Orbi System: Disable automatic firmware updates

But there is a way to disable automatic updates. It's sufficiently complicated to dissuade the average user, which is good, but also not really that complicated, so you don't have to be a network engineer to be able to do it yourself (I haven't done it, so ymmv). I would only say that the change, rather than being permanent, should be sunsetted. You can disable updates for, say, 60 days (or some other appropriate duration, given the frequency of updates), after which, the change is ineffective, and updates get applied again. Or, alternatively, you can basically blacklist a particular version (e.g., skip 2.2.1.210), but when a newer version comes out, that one gets applied.

Buggy updates are your problem (on a practical level, since you're the one who has to deal with reconfiguring everything, etc.) but unpatched routers can become everyone's problem (e.g., Mirai botnet hosts). Inevitably, what will happen is some users will disable automatic updates by default ("I'm special, and know what I'm doing, and will manually update things myself when I have the time, the updates are important, and I determine they're either stable enough or I can live with the problems they cause"). Some may follow though, and others will take the "if it aint' broke, don't fix it" worldview. Then, there will be those who are fine with auto-updating, until it breaks something, then they will disable it, maybe promise they're re-enable it later, but some of them will also turn into "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" types. Then there are those that will just stay with whatever the default is, in this case, auto-updates. The problem is, there's no guarantee the people in the first two categories will actually follow through with either manually updating or re-enabling automatic updates. In fact, there's probably a high likelihood that they will disable auto-updating, and will never re-enable it, perpetuating the problem automatic updates were meant to address.

And, again, properly tested updates would avoid this problem, even when they're pushed to users. If they only pushed properly functioning updates, what would be your rationale for demanding to be able to opt out?