Can Netgear PLEASE allow us to use names for attached devices that are long than 15 characters? 15 characters is, frankly, amateur hour. As is forced capitalizing all the names that you were able to acquire off the network.
We are not living in 1992 anymore. Bit are cheap, bytes are cheap, kilobytes are cheap. Have some pride in your work -- and that includes understanding how people want to use your products, which means rich names strings like "Netatmo Sensor - Upstairs Bedroom".
Fing, for example, as a company that's in the same sort of space, but that understands how UI works in the 21st century, doesn't have these idiotic limitations.
Not impressed about the Netgear UI and the limited name lengths, and some attempts to "niceify" things, too. In a light attempt for defense of Netgear - and different from eg. Fing - Netgear does support and use the Web UI and Apps (Genie, Nighthawk, Orbi) on many different products. Needless to say, they failed to change the 1990ties specs on the migration from the Genie to the Nighthawk/Orbi environment - not only where it comes to the allowed length of the device names/description text fields.
Nighthawk App and e.g. the R9000 device names are limied to 32 chars, and no change in the first characger from lower to uppercase (as on the gaming routers.
Nighthawk App and e.g. the R9000 device names are limited to 32 chars, and no change in the first character of the string from lower to uppercase (as on the RAXnnn).
@ChristineT we still can't edit posts in this community section ...
I didn't try the iOS app, but using the web interface it's 15 characters. Beyond that it just won't accept characters.
32 is closer to acceptable, but still ridiculously low (especially if people want to use unicode characters).
And the selection of devices you can classify against is utterly bizarre. Multiple particular iPhone models, but not a single IoT device? Bridge, Switch, Router, and Repeater?
And don't get me started on the bizarre editing UI.
The whole things feels like a project put together by a not especially talented 14year-old programmer 20 years ago. No concern for UI. No concern for real-world issues (like name lengths or unicode). No concern for what devices people actually see on their networks and want to name/classify.
BTW the point of the comment is not to solicit details on what namelengths are allowed where. It is to get Netgear to fix the damn apps and the web interface. I have to post here since Netgear don't seem interested in providing a bug/suggestion web page.
BTW the point of the comment is not to solicit details on what namelengths are allowed where. It is to get Netgear to fix the damn apps and the web interface. I have to post here since Netgear don't seem interested in providing a bug/suggestion web page.
In that case you are in the wrong place.
You should know that this community is essentially a user-to-user venue with some input from a small band of Netgear techies.
Most of the answers come from fellow users who have no connection with Netgear. They just have a lot of collective experience and are familiar with the sort of problems that turn up.They certainly have no control over what Netgear gets up to, although some seem to like to feel that they are important enough to try to pull strings from on high.
What you want is best posted in the appropriate section.
Since we're discussing newbie issues: is there some known issue (with an easy fix) that's causing my Nighthawk to cut off WiFi every few hours?
It's only been active about 18 hrs, but in that time
- last night it died completely. WiFi ended, then ethernet, and this morning I had to power cycle it
- then about six hours later WiFi (but not ethernet) disappeared for about two minutes, then came back without manual intervention.
I'm running the latest firmware (upgraded as part of the install yesterday) and am not doing anything especially unusual with the box. I cannot see any external justification for this sort of behavior (power spikes, ISP glitch, overheating, anything like that).
Surely this cannot be expected (and customer-tolerated) behavior? Do I have a bad box? Or is this just par for the course, something that Netgear users tolerate because they don't know that decent WiFi boxes go months, years, without ever losing connectivity?
So far not especially impressed withe the user-facing parts of the company.
Indeed, Netgear is by no means the best communicator around. But it helps if people turn up with a constructive frame of mind rather than determined to moan and groan.
How would you feel if the first thing someone said to you was "Everything you do is rubbish"?
Some people, present company excepted, seem to make it their life's mission to denigrate anyone and everyone who works for Netgear. Those of us with real world experience know when to make allowances and when to put the boot in.
If that length limit hasn't come up already in the idea exchange, then it should. In that way it can pick up "votes" from like minded people.
Sadly, some of the sensible ideas there pass by ignored. One way to counter that response could be to point to other brands that do a better job. Users can complain to their heart's content, but when the competition does something, Netgear's tech people can take notice and show it to their bosses.
Since we're discussing newbie issues: is there some known issue (with an easy fix) that's causing my Nighthawk to cut off WiFi every few hours?
I wouldn't try that one here.
For a start it isn't an app issue, and second the Netgear team has probably exhausted its interest, if there was any, in this topic. Try it in the section for your devices.
OK, let me explore the various boards and try to see how this community works.
Sorry to be a pain. But when your expensive box starts failing in random, frustrating ways right after you installed it, you don't have the patience to try to figure out the right way to get info, you just want damn problems fixed ASAP.
But I don't consider "draft ax" as anything close to an acceptable excuse. Draft means you may need to release a firmware update to modify some particular technicality in the protocol; it doesn't mean that your hardware is allowed to randomly crash every six hours. At the very least, I expect a draft ax device to be BULLET-PROOF when connected to nothing but ac and n devices, as is my situation.
I didn't try the iOS app, but using the web interface it's 15 characters. Beyond that it just won't accept characters.
32 is closer to acceptable, but still ridiculously low (especially if people want to use unicode characters).
Played this before, and re-tested today on the Android App version - test string with some random 32 Chinese chars borrowed from the Shanghai Wikipedia entry.
The App does deny any "non-English" characters:
The R9000 (v1.0.5.2) with a slightly older Web UI than the OP's RAX does go belly up with a 400 Bad Request. The Web input field is 32 chars long - so this is not a limit to 32 Bytes.
And the selection of devices you can classify against is utterly bizarre. Multiple particular iPhone models, but not a single IoT device? Bridge, Switch, Router, and Repeater?
It's even worse - the number and type of devices differs between the Web UI and the App (at least for the pair mentioned above).
The whole things feels like a project put together by a not especially talented 14year-old programmer 20 years ago. No concern for UI. No concern for real-world issues (like name lengths or unicode). No concern for what devices people actually see on their networks and want to name/classify.
Reads almost like my complaint sent to Netgear some time ago - thumbs up!
Look, we're waving the flag for a looong time, trying to document such issues. Haven't got even a "thank you" or a "we are working on it." - appreciate your push of course!
Why do you need a long device name? Sorry, i just don't know why I'd like to have a long device name. I want things simple but if you can give me a nice reason then maybe I'd try that.
I gave you an example in the first post. And I am not making these up, I just wanted to copy the names from my Fingbox.
So for example, NetAtmo sensor (Upstairs Bedroom)
33 characters, and every one of them makes sense.
If you're living in an IoT world (which apparently Netgear is not) you will have LOTS of names like this. At least one longish part to identify the device type, another longish part to identify the location.
