FVS336G Firmware Version: 3.0.3-17

SamirD wrote:

If the older firmwares worked, then you should have stayed on them. Products in this price range aren't designed for much more than reliable soho usage. I treat firmwares like different 'feature sets' since each one will have a bug that will break something. You find the firmware with the 'feature set' you need and then don't change it unless you have to. And if you can't find a firmware that works, you need to buy a different product (been there, done that). They list specs as that technically is the best the hardware can perform. Like EPA estimates on fuel consumption. I look at the specs, but no so much as I did in the earlier days of networking when the specs made a product stand out more than another, and products performed to specs in usual-case use, not laboratory best-case use Why no solution? Because a solution cost money, and there's not enough money being made from these products to justify good programming. Just farm it out overseas to the cheapest guys you can find, get a fairly stable product out there, and then ignore the outlier problems. Because those level 1,2,3 techs are trained to behave that way. Yes, it is shady business, but if you don't like it, buy someone else's product--who ironically does the same thing. This whole segment of the market is like this, and because it is so much more expensive to move to robust products. Yes, it is too much to ask. If a significant percentage of people wanted a solution, there would already be one by now. Or if sales drop significantly because of the lack of a solution. These answers are my experience with a lot of smb products from all sorts of different vendors, including netgear.

I think the shady part of the business model is what ruins any trust in products because how can one know what they are buying if the specs are 'cooked' to sell product. We can't and shouldn't be looking at every product as being a 'scam' made only to make a company rich should we? I would like to trust and have respect for a company's R&D and that in the end is what leads to brand loyalty, right? There's nothing wrong with that, right? I think that after buying MANY $$$$$ worth of Netgear ProSafe products for personal and business use since mid 2002, there'd be some kind of respect from a company but I guess not.

The sad thing is that the early firmware was fast but laden with bugs. Fixing bugs slowed down the FVS336G v1 so when Netgear moved to the v2 why did they not revise their specs when clearly they could do what they v1 did back in Jan 2008?

You're right, it's shady. I wish I could just return the router but I didn't find out it couldn't do what it was spec'd out until a faster speed service was available in my area. That's why I purchased it based on the 'future proofed' higher WAN to LAN speed when it became available.

Sadly, the FVS336G v2 can't do that either and that's what Netgear wants to replace my v1 with to solve the problem, which it won't.

How hard could it be to fix the firmware so it clears the WAN to LAN bottleneck or is this now a hardware bottleneck limitation caused by a firmware that corrects too many bugs and bogs down the hardware in the process?