TP-Link Omada VPN Gateway ER8411 Review 10Gbps with a Catch

The TP-Link Omada VPN Gateway ER8411 is a neat gateway because it offers 10GbE ports. We also found that this is using a different firmware than the TP-Link BE3600 Wi-Fi 7 Portable Travel Router TL-WR3602BE we reviewed. We decided to push this and see if it could indeed push 10Gbps speeds from a $399 device. That may sound like a lot to some, but for this level of performance, it is fairly reasonable.

Here is an Amazon affiliate link to what we purchased.

TP-Link Omada VPN Gateway ER8411 Hardware Overview

Starting with the gateway, it is a 1U chassis, and it is meant to be part of the company’s business products.

On the front, we get two USB ports, a reset button, and a console port. The USB1 is noted as a LTE one as the idea is that it can be used for a LTE connection.

Next, we get the SFP+ WAN port as well as a SFP+ LAN port that could also be used for a WAN port. Port 3 is a SFP 1G port that can also be used for WAN or LAN.

Then there are eight 1GbE ports.

Overall, this is a really nice array of ports.

On one side, we get a vent, and you can see where the rackmount ears attach. On the other side, we get fans moving air through the chassis.

On the rear, we do not get vents, so this is a side-to-side airflow gateway.

In the rear, we get two AC power inputs.

In the box, we got a console cable, two power cables, rack ears, and then rubber feet.

Here are the rack ears.

Inside the gateway, here is what we saw.

There are two internal power supplies that handle the AC to DC conversion.

Since there are two power supplies, TP-Link is using a power distribution board to take the two power inputs and provide redundant power to the gateway.

Here are the two 3-pin fans. You can see that these are glued to the board.

Inside, we get several heatsinks for the major chips.

These we could not remove without damaging the unit, since they were not clipped/ screwed in. We noticed that this uses 4GB of DDR4. The main CPU is supposed to be a quad-core Arm Cortex-A72 chip.

The chip to the right appears to be connected to the 1GbE ports and the LAN SFP+ port.

Here is another shot where you might be able to see the PCB traces.

Here is behind the 1GbE ports.

Here is the ESMT NAND.

This is going to sound like an outlandish take, but given that TP-Link has some heat from the US Government, it feels like it would be better to allow folks to at least look at the components on the board. For competitors, it would be trivial to buy one of these to take apart and another to test. We are keeping ours intact since we have been using it for firewall profiling.

Next, let us get to the management.