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NETGEAR 4300 (Possible Firmware Bug) V1.0.2.104
I updated my NETGEAR 4300 to firmware: V1.0.2.104
It seemed to then have unreliable wifi connections
I noticed this while using Facebook.com and very noticibly when I tried downloading a large file (UbuntuDesktop18.04-iso) -- I retried downloading that ISO file about 5 or 6 times (each time, their load-balancer would have the ISO arrive from a different download site) -- in all cases, the download would get stuck after downloading somewhere between 300 to 500MB
I downloaded the ISO file successfully on a similar router (WNDR4300 which I use for my wired internet access) -- this one was using firmware 1.0.2.98 -- this test download was successful on the first try
I reverted the router I was using for wifi back to firmware version 1.0.2.98 and tried downloading the ISO file -- it worked on the first try
Firmware version 1.0.2.104 may need to be retested with wifi and downloading large files
I'll watch for future WNDR4300 firmware updates and will re-test this error condition
Thanks
It looks like there is no problem and my initial request may be disregarded. Thanks for looking into it.
After reverting back to V1.0.2.98 for a week, I retried V1.0.2.104 without resetting anything. All settings successfully moved forward. It worked good this time and there was no further issue with downloading a 2GB file via WIFI. The problem I noticed above may be related to an ISP issue as a neighbor in the building finally was able to get the ISP to do a DSLAM reset. The reported issue may have been just bad luck in timing, though reverting back to V1.0.2.98 at that exact time did seem to help.
I do appreciate that they are still providing updates for this model (I have another on the shelf in shrink-wrap that I'll probably pull out when needed, so I'll probably get another 5 to 8 years from these two machines -- I hope they keep the updates coming!)
Thanks again for your help and I'll remember your recommendation of resetting the settings if I need to do troubleshooting in the future.
8 Replies
pw2 wrote:
I updated my NETGEAR 4300 to firmware: V1.0.2.104
It seemed to then have unreliable wifi connections
Did you reset the router to factory settings after the firmware flash?
New firmware sometimes introduces changes that are not compatible with the old configuration.
So while it isn't guaranteed to fix problems a factory reset is the first thing to try if you have issues with new firmware.
This is a nuisance because you then have to reconfigure the device all over again.
You can backup your settings before you reset and restore them later. But that may just bring back the fault. Then again, at least you will know if the reset fixed the problem.Thanks for the idea -- part of the problem may be that the ISP seems to be doing less filtering as my DSL modem is much busier (leading to my router likely needing to do much more work) after the ISP visited my apartment building a week ago to fix problems that others were having -- my primary test is whether or not the ~2 GB file (Ubuntu18.0.4-desktop-amd64.iso) can be completely downloaded -- I'll retry with both .98 and .104 at different times of the day as well as following a factory reset and will report back within 2 to 3 weeks -- thanks!
It looks like there is no problem and my initial request may be disregarded. Thanks for looking into it.
After reverting back to V1.0.2.98 for a week, I retried V1.0.2.104 without resetting anything. All settings successfully moved forward. It worked good this time and there was no further issue with downloading a 2GB file via WIFI. The problem I noticed above may be related to an ISP issue as a neighbor in the building finally was able to get the ISP to do a DSLAM reset. The reported issue may have been just bad luck in timing, though reverting back to V1.0.2.98 at that exact time did seem to help.
I do appreciate that they are still providing updates for this model (I have another on the shelf in shrink-wrap that I'll probably pull out when needed, so I'll probably get another 5 to 8 years from these two machines -- I hope they keep the updates coming!)
Thanks again for your help and I'll remember your recommendation of resetting the settings if I need to do troubleshooting in the future.
Model / Version: WNDR4300
Confirmed this to be a bug. I updated firmware to http://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/GDC/WNDR4300/WNDR4300-V1.0.2.104.zip and after two days starting noticing that 2.4GHz was disappearing while 5GHz was active.
Here is the FIX:
https://www.netgear.com/support/product/WNDR4300#Firmware Version 1.0.2.98
Piece-of-junk-that-breaks-2.4GHz: http://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/GDC/WNDR4300/WNDR4300-V1.0.2.104.zip
Previous-version-works-as-expected: http://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/GDC/WNDR4300/WNDR4300-V1.0.2.98.zipConclusion:
Fire the management team of the firmware department and verbally reprimand the dev team for doing shoddy work and cancel their xmas performance merit increases.
kingpoop wrote:
Model / Version: WNDR4300
Confirmed this to be a bug.
Happy to pass this on, but previous victims have marked this as Solved, so can you confirm that you went through the steps suggested here to fix your symptoms? In particular, did you factory reset your device after the update?
If that doesn't work, can you be more specific about the issues that you see?
Firmware writers need as much detail as possible if they are to squish rare bugs.
Yes, I performed all of the steps and it appears my previous post was incorrect as the following version http://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/GDC/WNDR4300/WNDR4300-V1.0.2.98.zip also caused the 2.4GHz to dissappear.
I ended up reverting to WNDR4300_V1.0.2.96 version and the problem was fixed.
http://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/GDC/WNDR4300/WNDR4300_V1.0.2.96.zip
My conclusion is that some change made after WNDR4300_V1.0.2.96 introduced the issue and it's been propogated in the WNDR4300-V1.0.2.98 and WNDR4300-V1.0.2.104
I verified this by installing them again WNDR4300-V1.0.2.98 and WNDR4300-V1.0.2.104 and 2.4GHz again intermittently dissappeared. Once i rolled back to WNDR4300_V1.0.2.96 the problem went away.
Best regards,
M
