Those mains plug in devices, besides being probably illegal under the
wireless telegraphy act for interference, have been known to upset devices
running from the mains due to the high levels of RF coming in via the mains
itself. Sometimes you can cure this by a ferrite on the mains cabling of the
appliance.
There are a lot of routers around just now which offer the facilities you
want, Mine is fine, but I'd suggest not using an older one if your internet
speed is over a few megs, since they cannot cope with the input from your
isps router in modem mode very well, causing weird lock ups and the like.
Brian

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The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

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Note this Signature is meaningless.!
"Sidney Endon-Lee" wrote in message
...
On Friday, September 11, 2020 at 1:18:31 PM UTC+2, wrote:
Hello all,

I currently have a:

TP-LINK
N600 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router
Model No. TL-WDR3600

(as reported from its admin page)

and have had it for a few years. It has always had a problem with locking
up every two weeks or so, where the wi-fi would stop working, then the
wired connections would pack up. A quick 30 second on & off sorted it. Not
ideal, but live-withable. Apparently it is a known bug, but there have
been no firmware updates for 5 years or so.

Recently the issues have become more frequent. Sometimes the wi-fi will
pack up but the wired connections are fine for days, something I only
noticed after I was out of range of the mains connected wi-fi extender I
have to service the garage with signal.

It does one thing which has proven to be very useful: the USB ports can be
used to host a network folder, and to serve films for the media players,
etc. I would like this feature in a new router. Other than that, no
special requirements.

Can anyone recommend a make / model, or recommend a make / to to
absolutely avoid?

Are current routers a mature sort of technology where an older model will
do fine?

TP-LINK is the current make, are these any better now than they were when
I bought my existing router?

Should I be looking at a different selection of equipment to do what I
want, i.e. a "bog standard" wi-fi router with a Raspberry Pi to act as the
network folder / media server?

Thank you all in advance for any help, it is very much appreciated. I know
next to nothing about networking.

David Paste.

If you are sufficiently 'techie', you might wish to try putting OpenWrt on
it.

https://openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wdr3600

The most recent OpenWrt firmware update was a couple of days ago (Version
19.07.4) , and the OpenWrt firmware often resolves issues not dealt with by
the original manufacturer.

I will not try to provide simplified instructions. Careful reading of the
web-page above and the link to the installation instructions for a related
device ( https://openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wdr4300#installation ) should be
sufficient.

Sid.