Insight Instant VPN RouterUpdate Oct 30, 2019 Dear NETGEAR BR500 customers, Over the past two weeks we have experienced extreme instability with our VPN cloud ecosystem. We believe it is due to the scale of customer base combined with our design tradeoffs on passing cloud status. We are working around the clock to identify a fix, test it and roll it out to production with as little ongoing disruption as possible. Unfortunately the current situation requires us to regularly reboot our cloud servers which is causing the disruption you are experiencing. We are committed to having a robust and reliable VPN service and realize that we have not achieved this. For this we are truly sorry and we will continue to work on this until we have achieved this objective. We will be posting regular (several a day) updates on our corrective action status at this location in our community until we have completely resolved this issue. If you would prefer to get these status updates sent to you directly, please visit this locked update thread in the community and for instructions on subscribing to updates. You can alternativly reply or subscribe to this current thread, but will be updated anytime anyone responds. Sincerely, NETGEAR BR500 team Update Oct 26, 2019 Thank you to the members that have provided feedback on the latest firmware. We are aware that the issue has not been fully resolved. We are continuing to work around the clock to stabilize the VPN service connection and hope to have a permanent fix soon. For those of you who have upgraded to the firmware provided in this thread there is no further action required on your part. We'll provide another update as soon as it becomes available. Update Oct 25, 2019 We would like to give you an update on the intermittent issues with BR500 VPN services that we notified you yesterday. Our teams worked continuously since yesterday and found the cause of this issue. We have a temporary fix with a new firmware V5.7.0.6 posted here [Note: Link Removed - please stand by for updates.] in NETGEAR Community. You can download and update your BR500 router(s) to this new firmware and it should be able to re-establish the VPN connection. Our teams are also working on the VPN server side fix that will fix this issue completely, expect that in a week or two. If you have any question or new issue, you can contact us at insight-feedback@netgear.com . Oct/24/2019 - We are experiencing intermittent issues with BR500 VPN services. This issue may impact both Site-to-Site and Client connectivity. Our teams are diligently working to isolate and fix the issue. Please stay tuned and we will keep you updated. Thank you for your patience in standing with us going through this resolution process. Thank You,NETGEAR Insight Team

Is there any kind of manual overide we can do to get site-to-site for the BR500's to connect? To be honest I am confused and angry that the BR500 needs to have a constant connection to your servers for them to operate propery. I would think once the BR500 makes a site-to-site connection with my other BR500 (using your server's to negoiate the handshake) it wouldnt need to rely on your servers to conitnue operations.. I guess its just another dissapointing "feature" of these devices. I am really starting to regret rolling these devices out to all my locations spread across the US. I have an entire company of 300+ employees unable able to work today becuase of this.

I got three BR500 about 5 months for three different locations that are several hundred miles apart from each other. Since day one I have had to deal with random disconnects, which would require me to reboot the routers. I have also had a real difficult time managing these things remotely since you are REQUIRED to be connected to the management port to do some of the most basic things like port forwarding. Driving several hundred miles to a location just to setup a new port forwarding rule is not an option. So I have had to setup a computer at each location with LogMeIn so I can remotely administer them, which I think is totally stupid, but I see no other option. They advertise this great "Insight Cloud" portal and app, which I had assumed would allow me to do all these basic things, but no. Not to mention when the first firmware update came out, I niavely tried to update the router via the app, since the app was nagging me to do it and I wasnt about to drive 100 miles to do it.. Well it bricked that device during the update and I had to return it. Which put that location offline for several days and meant a drive out to that location. We have several servers that are required for accounting department, warehouse and sales and when these connections go down, litterally the entire company comes to a halt. Needless to say my employer is not happy paying 300 employees to sit around and do nothing, not to mention all the lost sales and upset customers. All the heat falls on me, the IT guy, which is not fun. I understand these are only $300 routers and its probably niave of me to assume I could pull off such a task with "cheap" devices, but they were advertised as "enterprise" solutions. Ontop of that, I am paying a monthly subscription fee for this service that doesnt work. I have gone from being a "super-star" IT guy for setting up a failry complex VPN network for cheap, to the excuse for all lost productivity, sales and customers. The whole reason I got these devices was becuase I didnt know anything about setting up a multi-site-to-site VPN network and this looked like the perfect solution and Netgear has (in the past) been a brand that I respected and trusted. Today my company has been shut down ALL DAY, I have no idea if things will be working tomorrow, but I most likely wont have a job if its not. Thanks Netgear, I have learned my lesson. You get what you pay for.

You may want to look into setting up IPSEC VPN. While you are in the management console, go to devices, and then double click on the device, on the left you should see IPSEC VPN. It does take a little work to get both ends setup though. (I will say that I have pretty regular drops, but that those recover just as fast, and if you have alerting on, your phone, and email will be full of these alerts) The BR500, with their services, can make settting up a VPN between sites much easier, as long as it is up and working.

Same as Ekko Coleman I am really starting to regret rolling these devices out to all my locations spread.For us the problem has been recurrent for November 2018 and has a financial impact on our daily work.Since then we have been waiting for a permanent and lasting stability of the service.The question is : Who's going to pay for all these days of technical unemployment ???

Day 3 outage - how does Netgear think that this is acceptable? Netgear should be embarrased and ashamed by the support this product recieves. We have been dealing with constant outages for days a a time since April. How can you release a "fix" without testing it to confirm actually resolves a problem (esp since it was a manual image that required to be onsite)? The proposed "permadent resolution" being weeks later is not okay. We are pulling these devices from Production and replacing with another solution. It is marketed as a business solution that just works. This is clearly not the case - they feel like a product that was rushed to market with the infastructure not in place to support. Netgear, you need improvement. We will never recommend\purchase another product from you.

BR500 VPN Currently Experiencing Intermittent Connectivity Issues - Reply Thread

240 Replies

warsawtech
Tutor
Oct 27, 2019
This morning my VPN's are up
- warsawtech
  Tutor
  Oct 28, 2019
  Okay going on 48 hours and VPN still up on one of my clients.
  NOTE: On these two BR500 I did not upgrade firmware to the 5.7.0.6. Both routers remain on 5.7.0.2. I wasn't going to drive 200 miles to upgrade the firmware onsite since when I did 4 others it wiped my config and I had to drive onsite to restore config. This mess brought one site down as the default on the router engaged DHCP knocking their server DC DHCP off.
  - MrJoshW
    NETGEAR Employee Retired
    Oct 28, 2019
    Hello,
    
    To the users who have upgraded to the 5.7.0.6 firmware and still reporting VPN issues can you verify for me the setup you are running into an issue with?
    
    -Client to site?
    
    -Site to site?
    
    Can you please enable remote support on the unit and private message me the port number so that I can have engineering review the unit? This can be enabled by going to IPADDRESSOFDEVICE/support.htm
- tetrawest
  Apprentice
  Oct 27, 2019
  I'm going to let all of you test the BR500s for a week before I re-implement.
Habanoskid
Initiate
Oct 26, 2019
Morning All!

I'm new to this community but have been lurking since Thursday when my Insight Managed VPN tunnel broke. Thank s to everybody for their suggestions!

I woke up excited that the Netgear VPN problem was fixed. That "excitement" was short lived though. After updating the firmware to 5.7.06, the VPN broke again! Had to drive 80 miles to re-establish the IPSec tunnel. Based on suggestion of the "support team", I stupidly disabled the IPSec tunnel remotely in favor of the Insight Managed tunnel.

Did anybody receive the email from Netgear the day before the Insight Management issues occured? It stated that they were making some "exciting changes to NETGEAR Insight 5.7 ...". I don't know if this change has anything to do with the current Netgear Insight problems, but I wouldn't be supprised Frankly, this is excitement I could live without!

I should have known better than to re-up with Netgear after they wanted to replace a broken SRX5308 (lifetime warranty) with an FVS336v3 with half of the throughput and half of the WAN ports! At least the SRX's gave me over 10 years of relatively trouble-free service.
Retired_Member
Oct 26, 2019
Day 3 outage - how does Netgear think that this is acceptable? Netgear should be embarrased and ashamed by the support this product recieves. We have been dealing with constant outages for days a a time since April. How can you release a "fix" without testing it to confirm actually resolves a problem (esp since it was a manual image that required to be onsite)? The proposed "permadent resolution" being weeks later is not okay.

We are pulling these devices from Production and replacing with another solution. It is marketed as a business solution that just works. This is clearly not the case - they feel like a product that was rushed to market with the infastructure not in place to support.

Netgear, you need improvement. We will never recommend\purchase another product from you.
- warsawtech
  Tutor
  Oct 26, 2019
  I liked the idea of the BR500 in the beginning as a good solution that was cost effective for my small clients. Heck I'm a Netgear Powershift Partner so of course I promoted their products. I was going to be deploying these to my clients around the country. Got 8 still in the box stitting on the floor that are not going to be deployed. I just finished ordering 6 Meraki MX67 to replace the ones in production. It is costing us around $3500 for hardware and licensing, plus around $2000 in labor to change out and we are eating the cost.Our clients expect service when they hired us for their IT support and what kind of MSP would we be if we told clients that I'll get things fixed in a couple of weeks. Sad Netgear, very sad
  - TuKool
    Guide
    Oct 26, 2019
    Was up briefly last night. But this morning it is back to no connection.
- mdminded1
  Aspirant
  Oct 26, 2019
  I completely agree. Perhaps Netgear is going thru some internal restructuring or being acquired by or merger with another company and these issues will all be fixed.
- tetrawest
  Apprentice
  Oct 26, 2019
  Update:
  
  At 10AM this morning, the Insight App is showing the VPN link as up and running fine. But the VPN is now no longer working. When i rebooted the VPN Router at my office, the Insight App (while rebooting) is showing the VPN link is up and fine. So now even the reporting tools are suspect.
  
  After several minutes, the App did finally show "Broken".
  - mdminded1
    Aspirant
    Oct 26, 2019
    I’ve had a similar problem for months now and it started with the ReadyNAS, the reporting tool insight needs a lot of help. It shows me devices online then offline 3 minutes apart.
    
    I really love my Netgear hardware, it’s build quality is quite superior to other equipment out there HOWEVER, all of the software components need to be overlooked with meticulous detail.
Repair-my-pc
Guide
Oct 26, 2019
So I have swung by both sites at my own expense (Thank you netgear) and have updated both BR500's The software VPN is now seeing the deives but unable to connect to any resources and the devices advise unable to connect to insight VPN

Thsi needs to be fixed asap, you claim this is enterprise grade kit, yet in the post you advise that this is going to be fixed within a couple of weeks...Is this some kind of late April Fools joke???
Repair-my-pc
Guide
Oct 26, 2019
Ok, so you have a fix...great, but for those dealing with remote sites, how are we supposed to install the new firmware apart from going out to the remote sites and doing the install.

Seems to me that the process is flawed.

Here in the UK we have the sales of goods act, looks like I might have to raise this as there is no dedicated support status page for netgear BR500
seattle_
Aspirant
Oct 26, 2019
I recently purchased an BR500 and have experienced a number of problems related to this firmware update. One of the most frustrating problems is that when you created a VPN user, the netgear account became blocked. I got this error "Account locked after too many attempts" ... after 3 days of dorking with this I was able to replicate it on the .04 firmware - create the VPN user, soon after the account is locked, remove the vpn users, soonafter the account is unlocked. This happened with 3 different emails.

I updated the firmware, removed the vpn groups and router and users from the insight portal and re-added it all. Also removed the VPN client and reinstalled it .

That error has stopped but I'm still not able to connect using VPN it hangs up. It looks like it gets a IP from the service but it never adds the device to the network.

Hopefully someone can help. Support has been pointing to this conversation. Thank you!
- tetrawest
  Apprentice
  Oct 26, 2019
  Checking using the Insight App this morning and it showed my VPN is now up. I have verified that it is running. Please chime in as to whether your VPN is working or not.
  
  FYI - I updated the second BR500 about 10PM last night and when I checked at midnight, it was still not working. 8AM this morning it is now working.
BretD
Administrator
Oct 25, 2019
Update Oct 25, 2019 We would like to give you an update on the intermittent issues with BR500 VPN services that we notified you yesterday. Our teams worked continuously since yesterday and found the cause of this issue. We have a temporary fix with a new firmware V5.7.0.6 posted here in NETGEAR Community. You can download and update your BR500 router(s) to this new firmware and it should be able to re-establish the VPN connection.

Our teams are also working on the VPN server side fix that will fix this issue completely, expect that in a week or two.

If you have any question or new issue, you can contact us at insight-feedback@netgear.com .

Thank you for your patience in standing with us going through this resolution process.

Thank You,
NETGEAR Insight Team
- warsawtech
  Tutor
  Oct 26, 2019
  BretD wrote:
  Update Oct 25, 2019 We would like to give you an update on the intermittent issues with BR500 VPN services that we notified you yesterday. Our teams worked continuously since yesterday and found the cause of this issue. We have a temporary fix with a new firmware V5.7.0.6 posted here in NETGEAR Community. You can download and update your BR500 router(s) to this new firmware and it should be able to re-establish the VPN connection.
  
  Our teams are also working on the VPN server side fix that will fix this issue completely, expect that in a week or two.
  If you have any question or new issue, you can contact us at insight-feedback@netgear.com .
  
  Thank you for your patience in standing with us going through this resolution process.
  
  Thank You,
  NETGEAR Insight Team
  Well the firmware didn't fix crap. As per the course the update tanked my routers and spent the night on the road having to go from site to site to restore configurations back to each router locally. Let's hear it for paying and using the Insight cloud premium. Looks pretty and does work great for WAP and Insight switches but for the BR500 it is lacking in so many ways.
  A fix in a week or two WTH Netgear needs to get the engineers working on this more Redbull and powerbars. I mean Microsoft may have degraded service on some things, but back to full strength in 36-48 hours....not weeks
- Retired_Member
  Oct 26, 2019
  This new firmware did not resolve the issue. We are still down at multiple facilities. Did anyone even test this release before stating it was a fix? Several days with no VPN service is unacceptable.
  
  We will be recommending replacing these devices ASAP. They are clearly not ready for production use - they feel like a beta product.
  - tetrawest
    Apprentice
    Oct 26, 2019
    I have upgraded one router. I'll swing by the office a little later to update the other. If not, I will have to put my FVS336G routers back into operation. This is CRAZY!
- TuKool
  Guide
  Oct 25, 2019
  Updated firmware. Rebooted Router. Rebooted remote computer. Still no VPN connection. Very frustrated!!!!
  
  Did the firmware update work for anyone else?
  - mdminded1
    Aspirant
    Oct 25, 2019
    There are more issues I experience with notifications from insight that indicates my router is noine and offline when my BR500 is working, that issue has been going on since I bought my BR500 and should be addressed. I also get notfcations from insight regarding my RN426 NAS and that too has been an issue. These notifications are annoying and it's netgear insight monitoring both my router and my RNS426 NAS. Sadly I also get these apparently false notifications with my WAC510 wireless access points and my Netgear 28 port switch all purchased at the same time all of this to me points to netgear and firmware and or insight.netgear.com to my devices.
    
    I hope Netgear can fix these issues
mdminded1
Aspirant
Oct 25, 2019
Hi, I currently have the BR 500 and don’t know how to use the VPN service with my iPhone. I’m confused and would appreciate some help on how to configuring the VPN . When I bought this router it said it had VPN services built into the router.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.
EKKO_Coleman
Guide
Oct 25, 2019
Two days now, this is a complete disaster! Can we please at least get some update, and some ETA on when this will be working. Maybe some details on whats going on?
- NathenB
  Apprentice
  Oct 25, 2019
  I have been doing reboots through the app, but went on site to reboot with the physical power button, and seem to have some connectivity back. (This may have been a coincidence though).
  
  There is also an option for OpenVPN but you have to access the router directly, and I believe it was under advanced setup. I was successful in getting a connection, but it did not pass traffic. After the reboot, this is working as well.
tetrawest
Apprentice
Oct 25, 2019
Any update on VPN outage? I replaced my perfectly working Prosafe FVS336G (V3) because the Prosafe are no longer supported (Since 2017). On those I used a direct IPSEC connection. I am also paying a subscription to use the Insite service and the VPN. And I can't get the direct VPN for my PC clients to actually work on my work router.

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BR500 VPN Currently Experiencing Intermittent Connectivity Issues - Reply Thread

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