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Forum Discussion
Share Your NETGEAR Armor Experience
Hello NETGEAR Armor Community!
Thank you to all who have activated your NETGEAR Armor trial and to those who have subscribed to our cyber security service. Since the launch of the service we h...
My experience has not been great.
I activated the trial on my RAX120 earlier this year and it seemed fine but definitely had some minor issues at the time. I decided to buy a subscription anyway and see how it went.
Since firmware 1.0.2.236 I have had endless problems with devices losing connectivity and the router hanging. I tried reinstalling the firmware using the downloaded file instead of OTA and also factory resetting. Took me ages to figure out that activating Armor was causing the issue. Since disabling it there have been no further issues.
The other things that really annoy me about Armor and add to the reasons I will not renew are:
1. Even when you have the bitdefender software installed on iPhones and iPads it doesn't recognise it so your score shows as lower than it should be.
2. Devices on the guest network also show as needing bitdefender installed which is pointless. I can't tell people to install bitdefender on their devices or install it on my work laptop either, so why have them show up in there at all and reduce the score? Isn't the point of a guest network to segregate devices from the rest of your home network?
3. Only being able to activate and deactivate on the mobile app is stupid. Both the mobile app and web interface are also way too limited to be of any use.
4. If the software that is supposed to be protecting your network is actually causing it to crash all the time, it's not very good software.
So with the new firmware for my RAX120 and also an update, I thought it would be worth turning on Armor again. While my router is no longer crashing all the time, there's not much improvement to the app itself. Still no way to exclude guest devices and it still shows iPhones in the list of devices that need the software installed which reduces your protection level score, but now I have a new thing reducing the score....it says I need to update the firmware on my router when I'm already on the latest firmware.
This product just doesn't seem ready and fully functional and maybe should have been developed and tested for a while longer. The recent updates have not changed my mind about continuing with this product once my year is up.
inspectorgadjet wrote:Still no way to exclude guest devices
This should be feasible - under the requirement that guest devices are making use of the guest WiFi SSID. Just a question of the integration depth in my opinion.
inspectorgadjet wrote:still shows iPhones in the list of devices that need the software installed ....
Installing the Armor App is key for the Armor system on the devices supporting it.
Can this be related to the nightmare Apple introduced with this stupid random MAC tin hat feature? How shall the Armor software on the router distinguish between one of yours vs. one of your guests device? The answer can be installing the Armor client - this allows to identify your trusted devices.
inspectorgadjet wrote:... protection level score, ....
Whatever wonderful KPI the designers have specified and implemented. Some customers feel better if the KPI are high.
That's the problem though...even after installing the app on iOS devices it still lists them in the devices that need the app installed so the protection level score is reduced...if the thing worked properly, my score would be a lot higher.
Never mind that the app doesn't offer any real protection on iOS....the only thing it can do is offer web browsing protection if you enable a vpn.
