If you were expecting the router to look a little cheap and nasty then think again! The TL-WR741ND looks pretty good, clad in glossy white and black acrylic. You’ll find LEDs for Power, System, Wireless LAN, Ethernet Ports 1-2, WAN (for connection to an ADSL/Cable Modem) and a button for the routers “QSS” wireless security encryption button.
At the rear of the device, remove the setup sticker and you’ll discover the antenna socket, reset button, 4 Ethernet ports, WAN socket (for your telephone line) and a power socket. On the underside of the router are screw fixings for wall mounting (but you won’t find any screws in the box). The aesthetics, however, are spoiled somewhat by attaching the large old-school antenna which will have you partying like it’s 2005.
Installation
The TL-WR741ND offers two methods to configure the device once you’ve got the hardware connected. Either run the included Resource CD, which provides a simple to use walkthrough, or alternatively, connect to the device using it’s IP address (192.168.1.1.) and run a Quick Setup Wizard directly from the router. Ten European languages are supported on the device.
The setup wizard walks you through the setup in a warm, friendly and visual way ensuring you understand what to do at each step. It was good to see little touches included like the ability to save your configuration information on the desktop in a text file. Certainly the router setup experience was no worse than routers many more times the TP-Link’s price. The TL-WR741ND also ticks the box for wireless security, with WPA2-PSK supported, which is a more secure and more modern protocol than WEP.
Connecting additional devices to the network is helped by the router’s QSS (Quick Secure Setup) feature, which uses Wi-Fi Protected Setup to connect computers to the router courtesy of a PIN code. To connect, simply search for available networking on the PC you wish to connect. Unfortunately the feature did not seem to work for us until we flashed the firmware to the latest version (currently 3.11.1 Build 100312 Rel.42991n).
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