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BR500 Rebooting Itself
I've noticed that my BR500 occasionally reboots itself. Has anyone else noticed this? It started doing this after I did the following (not sure which, if any, contributed): upgraded firmware to ...
[Sorry to cross-post, but I made the error of splitting and overlaping my problems across two different threads here, and I want to accept this as my solution to both].
Just an FYI to anyone else who experiences any of this: I have disconnected my BR500 from the Insight service, rebooted the router, and the VPN messages have stopped (obviously!), the "NAT loopback" is allowing my LAN to reliably take advantage of port forwarding (sub-second connection again, before was either hanging or taking 10+ seconds to connect), and my router has stopped randomly rebooting itself. Also, I am no longer seeing the sporadic high-CPU (sporadically 30 - 60+ percent) on the BR500.
Of course I no longer have any VPN (as ports 12973 (TUN) and 12974 (TAP) hang, even when the Open VPN service is enabled, which is the only reason why I enabled Insight + Instant VPN). But having a stable, reliable, working router is much more important to me.
Another user on this forum shared that Netgear had suggested disconnecting from Insight as a possible solution to the random reboots, which is why I am sharing this, in the hope that it may help others.
No promises, your milage may vary, void where prohibited by law, etc., but for anyone who is at their wits end and frustrated with the BR500, as I was, this maybe a possible solution to regain stability if you can live without the Insight service.
I've noticed this in mine. In the last 4 weeks it's rebooted itself twice and when it did it returned to factory defaults. I'm on Firmware 5.6.0.1
It's getting a little bit tiring for me as I have 10 clients I'm wanting to put these in, but with the continued issues I hesitate. When you can't reach it in the Insight cloud you really can't restore the config unless you're onsite. Clients are from 10 miles to 1200 miles from our office. Trying to walk people through blowing the config back on the router is next to impossible.
I'm hoping Netgear can get a stable firmware to fix this behavior
Ah, very intersting ... mine has probably rebooted itself about +/- 6 times that I've noticed ... might have rebooted more times that I didn't notice since the outage only lasts a couple of minutes ... over the past 8 weeks, on both 5.5.0.1 and 5.6.0.1, and only one time did it reset back factory defaults ... which was a WTF moment for me, but fortunately I had a recent config backup that I could reload. Though I certainly understand your concern about remote support.
Just curious, have you contacted NETGEAR about it? Yeah, I know it is difficult to get support for problems that are not happening RIGHT THIS MOMEMENT with them, but just to report the incidents? And yes, they will want you to reset your devices to factor defaults, reload the latest firmware, reload your configuration, rinse, repeat, etc. However, since I know that other people are experiencing this as well, I may open a ticket. Even if you have already, I might want to reference your ticket # (which you can send me in a private message, if you don't want to post it here). Thanks.
Actually the latest instance occurred this AM. I was going to put in another ticket, but hadn't got to it today. Thought I'd check out the community to see if others were experiencing this issue. Funny thing is I'm a Netgear Powershift Partner and I still get fricking India for support. After 5 transfers I sometimes finally get an english speaking person. I see from what you said about reset, update firmware again reboot and rinse, then repeat.......oh I forgot the critical thing...Please upload your logs to hear the dreaded, "We don't see the problem in the logs" or you don't know what your doing so leave us alone.
I had high hopes when I saw Netgear come out with a new router and I really love Insight. I've been installing numerous switches with Insight and some of their new WAP.
Ok, I'll submit a ticket ... feel free to submit your ticket number(s) to me through a private message, so that I can at least request -- not sure if they'll do it -- be added to the ticket.
Yes, know what you mean about India ... at times, I have called and had to say "have a nice day", hang up, and then call back once or twice until I got someone that I could understand. Some might say that is our problem ... :-( ... but when dealing with technical issues, clarity of communications is paramount. I'm putting this in writing so that NETGEAR management might read this and understand our frustation.
Also, I've been through the "standard play book" so many times, my advice to you and others is: do the factory reset, reload the latest firmware, reload your configuration, and THEN open a ticket, letting them know that you just did all of that (and really do it!). That allows you to short-circuit the "standard play book" and jump straight to the real problem.
Oh, so far I have not done that with the BR500, but I had a FVS318G, and later upgraded to a FVS318Gv2, both of which I loved when they worked, but both tended to become unstable and hang or freeze after about +/- 2 years. I replaced each one once under "free ProSafe" coverage, but having "free overnight shipping replacement" (as you got with ProSafe) doesn't feel like a privilige when you have to deal with failing hardware and loss of Internet access.
I am hoping for better luck with the BR500 ... and I stuck with NETGEAR only because I generally like their software and feature set ... until the BR500 was released -- I got mine in March -- assuming it would have AT LEAST the same capaiblites as the FVS318Gv2 ... and was surprised to learn that it didn't ... but encouraged that we're getting new features with every firmware release. So I am still cautiously optmistic.
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