TP-Link 2.4GHz N300 Long Range Outdoor CPE for PtP and PtMP Transmission | Point to Point Wireless Bridge | 9dBi, 5km+ | Passive PoE Powered w/Free PoE Injector | Pharos Control (CPE210)

This CPE is great. I've used this in a setup for a family member to get internet out to their gazebo that is about 150ft from their house. Streaming video for watching NFL games, MLB games, movies etc works great without issue. It's an awesome setup! With that, I decided to get one myself to have internet in my detached shop. It's only about 50 feet from my house. I have this device configured as a client to my home wireless network and then running to a small WIFI router in my shop that is in AP mode. Standing in the same room about 20 feet from my home WIFI router it was getting about 75mbps download (2.4ghz band) and with my setup to my shop I get about 60mbps in my shop. So it's a solid connection. Here's the thing that some people MAY be overlooking if they are running a similar setup. I have a 1gbps internet connection. That's NOT the speed I can expect over wireless. If I were to use the 5ghz band I can get decent throughput but I'd have to be pretty close to the home router. Anyway, this CPE says 300mbps throughput in the 2.4 ghz band. IF you were to get that throughput that is ONLY to the CPE, NOT to anything that is using it to access the internet. The catch (for me) was the ethernet port. It's a 10/100mbps so that's where the bottleneck is in my scenario. The fastest I could hope to get is 100mbps. For me, there's nothing wrong with that and it will work great. I'm sure for a lot of people's needs this will work great. I just wanted to put it out there in case people had certain expectations. If ou really need the greater speeds, get the TP-Link CPE710 as it has the 10/100/1000mbps ethernet connection and the ethernet interface won't be the bottleneck any longer. Bottom line: Good, reliable, quality product. 100% recommend!

I got two of these to provide internet connection to my detached garage for security cameras. The distance is at least 200ft and the first 20-30 ft go through the attic of my condo and my neighbor's. The first one is in the attic as an AP (access point) (Ethernet to the router) pointing at the direction of the garage (the condo rules don't allow me to put it outside). Like I said, between my condo and the garage there is another condo. The second unit is also in the garage (cannot have it outside) as a repeater. My phone sees the AP from the condo but the Internet is not usable. If I use the second unit as a repeater, I get a solid 5 to 15 Mbps. Mind you I haven't optimized their placement yet, I just placed them quickly to check the connection. I should be able to raise both units a few more feet and potentially improve the signal/penetration a bit. The RF of the units seem very solid and I love their interface. Many parameters to configure and monitor the connection status. The units support as low as 5MHz BW which can help with very long distances, however, my phone wouldn't connect with anything less than 20 MHz (couldn't see the AP). I guess less than 20MHz can be used when one unit is AP and other one a client. Finally, this setup is less than 1/3 of the cost of another WIFI repeater system by CC Vector, it offers a better interface and actually works. The CC Vector gave me a 25% signal but no usable Internet. Update April 20th, 2019: Before mounting the units higher, occasionally the upload speed from the garage to the condo would be practically unusable. I suspect interference from one of the several other APs in the condo complex (the survey tool picked up 96 APs!). I was able to make the connection more stable by changing the channel, and limiting the max speed and bandwidth (again it is very nice to have these options). After that I got around to mount the units higher which helped to make the signal more stable and I didn't have problems since. In order to be able to use a bandwidth less than 20 Mhz and set the unit in the garage in the client mode, I bought a cheap router (TL-WR940N, about the same price as an AP only) that I connected to the client CPE210. Originally, the router was set as an AP but I ended up using it as a router for utilizing data filtering options that were not available at the AP mode. If I had a line-of-sight I would have used the 5GHz CPE units since the 5Ghz band is less crowded. I am pretty sure the 5Ghz signal wouldn't fair well going through multiple walls and roofs. Still, very pleased and I hope they last a long time.

I loved the price of this TP-Link 2.4GHz N300 Long Range Outdoor CPE for PtP and PtMP Transmission. It also includes the Power Over Ethernet adapter needed. Since most routers don't provide POE, it's a necessary item. It arrived quickly in excellent condition. Installation was easy, but the software setup was difficult. The power cord for the POE adapter is about 12" long. I had to use a power strip to get power to the adapter. The average person would have difficulty getting this CPE to work. They want you to give your computer a static IP of 192.168.0.10 which was difficult for me. When I set that static IP on my computer, I lost internet connection because I get DHCP through my provider and the router is 192.168.50.1. I'm pretty good with computers and software, but I had a lot of trouble with this. I finally got to the Pharos interface, and things were easier after that. The documentation that comes with the CPE and the support on the TP-Link website didn't really help me get it to work. Once set up, I now have my wifi extended a half mile to another residence. This device has many capabilities and functions, and can transmit the signal more than 20 miles line of sight. I would probably buy it again, but I wouldn't want someone to need professional assistance to have it installed and set up.

UPDATE….I have now used this product for over a year to transmit WiFi from my cabin to a metal shed 100 yards away. It has performed flawlessly. Not a single hiccup. I use it primarily for WiFi calling/texts/internet searches on my phone. I added a wireless security camera so I can watch over the tractor, 4 wheelers, boat, etc when I’m not there. I added smart switches so I can switch off the shed lights at 10pm when I look out the cabin window and realize I left them on. Finally I put in a television with a Roku with the Tablo app to wirelessly access the cabin TV antenna. I can now turn on the football/basketball/etc game while I putz around with my chores. It works surprisingly well. Original Review…I spend a lot of time in a metal building barn 100 yards from my cabin. My eero mesh in the cabin will not penetrate the metal building. I purchased 2 of these cpe510 units. I installed one as the host in the cabin connected by Ethernet to the primary eero router. The other is mounted outside the metal barn with an Ethernet cable running inside to another eero router. IT WORKS! Coverage in the shed is excellent. No more walking outside the shed to make a call, send a text, or do a search. No more stopping work when I’m expecting a call. I am very pleased. I must say, the setup of the antennae was unusually difficult. The provided instructions were pitifully inadequate. I am handy, but no IT expert. Among many other steps, you are required to set separate static IP addresses for the host and client antennae. Even drafting that sentence makes my eyes glaze over. 🙄. I could not have completed it without the patient assistance of Edemer Nunez at TP Link support. He spent 45 minutes in the phone shepherding me through the setup process. Whatever they are paying him…it’s not enough. I own several products from TP Link. Particularly the Kasa 360 degree cameras. Excellent products that are easy to install and use. Not so with the CPE 510. The product works well. TP Link must simplify the installation process, AND, give Edemer a raise!

There is so much to potentially like about this product but ultimately I never got it to work in the field. This product fits in a difficult niche: offering features beyond the capability of most SOHO devices, but clearly not catering to network professionals. This requires relying on a web interface instead of CLI. Worst of all is that you MUST go through the quick config before you can get into the details of config through the web interface. Quick config determines what the interfaces are named (the ETH interface can be called LAN or WAN depending on which quick config you choose, etc). Quick config also forces you into routing or bridging, but you'd be hard pressed to figure that out from the documentation because it is severely dumbed down to the point of being essentially meaningless. All the docs will do is walk you through one "recipe" config to get a web cam attached to a single computer that is not already on any existing network. Not enough details for anyone who understands TCP/IP to know what's going on, too much information for the average home user to do anything with other than follow the recipe. The most frustrating feature of all is what appears to be a late addition to the product's security. To extend an existing network you need to be in "AP Router" quick config apparently. This causes the ETH interface to be named WAN since they assume it's hooked directly to the internet. It also forces the WLAN interface into bridge mode instead of routing mode and calls the interface BRIDGE. All of this would be fine but to protect the users from themselves it immediately deactivates the web interface on the ETH "WAN" port to prevent hackers from getting in to your modem. Anybody see the problem with that yet? Yep, you are essentially locked out of ALL the advanced features because there is no longer any way to get into the web interface. If it doesn't work, and you only get 6 questions in quick config to choose from, you need to factory reset and start over and get locked out again. After probably 2 dozen factory resets and some help from the forum deciphering what the instructions actually meant, I did get it working in the lab. It worked great actually and as frustrating as the VERY limited quick config choices were, they did force me into a working bridging config. It wasn't how I wanted it to work but it worked. Here I hit the biggest frustration of all: it doesn't act consistently after hard resets. I typically want to see multiple power cycles in the lab to have confidence that it works and take it out into the field. It just doesn't work that reliably. Sometimes it comes up on the manually set IP address, sometimes it reverts back to factory default. Sometimes the DHCP server starts, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it comes up split brain where it remembered the WLAN settings but forgets the LAN settings, and sometimes it just reboots itself continuously and can never even be pinged on LAN. After a couple of dozen more factory resets (in hindsight it must have been acting erratically all along) I had what seemed like a working config. It survived 3 power cycles in the lab so I took it in the field. Local ethernet never once came up, had the DHCP server start, and not spontaneously reboot. I've wasted hours on this thing, time to return it unfortunately and try a more expensive option. Too bad, they clearly spent a lot of time on this product and I really wanted it to work for me.

STRONG signal. It's an antenna, what else can be said? It's a big flaky to get setup, you'll need to have a basic understanding of IP addresses and how to temporarily adjust the adapter in your own computer to get through the initial configuration, but once that's done, it produces a very strong signal. I have both the CPE210 for a specific application, and the TP-Link EAP650 outdoor antenna. Both work very well and both produce robust signals.

Over the years, have setup many routers/access points/repeaters. I have a particularly difficult setup in this case with many acres to cover with cameras' with the routers being in direct sunlight and pouring rain situations. I was replacing a high performance router that got zapped by an electrical storm with a couple of these. Blowing out a 300 dollar router vs a 40 dollar router is a no brainer. But I knew going in, that these weren't going to perform as well. Mainly because they are fairly directional. instead of omni. I only needed 2.4ghz for these cameras. And they are all HD. Traditionally this is a pain in the butt because you only have so much band width to allocate. Usually you don't get to know what the router thinks about this on a individual basis. But this router has a SUPERIOR gui in it. For one, it responds nearly instantly. Whereas most other routers there's an annoying delay. It has an excellent graphing analytics, and group and per station real-time readout of signal/noise ratio and bandwidth used. This may seem unimportant to the casual user. But this is very important to know what each station is consuming and how well it's performing "live". I was able to fine-tune each camera's res/framerate to fit within the 300mbps this unit can handle. And to know the strength "live". In fact, the gui was obviously designed by a no-nonsense expert engineer. He put exactly and "only" what was needed on each and every page. You can fine-tune this baby up like a well oiled machine. As well as all the modern optimization techniques possible. The prices was good enough to buy a couple of them instead of one super one. These are POE so you can hang several and chain them around without resorting to ethernet switches. The antenna doesn't beat a super high performance router. BUT you can put it up a pole and get the same result. Since it is semi directional all your power is going where you want it. If that's not what you want. Its inexpensive enough to hang another one going the other way. Which then DOUBLES your bandwidth to 600mbps. These are obviously designed to work together. And if something blows one out. No big deal I am going to buy a carton of them now. What I have written here applies to people setting up large scale camera systems. If your just looking to get some wifi to watch youtube and netflix you will be fine. It's a very capable little thing. But it's strength lies in it's ability to co-exist with others, with a pricepoint to make that economically feasible.

*5 month update* while im still not thrilled about the false advertising mentioned below, I am a bit impressed by this. in bridge mode this thing is rock solid stable. I have not had a single issue with this loosing connection to my main router, it just works. this provides a data connection to a remote POE switch that runs six POE security cameras, three of those are 4K cameras. I couldn't ask for better reliability. I do have ping watch dog enabled on the unit so if it cant ping my routers IP it will auto reboot after 3 failed pings 1 minute apart, so it is possible it could loose connection from time to time but it fixes itself before I notice. while this will work for my needs it looses 3 stars for blatant false advertising. while the wireless does have a theoretical connection speed of 300mbps the ethernet port is only 10/100. in bridge mode using the ethernet as the output I cant use the max bandwidth. doing a speed test I only get 93mbps throughput out of the ethernet port. another major issue is this item does not adhere to normal POE standards i was hoping my outdoor POE switch would power this but when connected the switch doesn't indicate a device connected to the port and the AP doesn't power up, I have to use the included POE injector. this is an issue since the POE switch is hardwired and has no outlets near it. I'm considering cutting the plug off the injector and hardwiring it inside the housing with the POE switch. don't get me wrong, like most TP link items, this unit is quality but if it had a gigabit ethernet port like it should have had and followed normal POE standards instead of requiring the included injector it could have been much better. Photos are of my completed remote security cam POE switch using this as it’s connection to my network. I haven’t deployed it yet. Due to the Poe issue I mention above I had to glue the included POE injector into the enclosure and cut the plug off to hard wire it. I know it the pics the ground isn’t covered with shrink wrap and that is because it doesn’t have to be, the ground shorting to the case is a good thing. The hot and neutral wires have shrink wrap to protect against short circuits. Not much room left in the enclosure for 8 camera drops but I’ll manage. *UPDATE* this device does actually follow a POE standard, its just passive POE. My switch is for active POE devices. a vast majority of POE devices are active. Passive is a cheaper standard to follow. Passive POE will not work with active since active POE switched communicate with the powered device to determine its power needs. the switch cant negotiate with passive devices so it just ignores that something was plugged in.