; 4+1x gigabit ethernet, 2 USB ports), in contrast to its "successor" "Play N600 DB" (which has only fast ethernet ports, and just one USB port IIRC).

While it does support Access Point mode, it unfortunately doesn't operate as a repeater; so my question is whether the TL-WDR4300 supports the latter.

Having taken a quick look at the manual, I rather doubt it does (only WDS / bridging), unless one installs DD-WRT (which I'm not familiar with, and the wiki page currently states "donated board needed for port").


P.S.: I do like external antennas, and being able to replace them is IMHO advantageous anyway...

Hi;

by any chance the max number of simultaneous connections and max WAN to LAN (and viceversa ) capacity was tested?

I'm debating between this, or the expensive RT-N66.

tamalero wrote:by any chance the max number of simultaneous connections and max WAN to LAN (and viceversa ) capacity was tested?

I'm debating between this, or the expensive RT-N66.

We didn't try to max out the LAN connections but we did connect quite a few wireless devices and about 6 wired devices. Unfortunately, we didn't run any speed tests to compare though.

What kind of testing were you looking for? We'd love to get feedback on our testing methodologies and try an integrate any suggestion for future reviews!

Digital Puppy wrote:

tamalero wrote:by any chance the max number of simultaneous connections and max WAN to LAN (and viceversa ) capacity was tested?

I'm debating between this, or the expensive RT-N66.

We didn't try to max out the LAN connections but we did connect quite a few wireless devices and about 6 wired devices. Unfortunately, we didn't run any speed tests to compare though.

What kind of testing were you looking for? We'd love to get feedback on our testing methodologies and try an integrate any suggestion for future reviews!

Id love to see something similar to what Smallnetbuilders do, not as complex of course.. (problem is, they seem to only review top of the line and hardly any gear like this product)

Anyway for those heavily involved in gaming... number of connections (Ie, torrents, p2p) is a must.. as some cheap hardware usually dies after 100 connections (hangs, freezes.. overheats) and since more and more updating clients use p2p to distribute their updates.

average wrote: [...] While it does support Access Point mode, it unfortunately doesn't operate as a repeater; so my question is whether the TL-WDR4300 supports the latter [Wireless Repeater mode].

Does anybody know, or even have experience with it (5 GHz<->5 GHz, 2.4 GHz<->5 GHz)?

Thanks in advance.

average wrote:

average wrote: [...] While it does support Access Point mode, it unfortunately doesn't operate as a repeater; so my question is whether the TL-WDR4300 supports the latter [Wireless Repeater mode].

Does anybody know, or even have experience with it (5 GHz<->5 GHz, 2.4 GHz<->5 GHz)?

Thanks in advance.

Honestly, I'm not sure about the repeater functionality. Since it supports DD-WRT, you should be able to find this feature (if it doesn't exist already...)

If it can act as a repeater, then both 2.4 and 5.0 channels should operate.

Digital Puppy wrote: Honestly, I'm not sure about the repeater functionality. Since it supports DD-WRT, you should be able to find this feature (if it doesn't exist already...)

Well, as mentioned earlier, doesn't look like DD-WRT would already support the TL-WDR4300.

average wrote:

Digital Puppy wrote: Honestly, I'm not sure about the repeater functionality. Since it supports DD-WRT, you should be to find this feature (if it doesn't exist already...)

Well, as mentioned earlier, doesn't look like DD-WRT would already support the TL-WDR4300.

Okay, I'm confused, are you saying that DD-WRT doesn't support the repeating function? or that DD-WRT doesn't work with the TP-Link? The link you posted showed TP/DD compatibility.

Digital Puppy wrote:

average wrote:

Digital Puppy wrote: Honestly, I'm not sure about the repeater functionality. Since it supports DD-WRT, you should be to find this feature (if it doesn't exist already...)

Well, as mentioned earlier, doesn't look like DD-WRT would already support the TL-WDR4300.

Okay, I'm confused, are you saying that DD-WRT doesn't support the repeating function? or that DD-WRT doesn't work with the TP-Link? The link you posted showed TP/DD compatibility.

I meant the latter, but...

Ooops, you're [meanwhile] right... ;-)

There are now two entries for the WDR4300, the first one for hardware revision "v1", still stating "donated board needed for port", the second one (actually the last entry in the whole table, which is otherwise in alphabetical order) for "1.x", with min. DD-WRT version "WDR4300 - build 19644 - 20120808".

(I'm pretty sure I didn't miss that last entry in the first place. )

Thanks for the heads up!