Long story short, TP-LINK doesn't appear to support their drivers. I happen to have in my machine a TL-WN725N based WiFi dongle... specifically this one but the drivers provided haven't been supported ...

The official drivers for D-Link DWA-131 Rev E, with patches to keep it working on newer kernels. Also works on Rosewill RNX-N180UBE v2 N300 Wireless Adapter and TP-Link TL-WN821N V6. NOTE: This is ...