And here I’ve been jist avoiding TP Link garbage for over 2 decades because it’s one of the shittiest brands around.
US Government Urges Total Ban of Our Most Popular Wi-Fi Router
Submitted 2 weeks ago by weirdbeardgame@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
Kolanaki@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
Mihies@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
Try mikrotik
floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
One of the few companies that I still “fanboy” for. The functionality and value are unbeatable. You can get most of the features of a $10k Cisco router in a 80$ SoHo Mikrotik. POE in and POE out for cheap so your APs don’t have dangling power adapters. It’s also a Latvian company which to me is a plus over both American and Chinese options
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
Who makes good 5G routers? There don’t seem to be that many options in the first place, could do with upgrading from my current TP-link MR-600.
KoalaUnknown@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Kolanaki@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
I’ve got an Asus that’s pretty good still. Just prior to Wifi 6, but the newer variants should have it.
matchaotter@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
I used Linksys for a while but went to TP Link to dip my toes into a mesh system. Any recommended alternatives that aren’t Unifi? I’m not opposed to Unifi, they just tend to be the most expensive outside of looming at the used marketplace, which is sometimes hard to catch good deals.
cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Well, they have had a lot of vulnerabilities. Most people won’t even update the firmware let alone install OpenWRT on them.
Darkenfolk@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
That’s more an user issue than a product issue though.
Bebopalouie@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
TP Link is the Temu of routers. For decades they have been the “cheaper router” and it shows.
philpo@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Bullshit.
It depends on what you buy from them and always has been. Their Omada line is on par with Ubiquiti, some other gear is similar to other commercial grade gear.
If you buy their cheap shit, yeah,it’s cheap. But they,as most manufacturers, have a broad spectrum…
Bebopalouie@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Just reflecting comments from clients. Was a computer consultant for 45yrs(now retired). They did not like them.
pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Can still put openwrt on them can’t you?
jinwk00@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Depends on CPU, not all of them supports out of box nor have upstream
apftwb@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Good. TPLink routers are cartoonishly insecure. They are consumer grade. A better solution is that the US establishes some minimum infosec standards for this equipment, but that would require time and thought.
ReluctantMuskrat@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Do you have any information to share about their bad security? I have a couple of their routers which seem to work quite well. Any I really at risk, and anymore than I would be with something from Linksys or Netgear?
apftwb@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Here are two new vulnerabilities from this month.
Here are some more exploits from 2023
Here are all the TPLink vulnerablies known publicly
Am I really at risk, and anymore than I would be with something from Linksys or Netgear? As always, depends on your threat model and attack surface. I have cheap TPLink switch in my home network because its cheap and kept behind a pfsense firewall. The TPLink switch is not allowed to talk to the internet. This is good enough for me.
For completeness here are Cisco’s and Netgear’s vulnerabilities
Infosec security is a journey, not a destination.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Replace the firmware on your current TPLink devices with OpenWRT, for a temporary solution.
jaxxed@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If you can, look for a mikrotik device, especially if you are in Europe. They are well established, not hard to use, but have extreme depth of features for advanced users, and they are not expensive.
mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
wow, CNET has really gone to shit, hasn’t it?
three popups, including a full screen, autoplaying video, and banner
guess that’s going on my blocklist
architect@thelemmy.club 2 weeks ago
I never understand how these sites survive. So many zombie businesses.
Squizzy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
They always sucked, they used to have a list of some software that I used and downloading through them inevitably got you multiple.other prompts for third party shit and random download buttons.
dantheclamman@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
They’ve been bought out and gutted a couple times over. It’s very sad
mlg@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
TP-Link is excellent for cheap switching hardware which a ton of vendors overprice for the same quality. Its your OG made in China deal that works pretty well for the price.
Otherwise, you should skip it as a router and instead opt for either a better AIO, or put in the 2 minutes of extra effort to get a cheap ethernet router and a separate AP because AIOs are still overrated in 2025 for the price per quality.
Not to mention that 5 GHz channels are getting clogged these days even on the DFS channels which people shouldn’t be using all the time. I know its not possible for a lot of people, but you’re really better off on even bargain basement maximum cheapo Cat-5e cables.
Gb WiFi speeds and MuMIMO not gonna matter when you have CSMA/CA throwing a metric ton of RTS and CTS packets causing increasing amounts of retries as you add stations.
Probably worst scenario is if you’re living in an apartment surrounded by like 30 stations within range. No amount of 802.11 magic is gonna give you a stable connection.
floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Spot on. Also, the popularization of wifi “smart devices” that often have a buggy or just bad network stack implementation does not help
mlg@lemmy.world 1 week ago
This actually reminded me of an actual instance of this I discovered for a family member.
Their 2.4Ghz devices would just randomly drop connections at seemingly random times, and changing the router didn’t fix anything.
So I fired up bettercap to take a look, and lo and behold it was a GE “smart” oven that would spam advertise its SSID with beacon frames on an interval and would block traffic because all the other devices would see a busy channel.
The funniest thing is said family member specifically decided against using the oven wifi feature because he already knew it was not going to be useful or even reliable, but he had no idea the wifi feature was left on which was causing all the packet drops.
Upon further investigation, we realized he actually did turn it off, but because the tap button was basically at elbow height, it was super easy to accidentally bump and flick back on.
Conclusion is that some GE ovens double as a crappy WiFi jammer lmao.
plantsmakemehappy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
A possible ban on TP-Link routers – one of the most popular router brands in the US – is gaining momentum, as more than half a dozen federal departments and agencies back the proposal, according to a Washington Post report on Thursday
sundray@lemmus.org 2 weeks ago
🙏
1985MustangCobra@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
goverment warns about Wifi network secuirty PRISIM exists.
thermal_shock@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Billionaires buying children exist.
W3dd1e@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Low Level Learning has a good video in TP-Link. Even if they aren’t malicious, they have refused to fix obvious exploits for decades.
viking@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
Totally off topic, but I was reading the article on Fennec (mobile Firefox clone) while playing music over Bluetooth to my car. I was parked waiting for someone, not driving. No streaming service, playing honest to god mp3s from my device, when out of the blue I got VPN ads over the speaker.
Fennec indicated that cnet was playing them, but there as was no video box or other audio player widget active, so it looks like they are splicing invisible audio ads in somehow?
I’m also using ublock origin on mobile plus AdAway (rooted), so that’s not an easy feat.
Could anyone double check? That’s the most obnoxious behavior I’ve experienced in recent time.
Emerald@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Fennec (mobile Firefox clone)
It’s not a Firefox clone, it is Firefox.
viking@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
It’s a clone of the official Firefox repo stripped of all telemetry.
Bazoogle@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Are you sure there wasn’t a video at the top or bottom of the web page? What you were listening to is kind if irrelevant, since if some other media starts playing it’ll pause whatever media was playing before.
viking@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
Nope there wasn’t anything visible, I’ve been scrolling up and down to verify. Unless the video was somehow truncated or scaled to 1x1 px or something.
cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Using Firefox focus and zenarmour on my firewall. Same problem.
viking@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
I’ll do some digging in the code and see if I can come up with a custom filter for ublock.
MajesticTechie@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
Using Firefox. I just had this same experience (- the car) but yeah, I couldn’t find any vid to stop. I ended up just muting the phone
viking@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
I used the volume controls for the website in my phone’s pulldown menu to stop it, then the music player resumed. Still very much unwanted behavior. Will dig into the page source and see if there’s anything hidden.
philpo@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Considering they recently also complained about Mikrotik I would,well, not give to much merit on that shit.
MSids@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Microtik is the router brand that I want to love, I even looked into deploying them when I worked at a service provider. Those little things had more features than anything else, but unfortunately they had such a poor track record with vulnerabilities that they really can’t be considered.
philpo@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Yeah, especially router wise I tend not to recommend them as well, but we widely use OPNsense as FWs now. Switching wise they are good and tbh, their track record got much better. (And everyone elses got worse, looking at you,Forti)
We tend to recommend Omada for smaller clients that would otherwise use ubiquiti (their track record is…far worse) and simply put a OPNsense in front of it. These are small healthcare establishments - the alternative is often far worse (cousin John doing the network or some antique Zyxel the local IT shithead service sold them as new) and with the OPN we can do due dilligence IT security wise.
rarbg@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Source?
bitwolf@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Cursed site is auto playing a video that isnt even visible when on mobile.
fusionsaint@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
This. Jesus fuck I thought I was going insane for a minute. Awful design.
GaryGhost@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Would it just ban the sale, or somehow ban my tp link devices? My tp link WiFi has been going strong for years
avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
The rest of the world would be getting discounts on TP-Link gear.
poccalyps@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Get a Protectlii vault with opnSense. Not horribly expensive and very very secure.
woelkchen@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Do Americans not have FritzBox routers for that crap to be the most popular router?
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
FR even though I hate Republicans and this admin when I saw this headline I thought “good shit, regulate the industry.”
cyberwolfie@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
I was planning to get the OpenWRT One. Any reasons that would be a bad idea?
ProgrammingSocks@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
Do not take what this government says at face value. Palantir has their fingers in it like crazy.
xylogx@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
TP Link is just as bad at security as most other consumer electronics vendors:
melfie@lemy.lol 2 weeks ago
I have a couple older TPLink Wi-Fi 5 routers with OpenWRT. One is used as a router running various services like DHCP, DNS, firewall, VPN, etc., and the other is just an access point. I’ll probably eventually get a rack-mounted router and some Wi-Fi 7/8 access points, but my current setup works well enough, especially since I mostly use Ethernet for anything requiring a fast connection.
Treczoks@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Is there a way to jailbreak them and run them on Linux?
Imhotep@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
OpenWRT
My tplink archer has been running it for 5 years or more without issue*
*excluding human errors
melfie@lemy.lol 2 weeks ago
Same here. Just like a desktop Linux distro transforms a crappy, old Windows machine into something nice, OpenWRT transforms a crappy router into a powerful, often more secure device with advanced features that consumer routers don’t typically have. Consumer router firmware is pretty limiting and I’m too spoiled to ever go back at this point.
Treczoks@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
OK, if it runs OpenWRT, what is their problem?
festus@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Yes; it’s pretty trivial to flash something like OpenWRT on them as they don’t restrict what you can install whatsoever.
PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I just hope the fucking thing still works after the ban
Treczoks@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Maybe because the US agencies have just not found their own backdoors into them…
Tylerdurdon@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
So the government is wiping it’s ass with TP-link, huh?
…holio
atmorous@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
So what ae the best alternatives any of you would recommend?
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
We don’t stand for Chinese surveillance in this country. Our surveillance shall be domestically produced or GTFO.
reksas@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
while understandable, if i was american i might actually prefer surveillance by foreign country. At least if i was part of group in danger like lqbt.
themurphy@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
At least the foreign country wont use the data to arrest and make laws against you.
willington@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
For me it will depend on what that foriegn country is, how it is governed, its cultural norms, things like that.
I don’t have more trust in Chinese government than I do American.
How about some real privacy rights instead of making me choose my surveillers.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Yeah, the worst case is they use it to influence elections. US surveillance will do that and look for “illegal” activity —for some fucked up definition of illegal.
For example, in my state you need to give your ID to sites to look at porn. Fuck that. I don’t trust those sites with that kind of data, even if I trusted that they were trying to keep it private (which I don’t). I use a VPN to avoid this, but I’m not really sure on the legal status of that.
Also, my political views don’t really align with the current administration (or any for that matter, but especially the current one). They’ve already made indications they’d come after people who hold opinions like mine. I trust China won’t send people after me, but I’m not sure about the US.
BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
It’s kinda like my google ethos, Google are already spying on me, I might as well use their phone and then Samsung aren’t spying on me as well.
favoredponcho@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Yep, Google WiFi or Amazon Eero only. Those two definitely don’t have an incentive to log your network traffic or anything.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
they want palintir to do it.
partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
We stand atop, adjacent to, within, underneath, and around foreign surveillance. But stand for? You bet your momma there’s no room for that.
notarobot@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Nah. The Chinese surveillance company would still sell your data to the us
HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Don’t worry you can just subscribe monthly to delete me and they will ask nicely for it to be removed.
Oh wait it doesn’t actually work. Imagine if the people in charge weren’t a thousand years old.
Modest_Toxic@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
With the exception of tick-tock
DarkSideOfTheMoon@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It’s not only about spying but about negligence. TP-LINK routers were found with many security issues and no patches. Some accuse them of do that porpose but might be negligence. Anyway they really do have bad security