[GTALUG] (question) TP-Link TL-WR802N 300Mbps Wireless-N Nano Router

[Scott Sullivan]

Hi William,


First Question, do you care about double NAT?

Scenario 1: Bridge (Single NAT from WIFI AP's upstream router).

* The 'box' joins a wireless AP, and all packets, including broadcasts, 
DCHP, ARP, pass through transparently to the wired port on the 'box'.


Scenario 2: Double NAT

* The 'box' joins a wireless AP, get an address from the upstream router 
and then NATs that, creating and managing a separate network for the 
wired port. Internet Access would be still be
'normal', you would not get broadcast traffic, or addresses from the 
upstream router.

Scenario 2 is a lot easier, and covers the majority of use cases.

----

Over the last five years I've been using the TL-MR3020 as a swiss army 
knife for old ball networking. I actually own several of them.

I did use it's stock firmware as a wireless bridge (Scenario 1), evening 
doing a PXE network boot over it. Although that was 4 years ago.

OpenWRT works on it very well, and I've even gone through the pain of 
bricking and recovering one.

https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3020
http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=690&item_id=047186

You can still find some stock in Canada Computers.




On the TL-WR802N,

It's 'next model' name-sake of the venerable TL-WR702N*, minus the oh so 
useful USB Host port... -_-;
It is completely different hardware though, not the same SoC and it 
looks like the openwrt community is still getting their heads around it.

https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr802n




* TL-MR3020 is just a derivative of the TL-WR702N with hardware buttons, 
and an extra PCB antenna, and larger flash chip.




So yeah, can't say anything about TL-WR802N other then it's half the 
price of the TL-MR3020. But the TL-MR3020 has worked well for me in the 
past.


On 08/11/2016 11:52 PM, William Park via talk wrote:
> Anyone have this one?
>     http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=27_1046_365&item_id=087761
>     http://www.tplink.ca/en/products/details/TL-WR802N.html
> If so, have you ever used its "Client Mode" and can you confirm that it
> works?
>
> I need small portable "wireless bridge", and the advertised "client
> mode" is what I need.  But, last TP-Link I bought was N750 dual-band
> TL-WDR4300.  It advertised "wireless bridge" and even their tech support
> said so.  But, both lied.  Shocking!
>
> I have Linksys WRT model with DD-WRT, and its client bridge works.  But,
> it's a bit bulky to carry around.
>