TP-Link ER605 V2 Wired Gigabit VPN Router, Up to 3 WAN Ethernet Ports + 1 USB WAN, SPI Firewall SMB Router, Omada SDN Integrated, Load Balance, Lightning Protection

Our home is 4,000 sqft on two levels and the wifi distribution was built using an older Netgear wifi/router with a first generation Rockspace wifi mesh. As more smart devices, tablets, IOT's and such being added, the system really began to choke and just couldn't handle the load. That's when I decided to rebuild the topology using a standalone router and upgraded wifi mesh. There isn't a huge selection of standalone routers in the home networking category, and the selection came down between Ubiquity and TP-Link. I settled on the TP-link ER605 and am very pleased with the overall results, though it did come with pretty steep learning curve, due to its (in my opinion) confusing GUI interface. For instance: setting a DHCP address pool is hidden within a category called "Network List". All that is displayed is a Network Name "LAN", the IP address of the router, and a couple other parameters. You must select an edit icon to expand the display which will allow you to customize your LAN set up. It's subtle, and easy to miss if you don't understand the GUI design intention of the programmers at TP-Link. The MAC/IP Reservation controls are straightforward, but there is no obvious way to sort the list by IP or MAC address. I have nearly 70 devices hanging off my network, and not being able to sort the lists makes for a tedious effort when looking for a specific device. I contacted TP-Link support about this and told me that, no, you cannot sort the DHCP IP listing, but you can if you use their add-on OMADA Hardware Controller (at a cost of about $100), but I really don't want another layer of hardware or complexity to deal with. There are other quirks in the interface that slowed my setup time, only because I had to spend more time just to find where the specific option I was looking for is buried within the GUI. Now, anytime you migrate to a new topology, there will be a learning curve, but most of the quirks I ran up against could easily be addressed with a bit of effort on the GUI design. Things like Port Forwarding (Called "Virtual Servers" in the GUI), Dynamic DNS, and OpenVPN services are all there and are fairly straight-forward to set up. So, overall, this little modem has delivered everything I expected and need and this, coupled with the new wifi mesh system (Eero 6+ with 4 nodes with backhaul to the router) has dramatically improved our overall network and wifi service throughout the house. The ER605 modem has proven to be very well suited and is a fast and efficient workhorse of a router. With a bit of pain, effort, and patience to get through the learning curve of the interface, there will be only a few minor disappointments in the interface.

This product is marketed to small business needs, I am using it for a home router, and it works well for that but requires some technical aptitude. Our old WiFi 5 (802.11ac) system was dying. Big house, need at least two access points. Our access point died (would lose connectivity once a week, then once a day) and our combo router/access point was starting to have issues, so it was time to replace it. I went with TP-Link Omada specifically because I wanted affordable ceiling-mount access points that uplink (backhaul) over Ethernet and can be individually replaced/upgraded as needed, separate from the router. I wanted Omada because of the ease of administration of everything through a single interface. The ER605v2 is the least expensive TPLink Omada based router I could find and I like the fact that it offers the ability to connect to two separate WAN uplinks for redundancy. It does have a stand-alone configuration interface but I'm using an Omada hardware controller to configure it. It's boot time is longer than I would like but since the initial setup I have not had to reboot it. I do recommend a UPS so that it doesn't need to be booted after a power failure. The Omada controller interface can be somewhat confusing to understand but once you have it doing what you want it to do, it just works. I get the full gigabit download/upload my ISP offers. For a router without built-in WiFi, this is an excellent option *especially* if you plan to use Access Points controlled by an Omada controller. I was able to do some basic VLAN configuration (e.g. separating IoT devices from main LAN) with it despite not having any L3 switches on my network, but for some VLAN capabilities apparently you need one model up (ER7206). It works well. I have not (yet) tried the VPN features.

Perfect so far. I replaced my old Cisco RV042G with this, and what a difference! Download speed went up around 10x all around and our internet is in general working better. I had no trouble getting my existing WAP and wireless devices on the internet through this new router. Small learning curve with the interface, but it's all there. Keep scrolling down and clicking the arrows and you'll find the setting you're looking for.

It required effort to set up my task (MAC filtering), but I managed to make it work. Although I am not a professional network engineer and possess only basic knowledge, I'd rather consider myself an amateur in networking. Upon receiving the product, I found that it did not come with the latest firmware, and the essential function I purchased it for was missing. I resolved this issue through a two-step firmware upgrade, but it demanded careful attention, patience, and persistence on my part. To be honest, I contemplated returning it three times due to inconvenient flaws in the product design. These included the administrator panel going offline after a period of inactivity, apparent issues with MAC filtering in the LAN-to-LAN mode (or again, I might be wrong, I just couldn't make it work), a considerably lengthy reboot time, and the very delayed reappearance of the web panel. There was another confusing point. The purchase's original purpose was to isolate a small network of security PoE cameras through the MAC address filtering feature to increase home network security. So after I reconnected my PoE switch through this router to perform that filtering, all my cameras had to be restarted as their network did not change automatically. Probably, this is a downside of my SECURITY CAMERAS with their limitations, not of the router, as my laptop reconnects easily every time I physically switch connections from one network to another. So be aware of this issue. I was lucky that I could reboot my cameras easily as their PoE switch is on my work table. If I did not have access to that, the cameras might have gone offline for some time. Despite these challenges, I decided to give it a final chance and eventually succeeded. Taking into account the product's price and the TP-Link Live Support's willingness to assist me, I exercised patience and thoughtfulness in finding a suitable solution before considering giving up. Over time, I began to experience routing issues with this router. Automatic DNS resolution periodically fails with dns_probe_finished_nxdomain error. After receiving the dns_probe_finished_nxdomain error, it takes around 1-3 minutes, then it eventually resolves, and the connection works. This issue ultimately led me to rate it 3 stars instead of 4, as it's becoming too problematic. Fortunately, for cameras, where the connection to a few constant IPs remains active, all routing tables, etc., are kept up to date. However, if you want to connect your laptop or—G-d forbid!—your entire company network, you might encounter unexpected and painful problems. It's very sad that the router does not do a normal routing job - there is no local DNS solution provided. I have the latest firmware installed - ER605(UN)_V2.6_2.2.6 Build 20240718. If you are connected to a VPN, it does address resolution work for you, so with VPNs it works fine. My cameras, again, have no problems as they all connect to the same IPs to operate properly. Update: the dns_probe_finished_nxdomain issue is gone now. I am not sure now if it was a glitch on the side of my ISP, or it was the router. Back to 4 stars.

TP-Link ER605 V2 Review: An Unbeatable Prosumer and Small Business Workhorse** The TP-Link ER605 V2 is not your average home router; it's a dedicated wired VPN router that occupies a unique and valuable niche. For its remarkably low price, it delivers a feature set and reliability that far surpasses any consumer-grade all-in-one unit, making it an absolute essential for tech-savvy users, prosumers, and small businesses. **Designed for Performance and Reliability** Right out of the box, the ER605 V2 feels like a serious piece of hardware. Its all-metal casing aids in heat dissipation, ensuring stable performance during continuous operation. With five Gigabit Ethernet ports, its core functionality is incredibly flexible: you can configure up to three WAN (Internet) ports for load balancing or failover, and use the remaining LAN ports for your internal network. The inclusion of a USB port that can function as an additional WAN for a 4G/5G modem is a brilliant touch, providing a crucial backup internet connection for critical operations. **The VPN Powerhouse** This is where the ER605 truly shines. It supports a wide array of VPN protocols, including OpenVPN, L2TP/IPsec, PPTP, and notably, WireGuard®—a modern protocol renowned for its high speed and security. Setting up a secure remote access VPN for your home network is straightforward through the Omada controller software. You can securely access your network files, security cameras, or NAS from anywhere in the world as if you were locally connected. For a small business, it can easily handle dozens of simultaneous VPN tunnels for remote employees. The hardware-accelerated VPN performance ensures that you don't suffer a massive speed penalty, a common issue with cheaper routers trying to handle encryption. **The Omada Ecosystem: A Key Consideration** It's crucial to understand that the ER605 is designed to be managed. While it has a basic standalone web interface, its full potential is unlocked when adopted by a TP-Link Omada Software Controller (a free application you install on a PC or server) or a dedicated Omada Hardware Controller. This centralized management is a game-changer, allowing for seamless control of multiple Omada access points, switches, and routers from a single pane of glass. This makes network-wide settings like VLANs, firewall rules, and guest policies incredibly easy to manage. **Who Is This For?** * **The Advanced Home User:** Someone with a home lab, a NAS, IP cameras, or a desire for robust network segmentation and a reliable site-to-site or remote access VPN. * **The Small Business/Startup:** Needs a cost-effective, rock-solid gateway with multi-WAN failover to ensure uptime and VPN capabilities for a remote workforce. * **The Tech Enthusiast:** Anyone looking to step up from consumer "gamer" or "mesh" routers to a more professional, stable, and feature-rich networking setup. **Final Verdict** The TP-Link ER605 V2 is a no-frills, high-value champion. It forgoes the flashing lights and simplified apps of consumer gear to deliver what truly matters: unwavering stability, powerful VPN functionality, and flexible internet redundancy. The requirement for a separate controller might be a small hurdle for some, but it's a small price to pay for the enterprise-grade features and control you gain. If you need a reliable, secure, and scalable network foundation, the ER605 V2 is, without a doubt, one of the smartest and most rewarding networking purchases you can make.

This is a great multi-WAN router with flexibility to have one to three WAN ports. Two ports are fixed LAN. The router allows you to have a fail-over mode for WANs that is somewhat limited. Each WAN can fail over to one other port, but they cannot have a secondary WAN fail over to a tertiary WAN. So there is some limitation for complex (3 WAN systems), which is likely a rare situation. There is also a rough load balancing on WANs based upon numbers you enter for each WAN (TX/RX), which are usually supposed to be the bandwidths of the WANs in kBPS. Mixing fail-over and load balancing seem a bit tricky if you don't want a secondary WAN to have any traffic at all until failover. The router automatically checks for up-status of WANs. Lots of other functionality in this router besides the Multi-WAN function. Easy to use web interface, but unfortunately have not gotten https to work on it yet. Two ports are LAN. One port is fixed WAN. Two other ports are configurable to be WAN or LAN. So you have have three WAN and two LAN. You could have one WAN and four LAN, etc. I used this router to have a primary WAN (Comcast) and secondary WAN (Orbic hot spot from Verizon - hard wired Ethernet). This seems to work well. I am using it to a potential (still playing with it) third WAN. Multiple weeks. No issue. I was using an Edge Router for this before - but the Edge Router seems to regularly drop packets while this one does not. In my system, the LAN output of this router goes into the main router for the home, a WIFI 6 router with other functionality and mesh devices.

I spent a TON of money on this ER605 and an OC300, along with several switches (24pt and several 8pt units), a lot of WAPs and more based on the positive reviews here. Well the reviews must be padded or fabricated by the company (who apparently doesn't read and certainly doesn't respond to any of the reviews here) because this unit pretty much SUCKS. Latency is terrible, turning 14ms pings into 44-540ms on average. It regularly freezes, hiccups and otherwise requires reboots in the middle of the day, even though the logs show little to nothing in the way of problems and the ISPs attached remain in an unchanged, running state. This is truly frustration in a box… The fail-over feature is a joke; spotty at best with large lag times IF it works at all (very rare that it works at all and when it does, it takes several minutes to do so no matter the settings.) Aggregation doesn't work in any way, shape or form. And the real icing on the cake is there is NO local DNS solution provided AT ALL. This is a basic feature that even the cheapest, worst equipment brands supply, yet TP-Link seems to think isn't necessary to include. It IS NECESSARY - by very definition!!! Unless you like going back about 30 years in network capability... AND, the entire Omada promise is reduced to almost nothing without it, unless you like remembering or documenting every single device’s IP address… HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT. For the load balancing feature, if you want the unit to test all ISPs/WAN connections to suggest and implement a load balancing formula, the speed testing algorithm often gets hung and will 'spin' for hours or days if you let it. You can just enter the balancing ratio yourself (which most likely you will be forced to do because the auto-ratio speed test routine will probably just loop forever as mentioned) because even when the auto-ratio test does actually complete, the ratio it suggests is grossly inaccurate relative to known statistics. I purchased all this TP-Link equipment to replace an older Ubiquiti infrastructure because Ubiquiti's newer UniFi products have become garbage themselves, and Ubiquiti doesn't seem to care. Perhaps both companies are secretly one and the same because TP-Link's products are just as bad or even worse (i.e. no local DNS - at least UniFi gear DOES have that, as it should!) and their support is about equal - non-existent. Calls (well messages left), emails, posts on their support forums, etc. that are requests for support go unanswered. The few answers that do come offer little to no help, and a “just wait, we’ve put in a request” is the best I’ve seen in about a year’s time. So the supposed TP-Link "lifetime warranty" is basically useless. A lifetime warranty with no one to honor it is no warranty at all. As the headline says - AVOID! Unless you LIKE continuous frustration, outages and below lackluster performance... If you do, this gear is definitely for you; go for it and good luck with that! I am beyond disappointed and feel I wasted thousands of dollars in a system that I cannot trust. As much as I hate to say it (and I do), I guess I’m going back to Ubiquiti and scrapping all this TP-Link junk. Update Sept 2023: I didn’t go back to Ubiquiti, but instead purchased a Peplink Balance Two (WAY more expensive than the ER605 mind you) to replace the TP-Link ER605, and it actually WORKS. And it has expected basic functionality, like local DNS resolution, etc. I’ll be converting all my TP-Link equipment as time and budget allows since removing the ER605 dilutes the Omada management platform value proposition close to entirely. My advice: unless you just want unmanaged network equipment, stay away from TP-Link.

I absolutely could not believe this could be had for anything like sixty bucks! If it didn't have all the Omada stuff (which I don't use because I don't know enough about it yet and because a lot of my network stuff is pretty old) this thing would still be an absolute steal! I have two (total) of the ports configured as WAN ports. On the one that's a fixed WAN port, I've got an LM1200 LTE modem. That's T-Mobile. On the second port, which can be configured as WAN or LAN, I've got a TP-link ADSL/VDSL modem that I already had. This router, of course does all the actual connecting once the modems are done syncing. The T-Mobile (4G LTE) on the WAN port connected immediately, in under 15 seconds and all I had to do was click <Save> on the settings it came up with. It has a NanoSIM, of course, and it doesn't even need user | pass. The DSL on the WAN/LAN port, was another story. It came up with everything (Except username and password, of course), but it just wouldn't connect. It even had me thinking the password must not be what I thought it was. Well, at >major east coast telecom provider< (starts with a "V"), there are at least 3 levels of techs between you and the guy who can actually do something with the DSLAM at the other end. Put me through the wringer all day. I finally got one of them to create a repair ticket. According to this thing's log, they tried pinging it at 12:33 while we were grocery shopping and the router called it a "ping of death" and just tossed it. Then there were a few lines above my pay grade. Then at 12:58 another "ping of death" and seconds later, it connected!! The point is, it was the other end's fault. One of the techs had told me they don't even use Username and Password on the DSL lines anymore, but I consider that a rumor. My best guess is that the DSLAM encountered a brand new router on the other end with a different MAC address and all, considered it "suspicious" or something, and refused to connect. The point is, it connected immediately when it could, without me doing anything except talking to tech support "monkeys" for hours, but that's absolutely not this router's fault! And it keeps a great log! The ports are all gigabit! My whole wired network, now, is gigabit thanks to this thing. It has MANY, MANY settings. Pretty much anything you could want. It doesn't have wireless, but that's actually kind of a plus; it makes it so you can choose your wireless AP's carefully and get good stuff. You can have up to 4 internet sources with this thing!! It has (In a pulldown menu) PPPoE, Static IP, Dynamic IP, L2TP, and PPTP. The LTE is Dynamic IP, BTW. I also have a 24 port gigabit switch (also TP-Link), so I could actually even more without running out of ports. I consider this device to be an awful lot of bang for the buck! Very intelligently engineered! As for me, specifically, I'm watching YouTube videos at either 720P or 1080P, as the wife is watching Korean "dramas" on a Roku and an Android pad all at the same time. It's just smooth. And, finally our phone line got so bad a few days ago, that one could not hear a phone call over all the snapping and crackling. The DSL tried to hang in, but eventually, the modems gave up, at least for awhile, and disconnected. You wouldn't even know unless you looked it up in the router!!! We still had good internet!! So, I can also vouch for the load balancing and the failover! I'd buy it again in an instant! In fact, if I remember right, it also gives you several choices for how to determine if a connection is up. Again, if I remember right, default is a ping. But it knew the DSL modem had disconnected and it knew when it reconnected. What's not to like?