It seems the firmware V2.1.4.2 is causing the device to get bricked. Once updated and rebooted, all devices stop connecting to the router. Both wifi and ethernet stops working. The router gateway also becomes unreachable. The phone app cannot connect to the router anymore and a wired MacBook cannot reach the routerlogin.com page either.

The only resolution to unbrick the router, that I found so far is to downgrade to a previous firmware version during the time when the modem reboots after a manual reset. Right after pressing the reset button, it gives about a 30-40 seconds window within which I can access the gateway, erase all settings, and downgrade to a previous firmware version. However, that's not the end of the problem.

The ISP always pushes the latest version of the firmware overnight. So the modem gets bricked overnight and you repeat the above resolution every morning. I somehow do not find any article with this same issue yet. Is this happening with anyone else?

I have contacted Netgear support many times and created multiple tickets and they always mentioned that they are working on a fix. But It has been like 4 days now with no update about this issue. I contacted Xfinity two times to stop syncing the modem firmware, and they mentioned to have fixed that only for me to find the next morning that the modem got bricked again.

After talking to Netgear support for 3 days in a row, now they told me to downgrade to an even older version and observe whether ISP pushes the latest one again or not. However, this whole thing is very much frustrating and Netgear did not properly acknowledge this. They rejected the request to replace or change hardware, pushed me to purchase gearhead support (and worse they charged me twice for that and gave no concrete resolution to fix that either), and tried to give some hacky workaround to waste more time.

This is my first post in the Netgear community. Please let me know if anyone had any similar experience.

Forum Discussion

CAX80 Xfinity firmware issue