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Comment by mightybyte | Hacker News Reader

This is especially sad because the NYC Mesh project (https://nycmesh.net/) to create a mesh network in NYC uses TP-Link routers pretty heavily.

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Same here in Germany. Most of the "Freifunk" communnities are running on TP-Link routers.

"This is especially sad because the NYC Mesh project (https://nycmesh.net/) to create a mesh network in NYC uses TP-Link routers pretty heavily."

Won't all of those existing TP-Link routers continue to work and be unlocked to flash whatever you like on them ?

Further, aren't there sufficient TP-Link parts in the supply chain from the last 4-5 years that you'll continue to be able to source them ?

Genuinely curious...

Whatever the answer to your question, that's very short term thinking to a longer term issue.

The problem is that this is a short-term solution. Yes, existing routers aren't going to magically stop working, as long as some moron doesn't reflash them with the latest TP-Link firmware for some dumb reason. And for a while, at least, people can buy current models off Ebay or whatever.

But eventually the supply will dry up and all that'll be available will be these locked-down routers, unless you're happy to use 10-20 year old hardware, which (if it even still works) will leave you out of whatever modern, advanced features routers have in 5-15 years. If some other frequency band becomes popular with mobile devices, or some new 802.11* standard comes about that's a big improvement somehow, then you won't be able to use that. Open-source projects like dd-wrt and OpenWrt will die out; who wants to keep working on a project that only works on ancient hardware?

A lot of community meshnet projects rely on their hardware because of the stability and low pricing. NYC Mesh is a great example, but there are dozens more that aren't known as well.

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