I understand that a developing product needs updates. Sometimes these updates require changes to what data is expected for an element of the settings config. As a customer, when a firmware update is incompatible with my settings, it is absolutely unacceptable that I would have to re-build my entire config from scratch after updating firmware. Netgear may not be able to update my settings but you should at least give us a tool to fix it. It is NEVER ok to lose a customer’s hard work, that’s just bad business. Here is how we fix it:

Give us a tool to download the config in a human-readable format. I don’t care if it is TXT, CSV, XLS, or whatever… Just give us something we can work with.
With every firmware update, the “release notes” should include details of ANY changes to the settings requirements so we know what to adjust in our human-readable files. (ex: “The [setting] field for [control] on [screen] is now restricted to numeric characters.”) This points us directly to a potential problem. Netgear just needs to track such things and release the info with every update.
Maintain a “white paper” with a list for the requirements/limitations for every settings value. This goes with number 2 above to allow us to fix problems.
Along with item 1 above, we need to be able to upload this human-readable settings file back to the device.
Auto settings debugger: When an attempt is made to upload a human-readable settings file, a check should automatically be performed to see if the file being uploaded conforms to the latest established rules. Any errors should be identified with the specific item and what the fault is. In the event of an error, the user should be prompted to override or abort with “abort” as the default. In the event of success, the config is uploaded with a success confirmation.

This isn’t rocket science here. I get that you need to do things that could break my old config. All we are asking is that you give us the tools to fix it. To reiterate my earlier point, “Start over” is NEVER an ok thing to tell a customer.

This one feature set would also solve several other problems:

uploading a port forwarding list
maintaining a block list
revising routing tables

All of these items would be downloaded/uploaded in one shot with the above suggestions.

As an organizational note: If the human-readable download were actually a ZIP file it could contain multible human-readable files where any setting containing lists could actually be seperate files within the ZIP. Maybe all the settings could be broken out into files containing relevant sections instead of a single long list. If you need to take it in small bites, fine. Dump everything into a single human readable file for now, add the error checker later, break the file into smaller relevant pices when you get the time. I don't much care how you break down the task, just give us a took to fix the things you break and provide it sooner rather than later. We need items 1 & 4 yesterday, the rest will be nice when you can get to it.

Thank you for your consideration.

Never rebuild a configuration from scratch again!