R7000 & Netgear = Worthless. Next steps?

[remixedcat]

Well netgear made Asus turn down the transmit power with firmware updates and then they off and do the same thing themselves (high power with external antennas and industrial design) . I won't buy a netgear product ever as a result of thier actions against Asus being immature and stupid.

 

[stevech]

Well netgear made Asus turn down the transmit power with firmware updates and then they off and do the same thing themselves (high power with external antennas and industrial design) . I won't buy a netgear product ever as a result of thier actions against Asus being immature and stupid.

Did Netgear actually get a judgement against ASUS? Or just make a lot of noise and false claims?

 

[thiggins]

Well netgear made Asus turn down the transmit power with firmware updates and then they off and do the same thing themselves (high power with external antennas and industrial design) . I won't buy a netgear product ever as a result of thier actions against Asus being immature and stupid.

NETGEAR's claim is that ASUS sst the power at a lower level to pass FCC tests, then boosted it in the products they sold to consumers.

The suit has nothing to do with external antennas or higher transmit power that is within FCC limits.

 

[thiggins]

Did Netgear actually get a judgement against ASUS? Or just make a lot of noise and false claims?

suits like this can take years to decide.

 

[RogerSC]

Okay, had the R7000 for about a week now, and here's my observations:

1. The bad:

After resetting the R7000, and getting an internet connection going, if I try to restore settings from a good saved settings file, the internet connection gets dropped. So I have to reconfigure it manually after resetting it.

Can lose internet connection during configuration, like make a change in a setting, and the internet connection can be lost in the process. At one point, I went to turn off UPNP, since I don't have any reason to have it on, and what do you know, lost my internet connection in the process. And when the R7000 is finall fully configured and connected to the internet, and I reboot it, it comes back up having lost it's internet connection. The only way that I can get the internet connection back after it's lost is by resetting the router and manually reconfiguring it. Very time consuming and repetitive.

Attached device list is not complete and is hard to use, since client/device names come and go, and they aren't all there. There's no equivalent to the DHCP lease table in the rt-n66u, so if you want to know what's connected it's really handy to have the MAC addresses of connected devices memorized.

In general, the admin GUI is not very useful, needs to be re-worked to have more information in it, and to be more user-oriented. At first, I was getting way too many web admin GUI page stalls, and using the GUI was slow and painful. At some point, that stopped, and the GUI speed became normal. I don't know why the GUI was initially very slow, or why it stopped being slow.

2. The good:

Great range and speed on wireless. Somewhat better than the rt-n66u, which surprised me. Works fine with Android phone and iOS 7 in iPad, as well as laptop using Windows 8.1. No problems with connecting devices to it once it's all up and configured. This makes up for a lot of inconvenience in configuring, but not all of it.

Did stay up for 7 full days with no problems after I finally got it all configured, but at the end of that week was having some problems with 5GHz. wireless. That ended with the usual loss of internet connection, and I had to reset and reconfigure *smile*. Spent most of yesterday evening dealing with that.

Today I've been looking more at the loss of internet connection, and found that resetting my cable modem seems to restore the router's internet connection, at least in the situations where I've tried that. Don't know why, there's nothing in the modem log about it, and the R7000 logs don't show anything, either.

3. The future:

Looking forward to firmware fixes for the problems with internet connection, and hoping that other things that are working well now don't get screwed up in the process *smile*. I also hope that they will improve the admin gui, especially the attached devices table, and the level of detail of the settings. It would also be nice to have more useful stuff in the logs. So the firmware future of this router is the key for me. And there's a long way for Netgear to go to make me happy with this one.

Update: The problems with the internet connection have now been reported to Netgear.

 

[TonyH]

Hi,
I played with the R7000 lastl night and I did not notice dropped I'net connections. All my surveillance cameras are on 2.4GHz radio and they never acted up either. Definitely has better signal compared side by side vs. RT-AC66U here. One thing, I can't use Putty(using router IP) to get to the router. Should try serial... When I perused dd=wrt forum folks there seem excited about R7000. They're using serial connection to get in. dd-wrt guru Kong said, "I never been so excited in years with new router" Some one donated R7000 to him so pretty soon dd-wrt f/w will show up I think.

 

[RogerSC]

Hi,
I played with the R7000 lastl night and I did not notice dropped I'net connections. All my surveillance cameras are on 2.4GHz radio and they never acted up either. Definitely has better signal compared side by side vs. RT-AC66U here. One thing, I can't use Putty(using router IP) to get to the router. Should try serial... When I perused dd=wrt forum folks there seem excited about R7000. They're using serial connection to get in. dd-wrt guru Kong said, "I never been so excited in years with new router" Some one donated R7000 to him so pretty soon dd-wrt f/w will show up I think.

Try this:

www.myopenrouter.com/download/10602/NETGEAR-Telnet-Enable-Utility/

Notes:

1. Don't expect a login after you do it *smile*. Just do an "Open" in putty, and you're there.

2. The above session times out after while, so keep the telnet enabler executable and the line that you used to run it around. You're going to need it *smile*.

3. Don't worry about the comment about Windows XP and Windows NT. This worked for me from Windows 8.1 *smile*.

That's Netgear for you...they don't stand on ceremony, you're dumped right into busybox when you open the telnet session.

 

[stevech]

Maybe the R7000 is not doing DHCP correctly on its WAN port to your modem?
This is a very old but still common problem.

 

[RogerSC]

Maybe the R7000 is not doing DHCP correctly on its WAN port to your modem?
This is a very old but still common problem.

What would characterize this problem? That is, how would I find out if this is the problem I'm experiencing? I haven't seen any obvious DHCP problems with the R7000, DHCP seems to be working fine, so I'm wondering if you could please say more about this problem so that I can check for it?

Thanks.

 

[stevech]

What would characterize this problem? That is, how would I find out if this is the problem I'm experiencing? I haven't seen any obvious DHCP problems with the R7000, DHCP seems to be working fine, so I'm wondering if you could please say more about this problem so that I can check for it?

Thanks.

Responding to your PM, I wrote a nice missive that seems to have gone to the bit bucket.
Gist was:
I'm referring not to the DHCP server that faces the router's LAN clients, but rather the DHCP client in the router. That talks out the WAN port to your modem or modem/router at your location. The response to this DHCP request is the IP address for the WAN port of your router. Usually this is a public IP address.
Historically, some vendors don't implement this DHCP client correctly, and/or the ISP's modem vendor does not implement the DHCP server correctly. Often, it works for normal cases but isn't right for some error conditions.

Perhaps if you can get the R7000 to fail where the Internet isn't accessible, you can look through the R7000's admin pages and see what WAN IP address it has. Maybe is 0's or there's some notation that the DHCP clinet got an unrecoverable error. These can be the DHCP clinet/server not handshaking properly. Sometimes, re-plugging the WAN port cat5 makes it work. Sometimes you have to power cycle the modem.

This assumes you have a cable modem or DSL modem with no built-in router. If your ISP gave you a combo modem/router and your R7000 is another router, and you have put the ISP's router in bridge (transparent) mode, there are other troubleshooting steps to do. Cascading routers is not a good idea.

Of course, if some other router cannot be made to fail in the modem DHCP handshake, then you have some evidence.

Try to induce: abrupt power failures, cat5 in/out, reboot router a lot, and so on.

Hopefully the DHCP exchange failing when the moon is in the waxing stage is not the problem because of the vendor finger-pointing.

 

[sfx2000]

AC 66 has not improved coverage or throughput over my N 66 , in fact I'm getting complaints about dropped and weak signals .

802.11ac is 5GHz, and if you have problems with coverage for 802.11n at 5Ghz, you'll have problems with AC as well.

 

[jerry6]

802.11ac is 5GHz, and if you have problems with coverage for 802.11n at 5Ghz, you'll have problems with AC as well.

Had no problems on the 5Ghz band with the n-66 but it bricked , got the ac- 66 as a replacement , coverage and signal went down with the AC66 , the N66 has now replaced the AC 66 .

 

[sfx2000]

Had no problems on the 5Ghz band with the n-66 but it bricked , got the ac- 66 as a replacement , coverage and signal went down with the AC66 , the N66 has now replaced the AC 66 .

Maybe just a bad AC66 unit perhaps - I've heard good things about the AC66, but I don't have first hand experience with that unit.

 

[TonyH]

All routers passed thru my house worked to it's limit w/o any problems. My AC66 was replaced by Netgear R7000 week ago running latest f/w. 5 GHz signal strength improved by 10dbm vs. AC66(60 vs. 50) but 2.4GHz gained barely 3dbm(50 vs. 47) in our family room where signal strength is critical for real time HD video streaming. Maybe I am always lucky with routers? Even if they don't do good, I can't complain as I got them costless, LOL! I think R7000 is staying until I get next one whatever it may be.

 

[TonyH]

The sad reality of ANY high-tech industry is that tall the companies are driven by time to market. Quality , support do not gain shareholders support as those deemed overhead... as a result, any first gen technology is always raw.... Raw firmware for routers, buggy drivers for new gen video cards, astonishingly buggy operating systems. Is there ANYTHING these days which does not require software patches and updates right after it has been released to the market?

Hi,
Which means engineers don't have much say running a company, marketing
people do. I hope engineers run everything some day. Wishful dream.....

 

[jlake]

All routers passed thru my house worked to it's limit w/o any problems. My AC66 was replaced by Netgear R7000 week ago running latest f/w. 5 GHz signal strength improved by 10dbm vs. AC66(60 vs. 50) but 2.4GHz gained barely 3dbm(50 vs. 47) in our family room where signal strength is critical for real time HD video streaming. Maybe I am always lucky with routers? Even if they don't do good, I can't complain as I got them costless, LOL! I think R7000 is staying until I get next one whatever it may be.

I doubt it's luck.

 

[Ziggy]

Enjoying My R7000

Thread title by OP such as this really provides no constructive criticism and should not be written as such, the R7000 is far from worthless. I'm now going on two weeks with my new R7000 and I couldn't be happier. It's being used in a mixed residential environment of Apple, Windows, and Android devices and all stay connected far better than my previous Linksys E4200.

I tried resetting the router (with the same firmware version) and reloading an existing saved router settings—no issues. The router has not dropped connections (I did reset my cable modem after switching to the R7000). The R7000 stays amazingly cool whereas my E4200 I had to turn upside-down to get it to cool properly. I'm looking forward the various third-party firmware that gets developed.

In closing this is the first NetGear device I've ever owned so my impression of NetGear is not as tainted as some of the posts I've read here throughout the forum. Hey, if NetGear got it right and beat the others on this one—more power to 'em! I started wanting to purchase the ASUS RT-AC68U, and it would have been my first ASUS device, but I'll purchase my first ASUS device with the upcoming Nexus 10 tablet. It's a win/win for me.

 

[RogerSC]

I'm in the middle of getting the R7000 replaced. Hoping that what I saw with losing its internet connection at reboot was a problem that might be remedied by exchanging the router. Especially since I haven't read about anyone else having the problem that I was experiencing. I'm leaving the case open with Netgear for further testing, but I've never had a router act that badly before.

All of the routers I've owned have also behaved well (within the limits of their firmware *smile*) until they stopped working, including the RT-N66U that I'm using right now.

 

[TonyH]

Try this:

www.myopenrouter.com/download/10602/NETGEAR-Telnet-Enable-Utility/

Hi,
Thanks now it works. I am on W7 x64.

 

[stevech]

The R7000 may have a bug/issue as follows:
Per discussions w/OP....

R7000 connected to commonplace cable modem. This interface has a DHCP client in the WiFi router to request a lease for the IP address given the modem by the ISP. This is in all consumer routers. The lease time is usually a few hours, at which a DHCP lease renewal message exchange with the router must occur. This seems to work. But it was reported that then the R7000 admin screen's manual "release/renew" functions are used, the pair wind up in a state where the R7000 and/or cable modem has to be rebooted.

Another report is that it may be that when the R7000 is reconfigured in some ways, the DHCP exchange fails and reboots are required.

Most folks just get the router configured and don't often change it, so the problem above may be, for them, more of a nuisance.

Personally, years ago I had a problem with a WiFi router and this WAN side DHCP exchange - and it was worse. The renew would fail too often. It was the router's firmware at fault. The vendor's tech support never really understood the problem and refused to escalate it - saying of course, it was my fault. That vendor is on my long time black list.