[Solved] TP-Link TL-WR1043N/ND v1 LAN Settings

Hi all,

I would like to ask some advice about a situation i have here with my router.
First of all: My Router and OpenWRT version:

|Model|TP-Link TL-WR1043N/ND v1|
|Architecture|Atheros AR9132 rev 2|
|Firmware Version|OpenWrt 18.06.2 r7676-cddd7b4c77 / LuCI openwrt-18.06 branch (git-19.020.41695-6f6641d)|
|Kernel Version|4.9.152|

What i would like to do is; plug my modem cable in the LAN part of my router and that the other 3 LAN ports and Wifi can make use of internet and basically do anthing like on a normal router setup.

Why i want to do that?:
The WAN port and LAN ports are each on it's own 1Gbps but the internal communication in this router between WAN and LAN is way less than that due to hardware limitations.
Now i have a 500Mbit Internet connection and bumped into this limitation.

The internet works just fine if i plug my modem cable into the WAN port but whatever config i try i can't get internet on any of my devices if i plug the modem cable into one of the LAN ports.

Does anyone have a suggestion or perhaps a link to a tutorial that explains how i can properly set this up?

You could try to create a new vlan and assign one of the ports on that vlan to be the new WAN interface.
However with 400MHz single core CPU it's a waste of time to even try that.

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This is an accurate assessment. Single-core, 750-MHz-class, MIPS-based routers can't handle more than 400-500 Mbps through their Ethernet interfaces before the CPU is fully loaded (no SQM, no NAT, no nothing). A 400-MHz core might get half of that. Both those cores from a day when a 30 Mbps connection was fast, and a 100-250 Mbps connection was "crazy expensive". (Your unit dates back to 2010.)

You might get slightly better speeds with "flow offloading", but your connection now outpaces the all-in-one router technology of a decade ago.

4 Likes

Thanks for your insights guys,

I was already kinda fearing that would be the case (with the overall hardware limitation.)
I guess i will go hunt for a decent manageble switch to change/upgrade my network setup.

This might be a strech to ask here but my local retailer has managed Netgear switches for fairly cheap. Do people have good experiences with that brand? (Never used it myself)

It depends on the specific model. I found the ones I had several years ago horrendous to try to manage through their GUI and there was no CLI available for them. Checking my Amazon orders, they were probably the GS108T units. I'm not familiar with their current line.

I find the Cisco SG300-series units, available used in the $100-150 range, to meet my needs. Others have recommended the upper-line ZyXEL units, though I have no personal experience with them.

The TL-WR1043NDv1 has a single CPU port (the internal connection between switch and CPU, through which all traffic that doesn't remain exclusively within the switch fabric (read, pure LAN internal traffic)) must pass through, all 4+1 ethernet ports are part of this switch. As a result it doesn't matter which way you assign the labels, the performance remains constant - all ports have exactly the same connection to the CPU and all routed/ NATed/ firewalled traffic has to go through the bottleneck of the CPU-port and be processed by the (by today's standards) very slow CPU, regardless of how you assign the labels WAN/ LAN between them.

For a 500 MBit/s connection (to be honest, even 100 MBit/s is a stretch for this device and above its weight class) the TL-WR1043NDv1 is totally inadequate, a 10 year old device manufactured with <30 MBit/s throughput in mind can't cope with those speeds. There is a reason why contemporary routers are increasingly switching to ARMv7/ ARMv8 and multi-core designs running 2-6 times as fast as the single CPU core of the TL-WR1043NDv1.

3 Likes

@everyone

Thanks for all the input. I have decided to shop for a switch to replace that old tp-link.

The switch that caught my attention currently is the Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X.
Here is de datasheet of that device:


And also already found out how to enable offload on that thing trough ssh. It should be able to reach around 920Mbit.
I guess it's decent enough for a device that's around €60.
The PoE is a nice bonus for that price :slight_smile:

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