I have suffered with WiFi issues since I recently moved into a rented flat. I went with NOW Broadband as my partner was with them living in the same area and had no issues with them.

First few days were great with no issues then started to have connection dropouts, losing a bar of WiFi signal leaving the living room where the hub was etc. Phoned NOW 3 times, replaced the hub, sent an engineer out who supposedly replaced a contactor in the box outside, gave me money off my bill to buy a booster, nothing worked.

I found this item as it had great reviews. I thought why not. I thought this replaced my NOW hub but it doesn’t. You keep your internet set up the way it is and this item is connected to your hub via an ethernet cable. You then connect your devices to this router and you should get all green lights.

Initially I had green lights but no internet connection. I panicked thinking it wasn’t going to work with my WiFi. However on the instructions there is details of a website to troubleshoot and eventually it done a firmware upgrade on my phone for the router which took a few minutes. This is all easy to do so do not worry if you’re not tech minded, either am I.

After the firmware upgraded, everything was sorted. I had internet. The next thing was to test if it had improved my speed. My NOW hub was situated in the living room and when lying in bed I would only ever get 2 bars of WiFi on my iPhone and videos would rarely load. After I was connected to the TP router I went through and it did drop to 2 bars but then straight away went back up to 3. I done 2 speed tests (see photo above). The bottom one is connected to the TP router and the top one is connected to the NOW hub. It’s almost double the speed. That’s another thing, because you need both your normal broadband and this router set up, you can just switch between the 2 if you want too.

I have the Tether app which again it tells how to install in the instructions and I can now control my devices etc. It’s really easy to use and you can customise your settings to your preference.

To conclude I was initially skeptical that this would work with NOW but it did and has improved my connection massively. If you’re thinking about it, just do it.

Hope this helps anyone who was confused like I was before buying.

I bought this because our WiFi has trouble reaching certain areas upstairs. We were recommended something much more expensive by our broadband provider, but after reading the reviews for this, we decided to try this router out first. It’s a great little thing as it has enabled complete WiFi coverage upstairs with full signal that hasn’t yet dropped. If you also have an OFNL router tucked away in a cupboard and you’re finding it isn’t reaching certain areas in your house, then I’d highly recommend trying this before splashing out on an expensive piece of kit.

This router is really good. It’s so simple to set up. You plug in your Ethernet connection to the blue Ethernet port on the router, head into the TP Link app where you set it up and then you’re ready to go. The app itself is really good, you’re able to change the routers original name and password to your own, see who’s connected to it, block users, use it as a router and there’s even a mode where it can be used as a range extender of your original network. If you need to log into the router in the app, the username & password (standard on most routers) is ‘admin’. The router is quite small (which is expected for the price). It’s nearly the size of my hand which means that it does lack range in terms of WiFi signal strength. If you’re looking to use this as a main router for the house, I’d definitely consider the more expensive routers. But if you need a quick and cheap fix for your WiFi in a ‘dead zone’ in the house, this is perfect. For an example of WiFi speed, my Ethernet plug is 50mbps and through WiFi on this router, I get between 40-45 mbps which is quite good.

I have a Virgin Superhub downstairs and using ethernet my Mac and PC laptops get 30+ mbps.

When they are in the same room as the superhub, on wifi my Mac gets 16mbps and the Dell gets 23mbps.

When they are upstairs, on wifi my Mac gets gets 5mbps and the PC gets 15mbps.

Because of the poor wifi speeds upstairs I have used two long ethernet cables, to get the 30+ mbps.

USING THE TPLink TLWR841N
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With the TPLink downstairs and using ethernet my Mac and PC laptops still get 30+ mbps.

When they are in the same room as the TPLink, on wifi my Mac gets 21 mbps and the PC gets 23mbps.

With the TPLink downstairs and the Mac and PC upstairs; on wifi my Mac gets gets 8mbps and the PC gets 18mbps.

WHAT I DO NOW
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I moved the TPLink upstairs and connected it to the superhub by one long ethernet cable and connect two shorter ethernet cables to the laptops which, as expected still get the full 30+ mbps.

Another benefit is that I have now connected my printer to the TPLink so it is a network printer used by both the Mac and the PC.

OBSERVATIONS AND CONCLUSION
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With wifi in mind (in preference to cables all over the place), I had read several reviews of this and other routers and was swayed by a video review by Geeky Ranjit (check him out on you know where) which implied great wifi range.

The wifi improvement was not that dramatic and all along I had in mind to use ethernet and have this router upstairs.

On that basis it does exactly what I want and at at 20 I recommend i

From messing around with MS ICS (internet connection sharing) from the PC’s motherboard gigiabit LAN to share internet with the onbaord 54g WiFi AP was getting silly. Its an older Win XP thing, and new firewalls are kinda leaving it out, because it’s a pain. Anyway, I did get that to work after a few days of messing about, and I learnt a few things.
I needed a WiFi router!

**This came delivered in retail box, wrapped in clear shrink wrap plastic (manufacturer packaging) with “documents enclosed” clear window and Amazon’s stickers attached. It wasn’t what I was expecting from frustration free packaging. I’m kinda pleased I received a retail box, but at the same time disappointed Amazon spent no effort to conceal the item from the postal service or anyone else. It’s just to let people know, and is no reflection on the product review**

OK, it’s got a UK 3 pin power supply (I read the lower end models may not??).
A short RJ45 CAT5 cable is included.
The antennas can be bent straight out of the back, for vertical mounting. They feel sturdy enough I guess (how often are you gonna move them?).
It can be mounted vertically either way up thanks to the slots on the rear that slip over screw heads.

Setup was really simple. The guide gives simple easy to follow hookup instructions, for “ADSL modem” read “any modem ADSL or cable” – it doesn’t have its own modem in built, you need to use your ISP modem or ADSL modem.
Don’t bother with the mini CD, just open your browser and login to […], and you have access to the different settings that the modem can offer. Click the “quick setup” option, follow the instructions, and choose “dynamic IP” as that is most likely (it says that in the pamphlet). Clone your MAC address, and that’s the wired side done (assuming connecting main PC via Ethernet).
WiFi network setup is really simple too, foolow instructions, use WPA2-PSK, enter an 8 digit multi character password (letters, numbers, and symbols @:& etc), change the network name (SSID) if you like. That’s done.

Security settings were surprisingly straight forward to adjust. I wanted to Hide the name of the network, so people don’t see it when scanning. This is called “disabling SSID broadcast” and there’s a check box next to “broadcast SSID” – easy?
I wanted to stop other devices from using the network (if they did manage to find it) so needed MAC filtering, which blocks all machine access codes (identifying numbers of all devices (network cards, dongles, PCs etc) except for ones on your allow list. Add new, enter the MAC address (you can find it in WiFi stats if its connected to your WiFi network), give it a name, and allow it – done.

So yeah, it’s password encrypted with one of the better encryption methods, the network name is hidden, and it denies access to any machine/device except for the ones I have listed. Of course these things *can* be broken, but only by someone trying really hard and being particularly determined.

I also specified that only my main PC has access to change any router settings, and that is actually always wired to the router – so another good security point.

There’s some parental controls and stuff like that, whereby certain sites can be blocked at certain times from certain users – all seemingly advanced but easy to setup – there’s a pattern here!

Took me about 5mins to bounce through all the settings and have the internet radio playing on a netbook in one room, whilst surfing on the main pc in the bedroom.

In use (1x wired PC + 1x netbook wifi) it’s 2.7watts consumption, that’s a lot lower than that Virgin superhub thing (from what I’ve heard its over 12watts!). Of course you have to add the 6watts or whatever that your modem uses to the total bill from running the network.

There’s no real impact on a 10mbps cable connection, maybe 0.2mbps drop but maybe not. It’s not noticeable.

I’m still having a trouble setting up a Local network (LAN) between the WinXPhome PC and Win7Starter netbook, but thats because the 2 OS’s are network crippled to some extent, and I don’t know quite what I am doing. I did it once using my Motherboard Wifi, but wasn’t sharing internet then. It’s definitely possible, I just need to find the right settings.

In summary, yes very easy to get up and running. Everything is included to pop it in between your existing modem and the PC you were using (connected via Ethernet RJ45). Low power consumption. OK, it’s a bit flimsy feeling, but it’s not something you are gonna be carrying around a lot!

==I always buy from Amazon, not a merchant. Speedy free saver delivery, ordered Friday gone 10pm, arrived Monday==

Okay, time for full disclosure – I bought this router because I a) needed a router (seriously?) and b) I wanted something cheap that I could flash with DD-WRT or OpenWRT.

It’s a nice little white box that does exactly what it says on the tin. I ran the default firmware for a couple of days in case it decided to throw a rod while in my care – electronics tend to fail early if they fail at all – and for this period, it was perfectly functional.

DD-WRT is open-source router firmware – it’ll run on a large subset of extant router models and it basically gives you the software capablities typically offered by a reasonably high end router. OpenWRT is a distant cousin – it offers a superset of the DD-WRT functionality but in a less friendly package. In effect, it gives you a mini-linux system and a library of software aimed at wireless and wired communication. For example, you can in principle set a system up to offer wireless mesh networking – I’ve not tried this so don’t rush out and buy one on the strength of this comment unless you can afford the hit.

My WR841N is currently running OpenWRT with UPnP, decent firewalling, some basic network monitoring snd not much else. The longest uninterrupted run has been 25 days of continuous routage. It would be longer barring the fact that I keep fiddling with the setup.

So, cheap router, works well, offers great flexibility if you’re a nerd.