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Forum Discussion
PeterAtZarita
Jun 28, 2026Follower
RAX50 Bug: Advanced Access Control Table Cache Corrupted on 2.4GHz for Months (Firmware v1.0.17.142)
Hi everyone,
I am posting this here in hopes that a Netgear Community Moderator or Engineer can escalate a severe, ongoing firmware bug affecting my Nighthawk RAX50 running firmware version v1.0.17.142_2.0.100.
I have been dealing with this critical ACCESS CONTROL issue for months, and it completely breaks the Advanced Access Control feature, making it entirely impossible to maintain a secure network.
The Problem:
When Access Control is enabled, my primary device (an iPhone 14) randomly loses internet access on the 2.4 GHz band and gets kicked offline.
When I log into the router's web admin panel to see what happened, my device is listed under "View list of allowed devices not currently connected to the network."
Technical Details & What I've Tested:
- Private Addresses Are Off: On the iPhone 14, "Private Wi-Fi Address", "Limit IP Address Tracking", and "iCloud Private Relay" are all completely turned off. The phone is broadcasting its true hardware MAC address.
- The Glitch: The router's 2.4 GHz radio module is refusing to transition the true MAC address from the offline cache back to the active table. It gets permanently stuck in the "allowed but not connected" state.
- UI Controls Don't Work: Selecting the device and clicking "Remove from list" or trying to manually "Add" it back fails to flush the routing table. The internal NVRAM database holds onto the duplicate ghost entry and rejects it.
- The Only Fixes: The only way to get the device back online is to completely disable Access Control (leaving my network insecure) or perform a painful factory reset—only for the bug to return a few weeks later. This has been happening repeatedly for months.
Netgear needs to fix this ASAP:
This is a massive security and usability disaster. Advanced Access Control is a core feature that consumers pay for to protect their homes. Having the router actively knock out permitted connections and lock up its own routing table renders the security layer useless.
Has anyone else found a permanent workaround for this table caching glitch? Can a Netgear Moderator please escalate this ticket directly to the firmware engineering team so it can be patched?
Thank you.
3 Replies
- FURRYe38Guru - Experienced User
Is the iphone the only device effected by this?
Is Smart Connect enabled or disabled?
Set a IP address reservation for the iphone?
Has a factory reset and setup from scratch been performed since last update?
Have you tried v.144 FW?
https://www.netgear.com/support/product/rax50
Make contact with NG support:
https://www.netgear.com/support/
- schumakuGuru - Experienced User
PeterAtZarita wrote:
When Access Control is enabled, my primary device (an iPhone 14) randomly loses internet access on the 2.4 GHz band and gets kicked offline.
Just that single device is affected?
PeterAtZarita wrote:
This is a massive security and usability disaster. Advanced Access Control is a core feature that consumers pay for to protect their homes.
ROFL. The never ending dream based on WiFi industry marketing lies - from the security propsective MAC based ACLs are (on such a small device) moslty useless. Takes an average attacker like me some seconds, and I'll find a ACL "secured" MAC address on virtually any network.
FMI: https://smallstep.com/blog/mac-address-filtering-and-hiding-ssid-dont-work/