TP-Link Archer VR400 AC1200 Wireless Modem Router, VDSL ADSL Wifi Router, Mesh Wifi Booster, Dual Band Internet Booster, Full Gigabit Ethernet Ports Mesh Routers, Plug and Play, Gaming Xbox PS4 Steam

Bought to replace the horrendous NOW TV Broadband router. This can also replace the Sky Broadband router. It is able to because it allows for a less common login method called MER or Option 61. I'm going to write this review in two parts - first, how to configure to replace Sky/Now broadband router - second, my thoughts on the router itself after a couple of weeks in place. FIRST. I'm writing this on the day of purchase. It took me about an hour to set up the router to substitute the god-awful NOW TV broadband router. It should have taken 10 minutes max. It took that long because I tried to use the mobile 'Tether' app supplied by TP Link. You can't do all the steps on it and therefore it was a waste of time. To save you the pain here are the steps... Quickest method - Plug in the new router to the microfilter that Sky/Now provided, plug an ethernet lead from LAN1 into your PC or laptop (you can use powerlines in between the two if the PC is too far from the router - I did) and navigate to 192.168.1.1 Use the login details from the sticker on the router to access. Under Internet Connection menu, select Sky(MER)_VDSL, vlan enabled, vlan id 101. Select Dynamic IP. (Here's the bit the phone app cannot do) Enter username 123456789012@skydsl - password 1234567890abcdef (they're irrelevant but you need to put something in there with @skydsl at the end) And hit save - that's it, you are now Internet accessible in the replacement router. You can then change other settings around the router admin as you please. Now there is a step that I preferred to do that I believe might stop future issues but it will add time. I used the Broadband MAC address from the NOW router as the start of the address - so 1a:2b:3c:4d:5e:6f became 1a2b3c4d5e6f@skydsl - as I read something on a forum suggesting it may be better for users who don't reboot their router regularly (for the geeky, the lease time on the connection being longer means it may fail a validation checks should one be run). I went this route but feel free to go the generic address route - just bear it in mind if you get unexplained disconnections. I hope all that helps. As for the router itself, it was easy enough to setup. It seems to be much better at doing IP address ports than the NOW router and I've been able to use uPnP instead of a dozen port forwards, at this time anyway. Also the speed is better. My speedtest.net results went from (18Mbps/2. 5 to 19.5/3.5). WiFi is stronger than the NOW router on both 2.4 and 5 likely thanks to the two directional antennas. UPDATE 10/2. Very stable and it has replaced the Now TV Broadband router completely. The WiFi strength is better and having more ethernet ports is a bonus. I'd like the ability to determine bandwidth control on a per-device basis. The firmware allows for QoS and prioritisation of device groups. However in these days of COVID homeworking I would like to be able give the important pc number one status. And my plex/kodi server the lowest. Smartphones doing their updates doesn't need high priority at the expense of a zoom call for instance. I'm very happy overall and would happily recommend to anyone looking to replace the awful Sky/Now routers.

I purchased this as a backup, when my ISP kept insisting that my kit was the cause of our poor connection, despite having already checked all my kit (and yes, I do know what I'm doing). Easy to set up, it was working in minutes with minimal interruptions. The router has a simple web interface that's quite well laid out and easy to swap between modes it's also responsive, which is good. The only concern I have is the SNR seems significantly worse when using this router, with poorer jitter, as well as pings well outside 100ms, even after allowing a couple of days for the line to stabilise. Switch to one of my other three routers and ping is closer to 20ms.

We had a Sky router which after about a year started dropping connection a few times a day. I read the reviews online and felt Id rather invest in a good quality router than go through the hassle of trying to get Sky out etc, especially as they would probably come at the time when it was working fine. Not only is this much more reliable and no connection drop since setting up there's also a better coverage of WiFi in the house and I'm not longer needing to use repeaters.

I purchased this TP Link modem/router to replace a bt home hub on a FTTP connection. The BT HomeHub was consistently achieving 450-500 MB DL over wired and 350-400 MB DL using 5GHZ wifi. The BT performance through the Home Hub was fine, but I was interested in the remote access and other features provided by the VR400. After setting the Archer VR400 up in wireless router mode, the wired connection plummeted to 250-300 MB DL and the 5GHZ connection to anything between 10-50 MB DL. The VR400 wifi range is abysmal. It drops around 10MB for every 5 m distant from the router, whereas the BT home hub loss was negligible over across my property. This is despite taking into account the general interference / traffic in range of the routers position. Based on this experience I can not recommend the VR400, particularly if your objective is to significantly improve consistent download rates and signal reach. Others may experience different outcomes.

I used this replace the BT homehub ar our sailing club. Our test speed immediately improved from 17 to 27mbps, pretty well our line max. Really simple easily understood configuration, and using the tether app on tp-link cloud I don't even need to go to the club to reconfigure. During sailing events we have always had a problem with visitors swamping the bandwidth, knocking out our results laptop. It's really easy to hide a network for club computers and choose 2.4, 5ghz or mixed. Also easy to put in the opendns family safety servers, essential in a safeguarding environment. The other problem we used to have was the lease length when busy with visitors. I couldn't find a control for this in the interface, but I think that's because the lease expires automatically when a particular device is out of range. The other nice touch is the ability to blacklist a mac. We are in a busy area and when the wifi password gets leaked we suffer excessive piggybacking. Using the clientlist and looking at times the club is closed we can now trim them out. I am not in any respect a networking expert. If you are, this probably looks obvious and normal. My point is that the interface makes it easy to do and at a decent price. Try doing any of the above on a BT business deal with a homehub, oh sorry, businesshub, and see how far you get.

We purchased this TP-Link Archer VR400 V3 AC1200 Modem Router to replace our BT smart hub. It had been causing some issues & various engineers from another well known telecommunications company didn't rate it. We chose this router as it was relatively inexpensive to other options , a newer version of the model & we didn't need more for our needs. Thanks to the informative Installation guide. The router was simple to install. And connecting it up to the internet via the TP-link sites "Quick Setup" was an easy step by step job. The TP-link site itself , is well presented with lots of useful information about your network , security & other options. Be sure to go into the "Advanced settings" and "System Tools" to get the latest firmware update. Wi-Fi signal is good. 3 bars two rooms away , 2 bars 3 rooms away , further 1 bar. PC is connected via wired Ethernet , here is a speed test result , free , from a well known browser company. 72.7 Mbps download 18.6 Mbps upload Latency 7ms Initially we had an issue connecting up our Sky Q. After connecting to the TP-link router , the main box would just freeze up & after resetting freeze after a few seconds. But once our mini boxes were connected via WPS , it all worked smoothly. Overall we are happy with the purchase , and look forward to some good years with it. We may try out some signal extenders in future due to home layout , router location.

I bought this router as the router provider by Vodafone would not let me forward port 22 (ssh) to my lan. Its fairly easy to set up with Vodafone (there is no vodafone preset so you need to use "other" as your service provider and then set vlan to 101, you need to powercycle the router once you have put in the vodafone settings, and then wait a couple of minutes -- it tries to connect immediately when you turn it on, it fails and tells you to contact your ISP, then auto connects about 2 minutes later). Things I have noted so far: 1. The wired ports seem able to delivered the advertised speed (1 Gb/s); 2. The router only offers one DHCP server for both the main and the guest networks. If you're using your own DHCP server for your main network, you will have to use it for the guest network and this really weakens the segregation between the main and guest networks; and 3. The VDSL connection speed seems slower (60 Gb/s) than the Vodafone supplied router achieved. This may change if the connection gets "tuned" for the new router. [Update -- after a couple of days its tuned itself and is now delivering full speed]

Quick and easy to setup. Would recommend turning off the mu-mimo nonsense, from memory it's set disabled by default...it only works on 5ghz anyway and seems to upset the 2.4 range. Also head over to advanced wireless settings and set channels and channel widths manually. I also split the 2.4 and 5ghz channels. Hope this helps. With the above setup the WiFi strength is no better but certainly comparable to our Sky Hub router but we can easily add on Onemesh extenders or bridge this for a true mesh. Way better setup than Sky👍 Update: added RE315 extender setup manually using WiFi and browser, dead easy and decent signal boost. Let me extend the split 2.4 and 5ghz bit I found I had to set channel selection back to auto to get stablewifi and decent speeds. Haven't yet tried mu-mimo or Smart Connect. Solid connection and WiFi so far. Five stars👍