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Forum Discussion
Netgear Orbi Firmware Updates Scare Me!
Well not so much scare as frustrate. The first step of doing the update of the firmeware usually is fine. It is the required 2nd step that always gets me. You know, the step where, because of all th...
Steps to help out.
Use a wired PC for doing any FW updates.
Use a web browser. I find IE11, Edge, Firefox or Opera work fine. I avoid Chrome as i've seen it cause problems.
Avoid using Orbi app to do the FW updates. Seen others post that using this causes. problems.
Some choose to manually download FW files and apply them manually to the RBS then RBR directly using there web pages. I been doing this for years.
Some can use the RBRs FW update web page on the RBR.
Do a full power OFF for 1 minute of the RBR and RBS and back ON after a FW update.
If problems are seen after a power cycle, then do a full factory reset and setup from scratch.
I prefer to do a factory reset and setup from scratch as a matter of habbit for anything I deal with. Just helps to ensure things are cleared out and setup well from scratch. Been using this process for years as well.
"If it works, don't fix it!" Not always that users have to update FW either. Not all FW is great. So keep what works for you. You can try and test out updates as they get released. If after trying and testing and it doesn't work, you can revert back to what was working.
Good Luck.
Thanks for that information. My router has already downloaded the firmware updates and is waiting for me to tell it to install. If I ignore that and do the download as you suggest will that be OK? I have not had to use a "wired" laptop for anything for many years!
Your post sort of supports my original post about why upgrading Orbi firmware is so scary. Lots of complicated steps to do it for us less technical types. And then if it does not work well, the steps to fix that are beyond the ability of many of us. For the life of me, I can't understand why a big company like Netgear can not make it simple and reliable. All our myriad devices have frequent updates to firmware and software. All of them are usually easy and seamless and in the rare event of something not working correctly, the fis is also easy. Why can't Netgear be the same??
The RBR does download the FW files and keeps them on hand in memory. IT's up to you if you want to install them. I believe this process is ok to use. I have tried it on occasion and it worked for me. Though again, I probably factory reset everything and setup from scratch.
I agree and I believe the current process is mostly directed towards the average home user. It's been a mixed bag over the years, some users have had nothing but problems when FW hits. While others have seen no problems. Been hard to figure out what the problems are with the users who see problems.
So from my experience here in the forums and seen what posts say and give feedback to suggestions we offer, some of us use the more advanced methods as I mentioned to do our own FW updates as it seems to keep the odd problems from appearing.There are many factors now days regard FW, Hardware and other IoT hard ware design and specs. I presume it maybe hard to NG at some level to make there products work for ALL kinds of devices, considering that some may or may not fully comply with current and emerging wifi standards. How the IoT devices are designed, supprted and developed may or may not be as well as we all kind of expect from both sides of the fence.