@MackPhoenix62 

I see some users report their joy that with the beta firmware the nearest Deco finally provides the signal source. Obviously that should not be the goal. What I would like to know is whether after their succesful update the wifi connection has improved in terms of stability and speed as well.  What are your experiences?

@Fi-Wi 

 

I would also like to know this. I have the Beta Firmeware and am a little reluctant to install it without knowing that. I've 4 M5s around the house and they all pair to the main unit, even though for one of them, thre's another 2 options that have full signal to the main unit. Anyway, if anyone could share their usage experience since applying the beta firmware (which is technially older than the existing full update if I'm going by the build numbers)

@TonyReilly it's certainly no silver bullet, it's not persistent- so if a unit is power cycled it normally returns to its farthest away node again. 
 

performance wize, there's still the noticeable drop from one floor to the next when doing download tests. Though definitely faster when the nodes are in the right configuration. 
 

ive only installed the beta one two and not my full network. 
 

one thing I've also noticed (and now blocked) the BETA firmware absolutely aniliates a time server - talking thousands of requests in hours, luckily I have DNS level filtering. 
 

 Asides from that, I'd say it's worth the update 

@TonyReilly 

Hi, Thank you very much for all the sharing.

The good news is that the new firmware 1.6.0 for Deco M5 would allow us to manually choose the signal source and it would be released very soon;

So if you are not in a hurry, we can wait for a while for the official firmware;

(and if you are still quite interested in the beta firmware, please feel free to leave me a private message.)

@TP-Link Thanks for the update, appreciate how difficult it is to deliver such a change on such a scale. Happy to continue beta testing going forward. 

 

Slight side note - did you see my message above about the beta AP hitting eu.pool.ntp.org ? It was clocking up thousands of hits per day, seemed to start around 14:00 for a few hours. Kind of off topic, so will start up a  separate thread if needed.

 

@TP-Link 

 

That's great. 

Bit of an obvious question, but do you have a, even high level, estimate on when 1.6.0 might be avaiable to the public?

 

Kind regards.

@TP-Link Hi, how can i get bet firmware for my m5 deco? I really need it, im having a bunch of throuble with my slave decos connecting to wrong source signal.

 

tnx

@vaultgunner 

 

M5 beta firmware (For V1+2+3):

https://static.tp-link.com/beta/2021/202102/20210207/Deco_M5_1.5.1_Network_Map_Optimization_Log.zip

 

You then need to connect to your Deco's on their web interfaces, by visiting their IP addresses in a browser. Upload the relevant firmware to the deco, ENSURING the FW is the correct one for your Deco. As if it isn't you could brick the device.... 

@MikeSel tnx, 

Did you test it? Any problem that could prevent the network from working?

You may want to read the rest of the thread.. The source isn't selectable manually in this release, you have to run the optimisation. If you read back a few pages, you'll see I have it installed on 2 of my 5 nodes (running m9's and m5's) and they now behave 'better' - not perfect, but better.