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Forum Discussion
Is Nighthawk a scam? Dangerous? Data collecting? Seems like it.
I bought this router/extender 3.5 months ago. Every single month so far, it shut down my internet access and the only way to get it back was to load that **bleep** app on my phone. As soon as I loaded the app, the network came back. This happened 4 times now. Every time I couldn't get the network back, all I did was load the app and the network came back instantly.
This indicates to me that you are collecting something, data, something, I don't know. There's no reason the app should be required to use your router or extender. I even factory reset this device, and set it up via the web page only. It wouldn't even connect to the internet once I set it up that way. I had to load the app, which said the router was not set up, but the network came back even with it saying not set up.
Today we had an 8 hour outage with xfinity and the network came back on the main xfinity router, but the nighthawk extender did not come back. I reboot it, nothing. I connected to it via the android app, boom, internet's back.
This is entirely unacceptable. There is no reason this app should be required to use your hardware. None whatsoever. I can't even access the router via the local web IP anymore, you guys disabled my access to it. It doesn't have a local IP anymore since I set it up and the android app can't even set it up.
You gave me a useless 3 month warranty with it, and don't even have support unless you pay for it. You are a terrible, scummy, greedy company. I used to like Netgear, way back. But you've changed, you've gotten way worse. The company should shut down, and never sell another product again. Forcing people to use android applications that collect god knows what in order to make your hardware operate. Shutting down your hardware if people don't want to use the android applications. Giving useless tiny warranties and support time limits. Absolutely horrific for a company to do. Very anti-consumer. I plan to make a fuss about this everywhere I can go. This is just, terrible. I'm so angry right now. Having to load an android app just to use my **bleep** extender.
I'm sure you'll hide my post, ban me so people can't hear my experience, whatever it takes to make yourselves look good. I already left my review on Amazon, and posted on the reddit. I'll continue to spread the word in other locations assuming this problem doesn't get fixed very promptly. This is truly terrible, I have no idea what kind of spyware your app is but the fact that its entirely required is just wrong.
https://www.reddit.com/r/NETGEAR/comments/1b0d7bw/nighthawk_app_dangerous_or_just_plain_bad/
https://www.reddit.com/r/NETGEAR/comments/1aw9bxp/netgear_routers_without_app_without_account/
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You detailed the issue you're having. Thanks for that. A couple questions.
1. What modem do you have from xfinity?
2. what router do you have? And what firmware is on it?
3. what extender do you have? And firmware on it?
I dislike the app and so rarely use it. Half the time, if I'm not testing something, I uninstall the app from my phone anyway because I don't use it. Its never caused an issue with connection. And you don't specify what app it is you're installing? The nighthawk app? Orbi app? Do you have bitdefender/armor? Just wanting to clarify.
When you're having issues, does it say "connected, no internet"? Does the SSID stop broadcasting entirely? Do wired devices drop? What happens when it comes back?
We're not there to see all that's going on or you experience so the better you describe what happens and is going on the better we can help.
Just an FYI, you're posting on the community forum where members of the public help out. We're not Netgear. Not trying to say you're not having issues. Just keep in mind that WE aren't Netgear and are trying to help you. So you can say whatever you want about Netgear and we don't care. But try to be courteous to the ones helping you and you'll get more help.
I don't know what modem xfinity gave us, it shouldn't matter in the slightest, its also the router too.
The extender is the EX7300v2, Nighthawk app on android.
As per the other questions, I've posted on reddit about it as well but it was unhelpful. I have screenshot proof of the fact that they give you a 3 month only warranty and support, which is absolutely terrible. Right after the 3 month period I start having major problems too. A little searching online and you find that Netgear is actually really badly rated by a lot of people. Which I should have done before I got one but didn't because I remembered over a decade ago when I used one and it was a great piece of hardware.
So lets describe what exactly happened when I got fed up with all this finally.
First time I set this up, I used the app. I then found the IP address to load the router page on PC because the app is too limited to set up the device fully so I used the web page version to fix my network settings a little bit better. Xfinity was terrible and constantly going out at the same time every night claiming it was a hardware malfunction on our end, as if malfunctions occur at the same time every night... Most of the time, the extender would reconnect just fine when the connection came back on. However, there were times when it just wouldn't, and even with a reboot, it wouldn't. I found out that I had to load the android app Nighthawk, and connect it to the extender, just to get my network back. The connection would appear fine, everything would connect to the extender, but the extender would not provide internet until the android app made a successful connection to the extender.
Keep in mind I may call it a router on occasion because router, extender, same thing. I'm used to that, but I have to call it an extender here because people get all confused if I don't.
So a few days ago xfinity comes out and replaces our modem/router all-in-one system. The extender wouldn't connect anymore even though the network name and pass were exactly the same. I had to factory reset the thing. So I used the app to set it up, but it used the same network name so I couldn't tell if I was connected to the xfinity router or the extender. I couldn't access the extender's web page either... So I factory reset it once more. This time I tried to set it up via the web only as people claimed it was possible. It worked, my laptop set it up and connected to the internet. But no other devices could connect. They connected to the extender, but the extender would not give network access to anything. I was confused, so I loaded the android app Nighthawk, it couldn't find a device, I selected the extender from the list. It connected, suddenly every device connected to the extender had internet access while the app said it was an unconfigured device that needed to be set up, but wouldn't allow me to set it up either.
Yesterday, we had an 8 hour outage caused by a tornado that destroyed a lot of stuff in the area. The internet came back online on the xfinity device, but the extender wasn't giving internet access. I reboot it. Still nothing. I loaded the app on my phone. Suddenly the internet comes back on all devices connected to the extender even though the app still says its an unconfigured extender.
Every single case, in which the extender was broadcasting the proper network name for me to connect to but wasn't providing internet even though the main router was providing internet its self, I had to load that **bleep**ty nighthawk app to connect my devices to the internet.
Lastly, yes I know this is a community forum. Netgear doesn't give a rats ass about anyone but themselves. If they did, they wouldn't have a scam warranty and scam support system. However netgear may still moderate the forums or have people who do, that try to hide negative reviews as quickly as possible.
From my observations so far, its the app that is required for the extender to connect devices to the internet. As if Netgear has programmed their extender to shut down internet access if it doesn't see the app once every x time or when something goes wrong or has been rebooted. If the internet works now, clearly its capable of working. It doesn't matter what I am connected to, it matters that the internet comes back the very instant I load their **bleep**ty Nighthawk application on my phone. Literally, the very instant Nighthawk connects to the router, the "no internet" symbols on my devices suddenly vanish and everything begins working. I saw it happen on my laptop when it said no internet, I loaded the app on my phone, and within 2 seconds of the app connecting to the router, my laptop connected and my Alexa Echos began working and my robot vacuum's red indicator of no connection went away.
1. it does matter what modem/router/gateway you have. Its the primary for the system.
2. it sounds like you've had a lot of outages in your area. An unreliable router can cause a lot of issues.
3. Try factory resetting the extender and reinstalling it. During the install process, uncheck the "extend 2.4ghz network". You'll still be able to use the 2.4ghz network but it won't use it as failover for the router--extender connection. 2.4ghz is sensitive to interference and slow and when its acting as failover, its pretty horrible.
4. Before reinstalling the extender, make sure to set your primary router's 5ghz channel to a non-DFS channels. If you have an airport/weather radar in your area, it makes DFS channels unreliable and they drop frequently. So set the 5ghz to either channels 36-48 or 149-165. Those are non-dfs and should be more reliable. That ensures the backhaul between router---extender is stable.
5. When (if) you do have issue again, instead of logging in via the app, use a computer and log into the extender using its IP address. This lets you log into it and check its status page. Get a screensnip of that. It'll help tell us if there issues between router----extender or extender---devices.
