Armor is a Bummer

[BinkyTheClown]

Netgear... I've loved your products for years, but you should BE ASHAMED to have released Netgear Armor in this state. I am an executive for a fortune 5 company and have been responsible for the developement and delivery of commercial software products for the past 35 years. My customers are some of the largest companies on the planet. If I did what you did, I'd be out of business. IEverything about this roll-out is an embarrassment. The web app, lack of control or "visibility" into what's going on from the Orbi dashboard, inability to control "anything" except for on the windows platform, lack of reasonable instructions for installing and uninstalling the software from the platforms you "support", etc. All I can say is thank God I did not purchase a license for this. I installed on Thursday and then spent a couple of hours uninstalling (after searching forums on how) on Friday. What a mess. You can post your apology here, but I won't be returning to read it.

[BinkyTheClown]

... also, if I was Bitdefender I'd be terminating my relationship with you because after this experience, I would never purchase Bitdefender either.

[Orbi-Roc]

Wow! That's a mouthful of rants @BinkyTheClown 

Exception made for a few hiccups here and there, I am actually reasonably please with Netgear Armor, but not so much with Bitdefender Total Security. So my take on this is the complete opposite of yours -- Bitdefender has some work to do here.

Netgear Armor is working just fine, albeit powered by Bitdefender. BD Total Security has some issues that need to be addressed, and the sooner the better.

[Joboo7777]

Biggest issue I have with this product is that you have to pay for it. I can get the same capabilities less the end point protection software for free from other competitors like ASUS(who uses Trend Micro).

[BinkyTheClown]

Yes, I'm ranting a bit, but I have reason to rant. Given extremely positive experience with Netgear I (foolishly) installed Armor and its agents on Win7 PC, Mac Pro, iPad Pro and IPhone7 as my starting point. After never ending alerts and a massive drop out of performance (on the devices) I uninstalled Armor from the router and attempted to uninstall the agents/Bitdefender from the devices. For Win7 is was relatively straight forward. For iOS it was VERY unclear. Apart from deleting the Bitdefender app, it is unclear if it is actually removed fully. iPhone7 seems ok. iPad Pro is lagging and has 15-20 second periods where it becomes unresponsive. Prior to Armor it ran incredibly well. Mac Pro seems ok but I haven't been testing it as much. Overall, I am still in the process of trying to clean this stuff off my devices. I am contemplating a factory reset of my RBR50 router and iPad Pro.

[Orbi-Roc]

Hi again @BinkyTheClown .

I'm not sure the a factory reset will do much more than just disabling Armor with the app. As long as you keep your Orbi software up-to-date, I'm afraid that Netgear Armor, hereafter, will always be on the router, in either Enabled or Disabled state. So yes, a factory reset will work momentarily; but as soon as you bring the Orbi software up-to-date (and it wouldn't be wise to do otherwise), Armor will be right back in, awaiting activation.

[BinkyTheClown]

Thanks for the reply. So my home automation is no longer working (e.g. IFTTT recipies controlling Hue lighting) and I'm getting DOS attack notices in my router log. This is all new shortly after enabling Armor and continues after disabling Armor. It took 15 minutes to setup Armor now it is taking 15+ days to recover from that mistake.

[BinkyTheClown]

So, I downgraded my firmware from 2.3.1.60 to 2.3.1.44

• Router Internet Status is now Good vs. Waiting
• Home automation is now working again
• No more DOS attack messages in log

Not sure if the downgrade fully disabled Armor or if the problem was related to 2.3.1.60. Either way, the router appears to be operating properly now. I'll wait before attempting an upgrade and will post results here in the next day or so.

[Joboo7777]

This is exactly why I havent enabled it even if its just to evaluate the service. Sorry you had these issues.  My guess is the .60 has nothing to do with it and more related to the armor software not completely uninstalling.

[BinkyTheClown]

Agreed. However, apart from factory resetting my router and reconfiguring, I opted to see if a firmware downgrade would at least get me to some sort of stable state. I didn't want to save config and restore as I assumed that would re-enable Armor. Everything seems to be stable now so I will attempt a firmware upgrade back to .60 in the next few days and see if everything is still good.

[Orbi-Roc]

Thank you for the regular updates @BinkyTheClown . I'm following this thread very closely as I may very well have to follow your footsteps pretty soon.

[StormShaman]

I agree with all of this. After finally getting my home automation working, I'm living with Armor. But ... the last issue is that it is not at all helpful. It said there was a blocked phishing attempt on my wife's iMac. There's a URL and a timestamp. No info on what to do, how it happened, any possible next steps. All I can really do is Google it and keep an eye out to see if it happens again.

One this is for sure, when my "trial" is up I'm definitelty not paying for this service. 

[DexterJB]

Hi all, we greatly appreciate your feedback on the Armor feature. Rest assured, all of it is being taken note of and is being forwarded to the right team.

NETGEAR Team