RBR850 We can't find your Orbi

Hello rplank05 ,

Yes, I have added your serial number to the list.

Thank you,

Christine

Hello Christine. I believe I sent you the incorrect serial number for my RBR 850 in my last post. I'm not currently at the address where the router is and wont be there for another 7 days. Is there a way you can find my serial #  to push the patch to my router? Thanks so much!

Thanks!  What are the next steps?  Do I need to reboot?

ChristineT I rebooted my router and force killed the app and was able to get access through the app although I cannot see the devices on my network.  I can see that all my satellites are connected though.  The web management console seems to be working now and I can see my devices there.  Thanks!

Hi Christine,

I just PM'd you my RBR750 serial number please push through the patch when possible.

Thank you.

-minorhavok

Hello Christine,

Can you do the same for me? I am having the same issue with my RBR750

Why is this thread marked "Solved" when clearly we are all still experiencing issues??

I likely am speaking for many of us frustrated Netgear customers by first applauding Christine for bravely facing countless customers and trying to help them recover from this incident.  She has been a beacon of customer obsession, as I've seen her on here nearly 24x7 the past week since this incident started.

I also, like many of you are likely wondering, am confused why Netgear leadership is so cowardly in how they are handling this incident.  Why let Christine go it alone?  Where is upper leadership and why are they not posting a recurring GA production restoration status every 4 hours or so?

Full transparency, I am a technology executive for a major financial institution.  If my organization were to encounter such a widespread, customer impacting incident, we would not be sitting idle letting one sacrificial lamb support staff try to go it alone, collecting Serial #s and trying to put out a 3 alarm fire with a dixie cup of water (which BTW people, please stop posting your S/Ns on a public site... that is a treasure trove piece of intel for a bad actor to use to try and attack your environment later).

If such a large customer impacting event were to occur, it would be all hands on deck, all other production work would stop until operations was fully restored.  Executives would be calling customers, putting out social media and other alerts every X hours to keep the customer base abreast to when their coveted business would return to normal.

Granted, Netgear is not a G-SIFI nor will the financial system be disrupted b/c our home routers are not functioning... but the principles of customer service should be the same (plus, i imagine some customers are relying on their Orbi routers to support their businesses and livelihoods).

So Christine, please take this back to your management.  Ask them to stop hiding behind you.  Have your CTO or COO get on this thread.  Have them give us updates every 4-6 hours until a fix is applied (not this serial # beta test fix), and functionality is restored.  We all paid good $ for a high end home mesh wifi system, and expect it not to crash for no reason.

annoyedNGcust has it exactly right.  This is not just a failure in technology, this is a failure in customer relations.  As a 20+-year software developer and infosec engineer, I know the kind of things that are probably going on behind the scenes here, and have been in the throes of them myself, so don't envy ChristineT her position at all.  Competent management would have spent 2 hours building a web form that people could use to submit serial numbers directly, instead of having to go through Christine's DMs.  Competent management would not have a message at the top of the forums saying "We are working to resolve an issue that is preventing some customers from accessing the Orbi app or web interface for the Orbi RBK85x and RBK75x. We are investigating this as the highest priority and will provide updates at Status.NETGEAR.com " when status.netgear.com says nothing about this besides "some systems are down".   Competent management would not continually give "48 hours" resolution times, but then reveal elsewhere that it may be "weeks" before the update actually happens.  Competent management would not rely on their users searching reddit to find out that they're not the only one with the issue.  

I bought Netgear because I've been burned by other major router companies, and tolerated the uselessness of Netgear's "security" (ok, so there's a security issue with one of my connected devices - you gonna tell me what that issue is??), and the limitations on functionality (like not being able to disable or schedule automatic updates - love it when those hit in the middle of a work day), but really, enough is enough. 

Hello jcfergus ,

Thank you for sharing your suggestions and concerns. I will share it with the appropriate audience. 

Kind Regards,

Christine

Hello annoyedNGcust,

Thank you for your candid feedback.  I can assure you, that I have the whole of NETGEAR supporting me behind the scenes. You'll be happy to know, that I am not alone in my "obsession" to ensure our customers can recover quickly and easily. We are continuing to test and learn around the clock during this initial phase to ensure the patch does not negatively impact our customers any further. We are taking every little bit of feedback and digging into it further as needed. We will also post a communication in the near future when this patch has been officially deployed. This way we can ensure it's as comprehensive as possible.

I will convey your sentiments to our management team for their review.

Kind Regards,

Christine

Hello Jmenchac  and static14 ,

That's great news! Thank you for confirming a few reboots did the trick! 

Best,

Christine

Hello RaiseCane ,

I have confirmed you should be able to test the patch Monday morning. Please be sure to @ mention me if you would like me to confirm if it's time to test if the patch has been applied.

Kind Regards,

Christine

RaiseCane reboot your Orbi then go to:

http://orbilogin.net/debug.htm and log in

if your seal value ends in -2 you have the new firmware with the fix. If it ends in -0 you don't.

---

Jroach wrote:
00_Jenn
I rebooted and went to http://orbilogin.net/debug.htm
I still can’t access that site. I haven’t asked for the update but I was curious if that website worked now for me.

---

The affected Orbis are not listening on ports 80 and 443.  i.e. the web service is not running at all.

That is why the router will not provide any web site.

Only customers who volunteered their Serial Number are having the new firmware pushed to them.

Everyone else has two choices: (a) wait, or (b) do a factory reset and reconfigure.

Hello jvcjbl ,

You are correct. If your seal value ends in -2 your system was patched with the fix. If it ends in -0 your system has failed to update. It does not mean your serial number hasn't been added to the update server. Once your serial number has been added to the update server the router will check for an update overnight (late or early morning) and will continue to do so until the patch/update successfully updates the router.

I have received a few reports where a few restarts have not successfully updated the router with the fix and the serial numbers have been confirmed to be in the database. I will provide this to engineering so we can dig into those cases further. It sounds like you are one of these cases. Is that right?.

Thank you for allowing me to clarify.

Kind Regards,

Christine

ChristineT I was wrong... I see -2. I was looking the wrong line. I deleted the iOS app and reinstalled it and now can successfully access my devices. I'd suggest doing this to anyone who hasn't. I for one have not had a working app for quite a while and just now finally though about deleting the app and it works (at least for now).

ChristineT Thank you for the help you're providing the community! I've DMed you my S/N as well, so please let me know when the fix has been applied and I am ready to restart. 

Thanks again!