If you want reliable Wifi at home, get yourself Ubiquity access points and throw away TP-Link. The issue is not the protocol. After many years of unplugging and plugging back in my TP-link router I know that they are cursed.
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I have "enterprise" TP-Link equipment for my house which I bought 3 years ago now and am very happy with it, in particular I'm using:
- 4x EAP245 Access Points
- 1x SG3428 Switch (the APs came with PoE injectors and I wanted a fan-less switch, hence why the switch is not PoE enabled)
I rent out a room on my property and have my tenant on a separate VLAN to the main house. I also have my IoT devices on a separate VLAN.
I use a generic PC with pfSense as my "router".
My only complaint is that their Omada Controller software doesn't want to run as a Windows Service (I'm not interested in trying to manage a Linux box). Fortunately, it's not required at all, but is useful for centralized configuration management and facilitation of handover of WiFi clients between APs.
Before I moved into my current large-ish place, I used "cheap" ISP supplied TP-Link routers with WiFi, and aside from limited speed capabilities, were 100% reliable for me, in particular I used the following two models:
- TL-WR840N
- Archer C20.
I also use a few cheap (but again fully reliable) 5 port and 8 port TP-Link 1GB/s switches, for example under my desk in my office to allow both my laptop and desktop to share the single CAT6 cable to the room.
Before buying the "enterprise" TP-Link equipment I considered Ubiquiti, but the TP-Link stuff was less expensive, I liked the controller being optional and considering all my past TP-Link equipment's reliability was a non-issue, I was happy "to take a risk".