TP-Link is one of major wireless product manufacturer and distributor in the world. I have been interested to see if the TL-Link radios and antenna are good or better for WISP equipment. Here I wanted to write note on CPE510 wireless long distance internet distribution. The testing, how good they are, how easy is it to configure them, whether the link is stable or not, the distance between the CPE510.
So, I have 5GHz PtP(Point to Point) link setup using two TP-Link CPE510 radio antenna. One is placed on a tower on my office building and one is placed at my home roof top. The CPE510 at my office is configured as AP(Access Point). The CPE510 at my home is configured as a station. The picture below shows CPE510 installed at my home.
I used the Archer C20 dual band(2GHz and 5GHz) home router to the CPE510 at home. The distance between my home and office is 300m. The office building is tall so the distance is bit higher than the horizontal distance between my office and my home. The following picture shows the CEP510 configured as AP installed in my office balcony.
There was no problem connecting or paring te CPE510. I was able to successfully connect to the internet from my office at home. But this is only for 300m. I need to test it at a larger distance. But I can provide internet to clients by using CPE510 and home router. The home router cost about 2000 to 3000 which is paid by the client. But I have to provide the CPE510 which costs 8000. I think I can use the TP-Link CPE510 as base station AP to serve multiple clients using different SSID. That is setup point to multi-point links(PtMP).
I tried to pair it with Ubiquiti LiteBeam 5AC and LiteAP to CPE510 but I could not connect them together. I think that is because the litebeam and liteAP uses 5AC and CPE510 supports 5 n/g/b protocols. I thought they would could be connected. So the supported 5Ghz 803.11 protocols are important.
Another thing I noticed is that CPE510 radio cannot tilted like many Ubiquiti products. However, when scanned from customer CPE510 acting as station(STA), the Access Point(AP) CPE510 was found easily so no problem.
