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Forum Discussion
Nighthawk App Limitations - Will it be improved to match Genie someday?
So I unfortunately allowed my phone to update the Genie app, which has now apparently been disabled by Netgear as being no longer compatible with my router. This is, of course, complete and total bu...
Dexter,
Thank you for replying. How does pausing a device that already has access to my network alloww me to disable MAC address filtering so a different unknown device can connect?
I don't mean to sound rude, but do you know what "Access Control" is? Just checking. The ability to turn Access Control on and off was easily done in the Genie app. It is nowhere to be found in the Nighthawk App.
DexterJB wrote:
You can try to use the Pause/Unpause feature on the Nighthawk app for you to disable the Internet access of a connected device.
Dexter,
This does disable the access for the device to the network - not "just" ot the Internet.
Regardless of the previous setting, once putting a device to Pause, the access control is enabled automatically - when I have ot right other unknown devices will be allowed.
MattMatt Turning off the Access Control would undermine the paused devices.
"Access Control" enables, or disables, the MAC Address authentication for devices on the network. If I have not added a MAC address to the router, and Access Control is enabled, it cannot use the Internet. In the Genie App, I could enable/disable "Access Control" from within the app. This feature does not appear anywhere in the Nighthawk app. I have to go through a web browser to do what I could easily do from within Genie previously, and this is annoying.
Do either of you understand this feature?? Perhaps you should read Netgear's KB on Access Control.
I never said anything about pausing a device on my network. Please ignore what Dexter wrote... I'm not trying to pause anything. :/
The control to enable/disable the Access Control (which exists in the Genie App and the Genie Program network map!) isn't available in the Nighthawk App - this is it.
Trouble is the App designers and marketeers apparently don't understand the subtile differences in the feature set, make a big mess with wording and naming of the features in the router Web UI vs the App.
The point is that disabling the Access Control would as well disable the Paused device blocking - they are mixing features, one often mistakenly defined to disable/enable the Internet access for a device, by a control named Paused/Resume ... what in fact does enable the Access Control in the background (Allow all new devices to connect), and add the device to the Access Control as a blocked device.
They are mixing what is "Access Control" with "Block" vs. "Allow" in the router Web UI with a "Device Manager" with "Pause" and "Resume".
It's a huge mess, and I din't wonder that even long term Netgear people and active community members are more than confused.
That's more a Nightmare App then anything seriously designed an integrated - I'm fully with the users complaining!To be fair, I was under the impression that Access Control would prevent a device from accessing *anything* on the network. According the the KB article I just linked to, that's not the case. Really, without Internet access, we don't do a lot of device-to-device interaction. I assumed Access Control was preventing devices from doing *anything* on the network, so I think I stand corrected here. (I don't like using a guest network.)
So I guess now, the procedure is to give a guest the password, they connect, but if Access Control is turned on in the router do they start out Paused? So then I just have to un-pause them?
I still have Genie on my unused android phone, and hopefully that old android tablet that I haven't touched in a while. I'm really upset that Netgear summairly disabled Genie, and have slowly been disabling features in the router during "security firmware upgrades". Very frustrating and I'm quite soured on the brand now.