New Firmware Released RAX80 1.0.3.88

My RAX80 will NOT upgrade to this.

Good step in the right direction! This update did bring some performance gains to my router, that is always welcome. The biggest thing i appreciate is the additioins to the UI. We need more control over this awesome device! Please keep working on this devices firmware, it has all the power now we just need the control! I upgraded from the R7000 and that thing had more granular control than this router. Give this router more attention regarding the UI (web UI), people who will be/are buying this device are power users for the most part and giving those users what they want and need will make this a much more attractive product. 

Just want to chime in with my experience using 1.0.3.88 for the last few days. From the client side it has been great, my wifi 6 units have been working flawlessy with WPA3 enabled. in short, no dicernable disconnects etc to report from the end user point of view.

When digging a little deeper the RAX80 still present some peculiarities, though. First a little about my setup: Internet -> ISP provided cable modem/router in bridge mode -> RAX80 (with AX, OFDMA & MU-MIMO all enabled) -> Netgear MS510TX switch connected to all wired clients. For further context; I live in an appartment building with around a dosen networks "fighting for supremacy", but using wifi 6 and a channel without much congestion wifi has been stable.

Now the peculiarities:

• The "Show statistics" page on the advanced home screen still show intermittent WAN drops/reconnects (about once every 24 hours). Strangely I have yet to find corresponding log entries in the ISP modem or the RAX80 log. 
• The connected LAN port also seems to reconnect/drop from time to time, albeit less frequent than the WAN port. No log entries for these drops show up in the router log, nor the switch log either.
• Trying to disable the "inlude known DoS attacks and Port scans" log category results in a ERR_CONNECTION_RESET page when clicking apply.
• The "Attached devices" page is clearly an improvement, yet I still find it somewhat unpredictable. Devices seem to linger in this list long after they have been turned off/disconnected, even after pressing refresh several times. Also, depending on how you view the list (router web view or Nighthawk app), the number of devices may also differ.

I have no idea if the log or the statistics view are correct, but there are clearly some discrepancies between them. In general this firmware release has been nice, just some oddities evident for the network tinkerers among us.

This new firmware has been problematic on my rax80, which was generally working fine beforehand.  The big problem is the need for factory resets.  I had to factory reset after the firmware installation itself.  Annoying, but workable.  I had a power outage tonight, and when the power came back on my router was doing the same thing it was after the firmware install.  I had to factory reset again.  If I have to factory reset every time the power goes out, this thing is going to get thrown in the trash pretty quickly.  

Any idea why factory reset is necessary after firmware update?  Seems a bit extreme.  I also have a EAX80 and an EX7700...will I need to reset the extenders as well?

Firmware Version V1.0.3.88_1.0.41 

Installation:

The update wasn't available in the router so I downloaded it from Netgear and installed manually.

After installing and reboot, it was unresponsive, so I had to shutdown and do a cold restart. Some of my settings--like my DHCP range--were reset and caused some minor difficulties but that's why I have a network spreadsheet with all my MACs and IPs to validate my settings.

The only things it seemed to erase were a.) the DHCP range; b.) possibly two port forwards, but since I only keep port forwarding up when I'm actively using them and erase them when I'm done, it's possible I'd already erased them; c.) some of my names from both the LAN setup page where I assigned IPs and Access Control under Security. But...Nighthawk firmware was doing that before and it might have been the earlier firmware. Right now I'm renaming everything and making a date entry in my spreadsheet to start the clock how long it holds everything.

I've only begun initial testing--my job, which is software testing, kind of got overwhelming--but below is what is working and didn't used to.

Opinion: I reserve the right to complain later, but as of about a weekish of use, this is infinite+1 improvement.

So far, awesome:

1.) My speed is still fantastic, but that's the only thing that ever worked and the only thing that made me not replace this router and then burn it beneath the new moon covered in goat's blood. The speed has always been fantastic. It's still fantastic.

2.) My USB shares now stick around. Like, all the time.

Context: I just got a Nvidia Shield TV Pro and moved my Plex server from my Pi to it along with the drive enclosure with all my media drives. The Shield dead refused to recognize my drive when I direct connected with USB, so I temporarily connected it to the Nighthawk router before the update just for testing Shield's Plex server. Of course, the router kept forgetting th9se rives existed. I was preparing to move the drive enclosure to my home server and mount it to the Shield from there (which I was trying to avoid), but between work and everything, I didn't get to check it until a few days after the update.

All my shares were showing in Plex on the Shield and all my libraries were up to date; the shares showed on my LAN and were accessible from my laptop, my server, my son's PC, and my Pi. I hosted a movie night online for friends and everything worked. Friends with library access report no problems. I check at random and the usb shares are right there.

3.) The Attached Devices screen is shockingly accurate as type of item; also, it now knows there are items that are not iPhones or Macs. It correctly recognizes my doorbell, a few smart speakers, my computers, my phones, my tablets as far as icons go, and got a surprising number of IoT items right. But now I have to categorize my four network switches as router since switch isn't on there, and my three AP routers as routers as well. Any suggestions on how to categorize them correctly? They're hardwired into the LAN; do I call them extenders?

4.) Names that were there right after I updated the firmware seem to have stuck, but I'm fixing all of them and their model names now and will report how long they stick.

5.) I don't think I'm imagining the layout fixes on some pages?

So far, weird:
1.) On the Attached Devices, the sort order is--weird?  I have no idea what the sort is, but even after I switch it to IP address, it defaults back to whatever it's using now.  Annoying, but happily, that's my biggest complaint.