TP link wifi extender

[allot27]

Hi I Just joined voda and among the many limitations found strangest andoften reported but not solved is ability to access internet via a TP Link wifi extender.

Connects fine to router but internet access denied. This is a piece of hardware thatwas fine with both BT and Virgin in the past.

Found numerous reports but no solutions on this forum does this mean that voda are controlling what cab access internet via their router and could lead to potential problems re smart home products via voda in the future.

Few weeks in and regretting move to voda....

[Luciftian]

I am having the exact same issue.
Was transferred just before 1AM last night to Vodafone from TalkTalk and I have been losing my marbles up until now (10 pm, with two hours sleep) with this router, trying to get it to work with my tplink range extenders (TL-WA85RE and TL-WA855RE) and with two tplink adaptors (TL-WR702N) in client mode, which have worked fine for years with TalkTalk.

Also had to reset ALL of my smart devices as the vodafone router would not allow me to use my previous wifi password as it was deemed weak - it's been an absolute nightmare. And had to disable 5g completely to set these up. 

Now one of the four tplink adaptors (TL-WA85RE) gets some access to the internet (normally it connects without internet) but only on my windows laptop, on the mac it is a nightmare, it's slow (dial up slow) and keeps on dropping connection.

[martipants]

Ok, It took a couple of days but I finally sussed out how to get TP-Link TL-WA850RE extender working on Vodafone router.

Ok, first reset the TP-Link (pencil in hole on bottom) and then plug a router cable from vodafone router to TP-LINK.

You will need to have both the Vodafone router Gateway app open (http://192.168.1.1) and the TP-Link app (http://192.168.1.23), but here's what everyone has missed, that won't open in firestorm, open in Chrome and post the TP_LINK url into that.

https://www.tp-link.com/uk/support/faq/1400/

That is the website I followed to get the TP_LINK setup

Work your way through that, change extender name to something you can recognise like vodaphone-TP-LINK, keep the vodaphone password.

Complete the various TP-LINK stages and save, it will take over a minute to do all the changes and reboot but when completed you should see your new extender in the wifi list, select it and connect, it will ask for a pin, but just bellow is the option to add your password, select that and copy your Vodafone password in, after a few seconds you should have a valid conection to the TP-LINK.

After that you can remove the cable and plug the TP-LINK somewhere further away, you will have to type the same password into each computer you connect, so take a picture with your phone of the password label from the setup guide.

Hope this helps

[CB12345]

To confirm I've essentially just done (Sept 2023) the same as Martipants for my TL-WA850RE and it worked. My technique after many failed WPS, TP-Link URL, Smartphone etc attempts was:

Re-set the extender via the pin hole

Use a Laptop to connect to the extender (it should say connected but no internet)

Use Chrome and directly type in the IP address 192.168.0.254 (found via https://static.tp-link.com/manual/2021/202106/20210610/1910013049_Range%20Extender%20Setup%20Help_RE... )

That leads to the set up page, where it found my router, which I selected - renamed the extender to something different, added the password, saved it all and then after initially thinking it had failed waited a while and suddenly my newly named extender appeared and had full internet access.

I think the key is use a laptop and Chrome not a phone (that failed even though I did the same) to try the set up and type the IP address numbers, not use any of the URLs - . Also - I think this extender only connects to 2.4Ghz - I have mine split and it didn't see the 5GHz one. Good luck!

[CB12345]

and one other thing - I didn't need to connect any cables