Feedback for R7000 New firmware 1.0.9.18

Holy cow, I just ran into this issue HARD on 1.0.9.18, after running on it basically since it came out. I saw that the .20 hotfix was out, and even attempted a factory reset on that version as well. After the factory reset the only thing I configured was the basic Wifi settings, and clients immediately had issues, basically everything else was default.

I also tried downgrading back as far as 1.0.9.6, and the same problems came up at every previous version. It seems like once this bug triggers, it's pretty darn persistant.

So after a lot of random attempts, I re-upgraded to 1.0.9.20 (along with another factory reset). While my problems were primarily related to the 2.4Ghz band, I went ahead and tried something different. I disabled the 5Ghz radio completely, and changed the 2.4Ghz radio to disable the 20/40Mhz coexistance & set the mode to 54Mbps specifically. Sure enough after that the 2.4Ghz band appears to at least allow clients to connect (granted the performance is relatively terrible).

Based on this behavior, I don't think the 1.0.9.20 version is fixing the issue on all devices. I really hope that a complete software fix comes out soon on this, as it stands I'll have to replace the router within a few days (family complaints), and I'm sure not replacing it with another Netgear if these problems still exist.