I have just received a replacement router (D7800) because my previous one started having problems with the internet connection: the internet connection would appear to stop working, yet the modem was still connected (confirmed in the advanced section's status, and confirmed by my ISP) yet in the Basic section it said no internet connection, and when clicked on that would lead to a page saying no ethernet cable was plugged into the internet port. Because the D7800 has a built in DSL modem, and the internet port is unused it was assumed that there was a fault with the internet port on the router.
I have now received the replacement, and within 3 days the problem has recurred. I am therefore coming to the conclusion that this must be a firmware issue (I used my old Billion Bipaq 8800NL router for a week whilst waiting for the replacement, without any issues).
Whilst setting up the replacement D7800 I have discovered 2 other related problems with the firmware (note that as soon as I received the replacement router I upgraded the firmware to 1.0.1.16). Firstly, in the QOS section, when trying to update the Performance Optimisation Database (which on the new router is on v2.0330.g60029a7 release date March 30, 2015) I always get the message "Failed to download Detection Database. Please try again later." which thinking about it my previous D7800 did in recent firmware versions - though it had a newer database - presumably the updates stopped working with one of the firmware updates subsequently, whereas this D7800 was upgrade to the latest firmware before I tried to update the database.
It turns out from this thread
https://community.netgear.com/t5/Nighthawk-WiFi-Routers/QoS-Error/m-p/1232567#M50559
that it is a firmware issue, the same as seen on the R7800. This issue was solved by creating new firmware which is not yet widely available. Interestingly, as part of the problem they identified that the date was wrong. It turns out that on this replacement D7800 the date is shown (in the log section) as 1st January 1970. Although I didn't recognise it as necessarily being an issue, I remember that the previous D7800 also showed that date - and I found there is no way of setting the correct date manually.
I have reverted my D7800 to firmware 1.0.1.10 but the date and QOS database issues remain. I have then reverted back to 1.0.0.48 where the date in logs is correct (so 1.0.1.10 introduced this issue). It appears that in 1.0.0.48 firmware allowed the Optimisation Database to update automatically, so it's now on a version from June 07, 2016.
So it seems that I need to get this information to Netgear, and we need them to work urgently on new firmware for the D7800. Because there is a known vulnerability in the older firmware versions, I'm potentially going to switch back to the BIPAQ 8800NL until a new secure and bug fixed D7800 firmware is available.
I'm beyond my 90 day telephone support (I bought the original D7800 in April 2016) - so I need support to acknowledge this post and raise a case based on this information.
