terryswileyfox, I've had similar problems in the past. What worked for me was to enter just the numbers part of the router's IP address into the address bar.

That is, rather than entering "http://x.x.x.x", you could try entering just "x.x.x.x".

Hi, Thanks for the suggestion but that doesn't work.

Even when I type 192.168.43.1 Firefox inserts https://

I installed Google Chrome and tried accessing the router.

Chrome came back with a ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED.

So it looks like there is a problem with the router and Chrome makes it clear with the error message while Firefox tries the https:// to see if that works and when it fails it doesn't explain what happened making it look like Firefox has failed.

Is this a Firefox bug that need reporting?

I've found the only way to access the router is by going to http://tplinkrepeater.net can't go direct so it looks like a tplink problem although Firefox error handling was a bit crap.

terryswileyfox, glad that you found a way to access your router's options.

If you wanted to, you could leave feedback for Mozilla regarding this at Mozilla Connect: https://connect.mozilla.org/

Even when I type 192.168.43.1 Firefox inserts https://

Yes, Firefox 133 changed! Before Firefox 133, when you entered a bare IP address or host name without specifying the protocol (AKA scheme), Firefox automatically used http:// if it didn't have any reason to use https://. Now, it automatically starts with https:// if you do not intentionally use http://.

If you want to roll that back, there is a hidden setting for it in about:config named dom.security.https_first_schemeless but you also could just bookmark the exact URL of that site for quick access so you can have the standard behavior on other sites.