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Comment by eqvinox | Hacker News Reader

To be fair, TP-Link routers without OpenWRT installed should be banned, considering their vulnerability history...

But they are nice and cheap OpenWRT platforms. Ban the software instead? ;D

Exactly this. I don't want my source of hardware to dry up, but I'd love if ISPs wouldn't allow the stock firmware to connect to their networks.

I bought a pair of TP-Link units specifically because OpenWRT ran well on them. If I had to get something more expensive, I might not decide to keep a cold spare.

What can be said for those whom throw the "you bought it, you own it" over "nah, you're really just renting it afterall" arguments?

I'm sure you'll be able to still get older gen openwrt compatible stuff.

The newer generations of TP links are a different beast entirely. Doubt you can even set it up local only let alone openwrt it

Yes, but if they did that, they would have to enforce the same rule on routers of US companies. So the net advantage for the US companies would be zero (which I believe is the point - the "hacking fears" is just a smokescreen).

God forbid any of that corrosive communist ``free software'' touch our pure American companies.

I'm wondering if this suspicion should apply to TP-Link wifi range extenders as well as they should be just layer 2 devices. I tried installing OpenWRT on my TP-Link extender, everything was supposed to be compatible, but it did not work.

> TP-Link wifi range extenders as well as they should be just layer 2 devices

Nope. Any device that has a wired Ethernet port and an antenna cannot be just a layer 2 device; WiFi is not just a wireless Ethernet. Also, any device that you can ping by IP address and configure over the network rather than over a serial cable is operating above layer 2 for at least the control plane.

This is not correct, a wifi range extender is a layer 2 forwarder (aka bridge). It does not function as layer 3 forwarder (aka router), only as host, and that host function is theoretically optional.

WiFi in fact goes to great lengths to behave as wireless Ethernet, putting all its complexity on layers below carrying Ethernet frames.

> It does not function as layer 3 forwarder (aka router), only as host, and that host function is theoretically optional.

Set aside the theory and look at how any of the real devices are implemented. These devices are all running Linux, and that Linux OS is managing a minimum of two separate NICs with the full software networking stack. They incorporate all of the software complexity of a full-blown router, and none of the simplicity and security/privacy advantages of an unmanaged Ethernet switch which is a purely L2 device. There's no separation of control plane and data plane; no hardware-accelerated forwarding between Ethernet and WiFi to allow packets to skip a trip through the CPU cores. In fact, it is often the case that the only meaningful difference between a consumer WiFi router and a WiFi extender is that the latter omits the Ethernet switch chip and consequently only has one or two Ethernet ports rather than 5+ ports. Presuming that a WiFi extender is less likely to be nefarious than a WiFi router by analogy to a layer 2 unmanaged Ethernet switch (with at most kilobytes of RAM and likely only an 8-bit or 16-bit microcontroller for a processor core) is entirely wrong.

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