alt Hacker News> The connection was a bit janky, a video would occasionally start buffering, but it didn't bother me much.
This is truly bonkers! Please, if you buy hardware that does not work correctly from day 1, return it. If you do not vote with your wallet these companies will never learn and will never adjust their practices. Rewarding TP-Link by keeping their terrible hardware does nothing.
> I contacted support in June because the website only had firmware for v2. They couldn't find v1 in their database and asked for photos of the device and box
!!
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Hardware offload bugs are bane of NICs since hardware offload was offered (and that does include pricy enterprise ones, not just your random consumer one) and it can be drivers but majority it is on hardware/firmware side so I wouldn't be too crossed on TPLink for that one.
I wonder if EU push for basically 5 years of mandatory updates will make it better. Then again this isn't security bug but functional one...
IF you don't accept hardware that doesn't work correctly you'll never have certain types of hardware (I've not seen an ethernet card nor storage controller that didn't have SOME weird edge-case bug).
> I contacted support in June because the website only had firmware for v2. They couldn't find v1 in their database and asked for photos of the device and box
> !!
I was shocked when this happened to me. My company had a Dell switch kicking around in storage. It was a Dell Powerswitch Somethingorother_b. Big, expensive, enterprise switch. I went to set it up and found that I couldn't find the manual for that model online. Dell told me they only made a Somethingorother without any suffix. But we had records of buying it straight from them.
Apparently it happens. I have no idea how.
[dead]
Step one is not to buy TP-Link routers.
I know people have limited budgets, but having seen the code that sits on these devices and how poor quality and easily exploited it is, time and time again, I'll never buy TP-Link (amongst others) again.
For a while I collected a graveyard of routers that had been abandoned by the manufacturers (and contained serious vulnerabilities), with the intention of writing them all up one day; next thing you know I have two children rapidly reaching double-digit ages, and much better things to do with my life than write about how shitty the code is on actual products we buy every day.
I switched, about 7-8 years ago to a Protectli box running Coreboot and OPNSense and haven't looked back; I use Ubiquiti APs and switches. I'm not saying they're the best, but anything used in corporate/enterprise is going to have better support (if not better code quality).
The great thing about Ubiquiti APs for me is that each new WiFi generation (or two) I can just buy a few more, snap the existing APs off of the various ceilings they're attached to, snap on the new ones, adopt them, and away we go.