TP-LINK TL-WR1043ND Ultimate Wireless N300 Gigabit Router w/ USB Port & DD-WRT Support $25 after $20 rebate + Free Shipping
 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/...UTF8&psc=1

List Price: $76.64
Price: $44.99
Deal Price:
You Save: $31.65 (41%)
Post-purchase rebate: $20.00
Price after rebate: $24.99


Rebate [images-amazon.com]

TP-LINK TL-WR1043ND Ultimate Wireless N300 Gigabit Router w/ USB Port & DD-WRT Support $25 after $20 rebate + Free Shipping
 

Update: Ships within 2 to 5 weeks.


Amazon has TP-LINK TL-WR1043ND Ultimate Wireless N300 Gigabit Router w/ USB Port, DD-WRT Support, Detachable Antennas for $45 - $20 rebate = $25 with free shipping. Thanks iRabbitt

Price Research: Our research indicates that TP-LINK TL-WR1043ND Ultimate Wireless N300 Gigabit Router is $20 lower (44% savings) than the next best available price from a reputable merchant with prices ranging from $45 to $80. - yuugotserved

This post can and should be edited by users like you :)
 

Back in Stock (15 available and more on the way)
Alive!!
back in stock 11:30PM EST
click the link on the right side that says Sold by Amazon to get it to come up.
Codel is supported under OpenWrt/Gargoyle.

OpenWrt Wiki for this router: http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr1043nd
Gargoyle supported as well.
DD-WRT supported as well (google it)
Tomato is NOT supported since this is not broadcom based

This is a rare one: FreeBSD mips is supported.
https://wiki.freebsd.org/FreeBSD/mips

I am tempted to buy it just to play around with.

I have one for around 1 and 1/2 years. I installed DD-WRT right away, but my experience was not good -- dropped wireless connections, problem with b+g mode. Recently, I installed OpenWRT and am happy with the performance. For me, DD-WRT interface was more intuitive, OpenWRT is not. I will need to spend some time to learn about it.

does this support ipv6

how reliable is the router and how are the speeds? and does it suport ipv6?

I too had a problem with a different TP-Link router dropping signal or needing to be reset. It mainly happened when I was running 2 xbox's at the same time but one was on N and the other on G. It seems a lot of N routers don't like this and so I would recommend basically what this guy [amazon.com] (scroll up after clicking) is explaining in his post.

I didn't do it exactly the same way. Mine is set up so I know which router/access point I am connecting to but same general idea. Ever since then I haven't had problems or had to reset the routers and it has been smooth sailing since.

can you run it as wireless client bridge? since it allows for DD-WRT?

Not a bad price AR if you're ok with rebates, although I've never done one through rapid-rebates.com before. This sells for about $40 on eBay. Detachable/upgradeable antennas, but relatively low specs compared to the current, main, $50-80 price range. Still, it's got your modern household basics, can take alt firmware, and as long as you don't brick it, you can resell and make your money back in the next couple months to give you time to try it out. Or just return to Amazon for a couple bucks shipping (or free w/ Prime) within 30 days.

I've only ever used 1 TP-Link device, and the stock firmware worked fine for basic g-wifi and 100Mbit LAN but that one did feel warmer than any other home router I've ever used. Still had good uptime on that one though, better than some of the Netgear *refurbs* I've tried (not a good comparison, I admit).

If you want an answer from someone with actual experience with this specific router, you might want to spam all the reviewers on Amazon to see if anyone's done it, or do a search on the wider web, if you aren't doing that already. (edit: or skim through the past SD threads on this model, "bridge" pops up here and there)

Also, try this ddwrt thread [dd-wrt.com]. Inactive since August, but sounds like ddwrt works after a headache setup but gargoyle might be easier. Not sure how successful you'd be trying to bump that thread.

Personally, I think you'd need to be really desperate in need for a wireless repeater to link up two access points to put up with the configuration hassle (the first time, then again for troubleshooting later, and for any firmware updates as security measure). Considering the range and halved throughput already on a limited-throughput wireless link, you might as well just run a cable. Definitely for indoors, where there's already enough RF interference, maybe even outdoors if you can keep it neat and safe.

BTW, the ddwrt thread was for wireless repeater, to extend the wireless range. If you really just wanted a wireless client bridge, it'd be a bit simpler setup.

If you really did want client bridge, here's one of a few ddwrt threads [dd-wrt.com] with some tips regarding this particular model. To clarify, with wr1043nd as client bridge, the wr1043nd would connect to the rest of the network wirelessly, but devices connected to the wr1043nd would need to be wired (and would end up sharing the wireless bandwidth between the wr1043nd and the rest of the network).

ddwrt has a more general article [dd-wrt.com] on other methods to link routers too.

Isn't this a staple router in the dd-wrt community? It has great loyal support and seems like a great deal?

Yes. I am using it as CB with WDR3600 as main.

wonderful price

Guys, how does this compare to the NE frontpage deal for the TL-WDR3600 N600 yesterday for $39?? Specs seem almost the same except for the Dual band, which most of us don't care about anyways.

how does this compare to the FP deal of yesterday ?

EDIT : On a quick look , this seems to be an older model and has 1 usb port compared to 2 on yesterday's deal.

Like the other TP-Link WDR3600 deal posted recently, this is OpenWrt compatible and supports Codel. The primary difference is that this is not dual-band and has less ram than the WDR3600. If you don't know why you need more RAM, you probably don't need to worry about it.

This is a reliable router and quite popular for OpenWrt.

http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr1043nd

**Edit - sorry less RAM, but same flash as wdr3600**

I had a similar experience and installed Gargoyle (which runs OpenWRT under the hood). It seems to have resolved the wireless dropouts. Gargoyle provides a nice UI.

https://wiki.freebsd.org/FreeBSD/mips
FreeBSD/MIPS is supported.

Added info to the wiki.

In essense wdr3600 is still a better deal, i was just about to cancel it and order this one..

http://www.google.com/trends/expl...600&cmpt=q

Great router,I'm using stock firmware due to the awesome QoS capabilities (better than DD-WRT, havent tried OpenWRT). I can control bandwidth via IP or IP range and it works great

In for one, thanks OP. This met all 3 of my criteria:

1.) Runs DD-WRT/Open-WRT

2.) Cheap (<$30)

3.) Gigabit

I've seen plenty of deals with 1 &2 but still only Fast Ethernet.

Would I be able to use this to extend my signal from my other router to inturn have a stronger signal throughout the house

You can only return for free if there's something wrong with it. Otherwise you have to pay for return shipping, and there's a restocking fee

I am considering the ASUS Black Diamond Series Routers (RT-N65U), is that better than this?
I really need to retire my old WRT54G. I think it is slowing down my internet...

I don't want to spend more than $100 but Asus is the only one that has a lot of functions and costs $125

Is this or the TL-WDR3600 better?

was about to pull the trigger till i saw no 5Ghz... 2.4 sucks and is too congested by me so 5GHz is a must now...

wow. I don't care much for how the router looks, but this thing is UGLY.

must get at this price!

At this price I bought it just to play around with it (fyi - "it" = the router) :)

I've had this router for about a year and it has been great!!

Wish it had more under the hood to handle ps3 media server but for the price (got it for around $45 last year), you cant beat it..

is it pretty easy to use this as the main router and keep my wrt54g to take care of the B and G wireless?

in for 1

Amazon says its no longer available at that price.

yea, it wasn't going to last at that price. it's an awsome router with a huge fan base.

wow this is pretty cheap for a dd-wrt router

Just bumped to 51.95 pre-rebate

just bumped to 51.95 pre-rebate

yep had it in my cart...now 51.95

No longer available from Amazon, hence the price bump from 3rd party sellers.

That sucks. Amazon deals seem to fade faster than any other slick deals posted here. Thanks to op for the effort (repped).

I have one quick question for techies here.
I have a Time Warner cable modem SURFboard SBG6580 but time Warner is charging me the rental fee so I am deciding to get rid of their modem.
I bought Zoom Cable Modem and from my previous Verizon I have a D-Link DSL-2750B Wireless Modem/Router.
My question is do I need to purchase any other router like this one or I can use Cable Modem plus D-link router modem as Wireless Router?
If not then I will buy this.
Any suggestion SDers?

Shame I missed it, needed one.

I've have mine for close to 2 years and had the exact same experience (DD-WRT was actually worse than the factory firmware). There was an awfully long thread dedicated to this router, but it was filled with problems and very few solutions. I'm sure that one of the main reasons there was limited support for this router (at least back then) was because it's a bit of an off brand with a less popular chip running it. I see that some people like you tried out other open firmware solutions but unless you're a power user with a lot of programming knowledge, why bother? The headaches associated with messing around with that crap is too time consuming for the average user. Before any of you decide to flash the firmware to a 3rd party one, give the latest TP-Link firmware a shot. It's been rock solid for me (doesn't drop connections and never have to reboot the thing).

One negative that I have for this thing is that anyone should just forget about the damn USB port. It's going to be way too slow for any kind of networked backups/sharing (I'm talking something in the ballpark of 2-3MB/sec slow). When I researched it a while back, it seems like it was more of a limitation of the hardware rather than the firmware. I haven't been router "shopping" in quite a while, but I'm guessing that many of the newer ones have much better USB transfer speeds. Just something to consider if some of you are after a router with USB ports.

Edit: I was a little curious about how long ago I actually bought this thing so I checked my Newegg order history; Dec 2010 for $48.42. Even older than I thought. The good; it's still going strong. The bad; this certainly isn't the latest and greatest (I don't think that it was even that new back when I got it). Some of the other TP-Link router deals that have popped up lately may be a little better even if they cost slightly more.

better then Linksys E3000?

back in stock. ordered 1.

You probably need to buy a new one but it wouldn't hurt trying to add the routes manually.
I had an old linksys that did that although it was dsl.

It's back at $44.99 - $20 REBATE = $24.99
BUT....."Usually ships in 2 to 5 weeks."
Rebate MUST be postmarked by March 25, 2013.

got one.

thanks

im still seeing 51.95

TP-LINK TL-WR1043ND Ultimate Wireless N300 Router , Gigabit, 300Mbps, USB port , 3 Detachable Antenna x3/ IP QoS/ QSS Button
by TP-Link
3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (343 customer reviews) | Like (59)
List Price: $76.64
Price: $51.95 & FREE Shipping. Details
You Save: $24.69 (32%)

Darn missed it.

For some reason you have to click the link on the right side that says Sold by Amazon to get it to come up.

Shipping in 2-5 weeks, I don't know if I will get it in time to post mark the rebate...
Itching to get this though and replace my old Netgear WGT624 [productwiki.com]
Haha, a real blast from the past

This router is awful with OpenWRT. And OpenWRT has a horrible UI.

Just beware.

I bought it a couple of years ago and used it for a few hours before throwing it in a box in the basement. There's a long standing bug open about it dropping wireless clients... The situation is much better in the latest OpenWRT but I still got tired of Youtube and comedy central videos freezing two or three times per night. I noticed some devices are more affected than others (laptops OK for example, MS Surface can't seem to stay connected more than a couple minutes)

internal throughput is not that high for a modern GbE router/AP, about 1/3rd that of a refurb $39 EA2700 on the linksys/cisco site, from smallnetbuilder site data.

So pissed I just ordered a router last night from amazon, then this pops up!!! Too bad the one I ordered is being delivered tomorrow so I can't stop the order.

you can still refuse the shipment.

Yeah, say something like the Matt ordered the router no longer lives and went to fight taliban.:D

This is a Chinese brand, and the company is headquartered in Shenzhen, China. http://www.tp-link.com.cn/introduce.html, how is the reliability of its products? Will it die in one to three months of usage?

I went ahead and ordered one. My e2000 running tomatousb is not as reliable as it once was. The link you click on shows $56 but if you search the product number you can still find the lower price. It says ships between 2-5 weeks, but sometimes amazon sends things like that out in a few days. If it takes too long though the rebate wont work

I've had this router for a while running DD-WRT. I had to set a nightly reboot to fix the wireless connectivity issues but now it is working much better. For the price I would recommend this router as it has lasted me for years.

I am thinking of upgrading to Gargoyle as I've heard good things. Does anyone know an upgrade path from DD-WRT to Gargoyle? Do I need to revert to stock first or can I just download the firmware and update?

I have one that I just recently replaced with the TP-Link WDR4300.
I used the 1043 for about two years with stock firmware and it worked great, til it was about 2 years old. Then I started having to do daily reboots. That's why I bought the 4300. My 4300 wasn't too stable, so I put the 1043 back in service until I could figure out my problems with the 4300.

anyway, don't expect it to last five years, but it should be good for a year or two. I personally think that is about the life expectancy of routers these days, they work pretty hard!

If you can get it for 25 bucks, I think its a very good deal

I never did try any third party firmware, so can't comment on that.

Humm could they have stolen this technology from a US company?
Conspiracy theorists this is a call to rise to the occasion... LOL!!!

yours will die in the 4th month, really.:turtle::turtle:

Most if not all the cheap stuff you buy here on SD is made there. These days even the most expensive Electronics ( or components ) is made there. You late to the party??

Still available. Click on the Right for Amazon link. Says 2-5 Weeks to ship. But normally it will ship in a week or less based on my experience.

I'd be a little bit surprised to find ANY wireless router that wasn't made in Shenzhen or close by.

info on Gargoyle firmware for this router here: http://www.c2s.co.nz/blog/gargoyl...-wr1043nd/

Atheros WiSOC based Hardware always sucks in dd-wrt

Yep, I bought a buffalo router and that was my last Atheros based router. Tried the stock buffalo branded dd-wrt and it sucked hard. Put on regular dd-wrt and it sucked less, but still never came close to the reliability of my old Linksys WRT54g with dd-wrt. Maybe one day I will get around to testing out tomato on it.

If I wanted to hook up my printer to this router, do I need a USB port or ethernet port?
http://www.amazon.com/SAMSUNG-ML-...=ml-2955nd

Because I also want to hook up my external HDD to this router and have it accessible wirelessly.

A hub is needed to connect more than one usb device, you will definitely need to purchase a powered USB hub if the hard drive does not have it's own power supply.

Just so you know, data transfer speeds over USB will be slow on this type of device, as the speed of the router's cpu bottlenecks the throughput, and significantly slower yet if you format the drive NTFS instead of a native Linux file format such as ext2 or ext3.

Yeah, it's usually better than stock, but I'm sticking with broadcom hardware from now on.

I assume that the Zoom cable modem you bought is a modem only and not a router/modem combo.
If that is the case you will need to buy a new router. The D-Link DSL-2750B doesn't have a WAN port (lets call that the input port) other than the DSL input.

I hope this helps

What exactly is Gargoyle, is it a branch of open-wrt or is it some kind of new open firmware?

Gargoyle [gargoyle-router.com] and here [wikipedia.org].

Gargoyle is a free OpenWrt-based Linux distribution for a range of Broadcom and Atheros chipset based wireless routers, mainly the older-model Linksys WRT54G[2][3] (including the WRT54GL and WRT54GS), Asus Routers and Netgear WNR3500L. Among notable features is the ability to limit and monitor bandwidth and set bandwidth caps per specific IP address

Thanks I bought the TP-LINK one.
Yes Zoom is only cable modem that's why I was looking for a router to go with it.
I am not sure whether D-link would work just as a stand alone router or not.
Any way now I have this router I will D-link just to see,if its works.

The dlink wont work as a standalone. I figured maybe with custom firmware (such as dd-wrt, tomato, etc) you could reassign one of the LAN ports ("outputs") to work as a WAN port ("internet input") but didnt find any custom firmware for it.

Without DSL that D-link unit becomes an interesting paperweight. It may be worth something to someone on ebay however!

Exactly! I would try to sell it on eBay, but seems like not many takers, eventually I am not good in listing or selling things. May be it going to be future paperweight.
Or if for some reason I move back to Verizon then it will be of some use.

Damn, price went up...

Gargoyle supports TP-Link TL-WR1043ND v1-1.8 Did anyone get theirs yet? If so, what version is it? (1.8, 1.9, 1.10 ...)

I got v1.10

I got v1.10 also. Just installed Gargoyle. Works great so far.

To clear up confusion about supported hardware versions, see the OpenWRT support information: http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr1043nd

The latest Gargoyle is 1.5.9, which is built from OpenWRT Attitude Adjustment RC1. Attitude Adjustment RC1 supports this router's v1.10 hardware. Earlier OpenWRT builds do not support v1.10. Backfire 10.03.1 is known to brick this router.

So make sure you install Gargoyle 1.5.9 (or higher). This is the 1.5.9 firmware that I installed: http://www.gargoyle-router.com/do...actory.bin

I followed the instructions here: http://www.c2s.co.nz/blog/gargoyl...-wr1043nd/. Only change that I had to make was to rename the Gargoyle file to factory.bin before upgrading the router. For some reason, the upgrade didn't like the original file name (kept telling me to choose a file, when I had already chosen one).

Did anyone run a throughput test?

The shipping estimate on mine was also 2-5 weeks. Mine shipped out on March 1st and should be delivered on March 5th. I selected 2 day Prime shipping.

Anyone get rebate confirmation at http://www.rapid-rebates.com/Cont...earch.aspx

rapid-rebates.com site acknowledged my rebate submission.

"Your check was mailed on April 16, 2013. Please allow approximately two weeks for delivery."

Looks like my rebate check should be here in the next couple of days. I mailed the rebate on March 8th so pretty quick turnaround.

Still haven't even opened the router box yet. To many projects, to little time.

rich123, Thank you for the link to the rebate status.

WB

Rebate check came yesterday:)