C6300 Mac Filtering has disappeared

Hello Babylon,

Thank you for the response.  I truly appreciate it.  I was hoping the list was still working and just not being displayed for some reason, but alas, it was just gone.  I loaded up the original default cfg from the day I bought it.  Made no diference whatsoever.  I can only guess that Netgear forces out firmware updates or something, as the MAC filtering is completely different even with the old cfg file.  I did not see any place to turn off auto updates either.  Of course regardless of what happened, Netgear didn't have the decency to back up my mac filtering list lol

I began the slow tedious process of adding back in all the MAC addresses I have saved to spreadsheet.  It wasn't so bad adding 1 or 2 at a time, over the course of the last 4 months.  However, trying to add several dozen at once is pathetic lol

This router has the slowest interface I have ever seen.  To add ONE entry to the MAC filter list you have to hit the add button...wait 5 seconds....type in the info and then hit the update button....wait 5 seconds....and then it takes you back to the HOME page roflmao!!!!So add on another 15 seconds or so just to get back to the advanced menu and access control page and then repeat ad nauseam.....

My 14 year old linksys has a faster interface and my cisco (the router this one was replacing) still runs circles around it and its dying lol  Another annoying thing, is the original MAC filtering list let me choose different MAC addresses for 2.4 and 5 ghz channels.  So I could put machines that needed the biggest chunks of speed the 5ghz and regular machines the 2.4.  Now its just one access control list.

However it makes no difference, after adding several dozen it starts throwing a "MAC address duplicated" error.  When in fact the address isnt duplicated at all.  To test I deleted one MAC address and then added a new one to the list and then try to add another new one and it gives the same error.  This of course is unacceptable, but by reading the forums and other sources it appears Netgear puts a cap on the max # of MAC filters.  My Cisco had hundreds on it, and I could edit them all at once too.

Needless to say, I made a mistake.  My cable modem was $120 /year from the ISP and my Cisco router was $365-ish.  I thought "Hey, getting this $250 netgear would save me a cool $235 lol.   Thankfully I always buy a replacement plan for anything 250 or more.  They agreed it was no longer performing correctly compared to when I first purchased it 4 months ago.  Already got the ball rolling and will get my money back minus the cost of the replacement plan.

I am still kind of shocked I couldn't actually call netgear, but instead had to get help on a forum.  I only needed tech support once for my cisco (nothing wrong with the router, it was my screw up) and they informed me I was out of phone support but could still get chat / email support while the router was still under warranty.

Needless to say, I am going back to Cisco.  You truly do get what you pay for.

But again, I thank you for your help Babylon.

Have a great day sir,

Scott