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Solved
No new updates
I’ve received a couple emails over the past couple months stating a new version of firmware is available. Checking this website it does indeed show newer firmware. I show that I am running Firmware Ve...
Okay, here we go - I have the results for this issue. I was originally at V1.2.0.22_1.0.78 of firmware for my Netgear Nighthawk R6900P router. I just manually downloaded the latest firmware release NETGEAR Router R6900P V1.3.0.8_1.0.93. The manual upgrade after downloading this release to my PC worked fine. What this means to me is that when the Netgear Router is operating in Access Point mode, it will appear to go to the Netgear server to check for the latest release, but apparent this function must be disabled like many other functions if your router is operating in AP mode. I am current using the Netgear router in AP mode since I have a Verizon Fios router in line from a recent upgrade to Verizon Fios Gigabit Internet. My plan is to eventually eliminate the Fios Router, since the Netgear WiFi coverage is far superior to the Verizon Router. I hope this helps those in similar situations where they have their router attached in AP mode to an ISP router. I guess I will just manually perform these upgrades while my router is operating in AP mode. It would be benefical if Netgear could make in known that the firmware check routine does not work in AP mode, as they have done with the other functions that do not work. As a previous responder mentioned, although they do not mention this by name, some of the functions that will not work in AP mode would make you think that the firmware check does not work. It is still not clear to me why it does not work since Internet access gets passed though the Netgear router in AP mode. Thank goodness for the Netgear emails or I would not have realized that my router was out-of-date because I have always used the firmware check procedure and it does appear to go out to the Netgear server to check and comes back no newer firmware available. CASE CLOSED. Thanks for all our your input. I was pleasantly surprised at the number of great, timely suggestions.
tkwilli wrote:
I decided to keep my router since it has better WiFi coverage.
If your current setup meets your needs, don't mess around too much.
Sometimes these gateways double as a link to a phone, so you wouldn't want to lose that.
Okay, here we go - I have the results for this issue. I was originally at V1.2.0.22_1.0.78 of firmware for my Netgear Nighthawk R6900P router. I just manually downloaded the latest firmware release NETGEAR Router R6900P V1.3.0.8_1.0.93. The manual upgrade after downloading this release to my PC worked fine. What this means to me is that when the Netgear Router is operating in Access Point mode, it will appear to go to the Netgear server to check for the latest release, but apparent this function must be disabled like many other functions if your router is operating in AP mode. I am current using the Netgear router in AP mode since I have a Verizon Fios router in line from a recent upgrade to Verizon Fios Gigabit Internet. My plan is to eventually eliminate the Fios Router, since the Netgear WiFi coverage is far superior to the Verizon Router. I hope this helps those in similar situations where they have their router attached in AP mode to an ISP router. I guess I will just manually perform these upgrades while my router is operating in AP mode. It would be benefical if Netgear could make in known that the firmware check routine does not work in AP mode, as they have done with the other functions that do not work. As a previous responder mentioned, although they do not mention this by name, some of the functions that will not work in AP mode would make you think that the firmware check does not work. It is still not clear to me why it does not work since Internet access gets passed though the Netgear router in AP mode. Thank goodness for the Netgear emails or I would not have realized that my router was out-of-date because I have always used the firmware check procedure and it does appear to go out to the Netgear server to check and comes back no newer firmware available. CASE CLOSED. Thanks for all our your input. I was pleasantly surprised at the number of great, timely suggestions.
tkwilli wrote:
It would be benefical if Netgear could make in known that the firmware check routine does not work in AP mode, as they have done with the other functions that do not work.
Excellent point. My guess is that they wrote that note before the roll out of the process for automated updates. (The note is now more than a year old.) That's a relatively new feature.
There are also probably a lot of old devices out there that cannot do the automated update. But that is no excise for including that as a comment in that article.
I'll pass that one on.
> [...] It is still not clear to me why it does not work since Internet
> access gets passed though the Netgear router in AP mode.
A wireless access point knows nothing about the Internet. All it
knows about is the LAN. What it does is (logically) join together
different physical parts of the LAN. Somewhere on the LAN is the
router, which _does_ know about the Internet. An AP acts like a simple
network switch (with wireless capability). All the AP needs to do is to
get traffic from one LAN segment to another; it has no need to know
anything about the router, or the Internet, or much else of any kind.
An individual _client_ knows about its gateway/router (to the
Internet), so it sends messages thither. They may pass through the AP,
but the AP has no idea why, or what the ultimate destination might be.
To the AP, it's all LAN traffic.
> [...] My guess is that they wrote that note before the roll out of the
> process for automated updates. [...]
Who's talking about "automated updates"? The problem appears to
affect manual checks, like: ADVANCED > Administration > Firmware Update
: Check for new version from the Internet. Or did I misunderstand the
original complaint ("on the firmware check")?- Thanks for the explanation. That makes a lot of sense and I should have picked up on it earlier, with just an aging brain and body as my excuse. Since security of the Netgear’s router in AP mode is still important because it controls security of local WiFi access, while the Verizon router provides both WiFi and Internet security for the functions it controls, it may be of benefit to put a message out to use the manual firmware update procedure when operating as an AP. That would have saved me some time, and it is clear from this thread that a lot of people were unsure why the check procedure didn’t work. I suspect that those who initially set up theirs routers for automatic updates and gone through an ISP upgrade such as I did may be unaware of security exposure in not receiving the automatic updates. The tricky part for me was it appeared that the check procedure was going to the Neargear server to check where it responded no newer firmware available. If that routine first checked the routers status as in AP mode, a response could be programmed like “your router has been detected in AP mode, please download the firmware update corresponding to your model at netgear.com/linklocation, and follow the manual update procedure”.
> [...] The tricky part for me was it appeared that the check procedure
> was going to the Neargear server to check where it responded no newer
> firmware available. [...]
It would be interesting to see what "Check for new version" does in
normal-router mode when there's no Internet connection. Does it
complain that it can't check, or does it report "no newer firmware
available"? If the latter, then getting that result in AP mode wouldn't
be a mystery. More Netgear firmware de luxe?
