MR60 LAN setup

[spapanik]

I made the mistake to pay £300 for this useless piece of garbage, and now I have to live with my mistake. Every few days my router changes my subnet mask and my LAN setup (Firmware version V1.0.6.102_2.0.45). Is there a way to force it to remember my setup?

[antinode]

> MR60 [...]

   Connected to what?

> [...] Every few days my router changes my subnet mask and my LAN setup
> [...]

   That sounds very unlikely.  What, exactly, changes from what,
exactly, to what, exactly?  How, exactly, are you observing these
"changes"?

> [...] Is there a way to force it to remember my setup?

   Without knowing why (or what) it's changing?

   Visit http://netgear.com/support , put in your model number, and look
for Documentation.  Get the User Manual (at least).  Read.  Look for
"Manage the router configuration file"?

[spapanik]

Obviously, and I cannot stress that enough, I have read the user manual first. Also your answer is rude and unhelpful.

> Connected to what?

What do you mean exactly? To tell you all the 25 devices connected to the router?

> That sounds very unlikely. What, exactly, changes from what, exactly, to what, exactly? How, exactly, are you observing these "changes"?

I really don't appreciate the quotation marks in the question. It's rude. But what changes is my subnet mask from `255.255.0.0.` to `255.255.255.0`. The way I that in the router setup page I can see it changed. It also removes everything from the Address reservation, which means that I lose the ability to ssh in and the NFS exports are all messed up.

I have no idea why this is happening, but it happens when it reboots (subnet mask MUST persist between reboots, this is obvious). Last time it happened was due to a power failure, that we lost electricity for a few seconds, and the time before that was when I changed the DNS server. I cannot be wasting my time adding again and again the whole change back the subnet mask/ add the 25 devices to the address reservation.

[antinode]

> Obviously, and I cannot stress that enough, I have read the user
> manual first. [...]

   It wasn't obvious to me.

> [...] Also your answer is rude and unhelpful.

   I found your problem description vague, lacking obviously significant
details.  I find wasting others' time that way "rude".

> What do you mean exactly? To tell you all the 25 devices connected to
> the router? [...]

   Start with what's connected to the router's WAN/Internet port.
Presumably, the client devices on your LAN are not causing the problem.

> I really don't appreciate the quotation marks in the question. It's
> rude. [...]

   See "lacking obviously significant details [...]", above.

> [...] what changes is my subnet mask from `255.255.0.0.` to
> `255.255.255.0`. The way I that in the router setup page I can see it
> changed. [...]

   _Which_ "the router setup page", exactly?  There's more than one,
isn't there?  Unless you think that asking that is "rude", of course.

   Generally, these consumer-grade routers do not behave well with LAN
subnet masks narrower than "/24".  I wouldn't expect it to change
spontaneously whatever you specified, wherever you specified it, but I
would not be amazed by trouble of some kind(s) if you specified a "/16"
subnet mask.

   Why are you doing that?  Is there some actual problem which you are
trying to solve by using such a narrow subnet mask (broad LAN address
range)?  With "the 25 devices connected to the router", you would not
seem to need an address range greater than around 250.

> [...] I cannot be wasting my time adding again and again [...]

   Hence the earlier suggestion regarding "the router configuration
file", which seemed to upset you so much.

   But if what's causing the trouble is a senselessly narrow subnet
mask, then restoring it that way probably wouldn't help.

[spapanik]

On my internet port there is the Virgin media modem, with DHCP disabled. Should it ever matter which setup page I used to setup the subnet mask? It's set. If something is set, the sane thing to do is not to care how it was set. But anyway, let's assume that the software engineer who coded that was an escapee from Arkham Asylum, I used the one and only setup page that allows setting the subnet mask, and it's the one that IS described in the manual.

The manual doesn't specify that /16 is problematic, it actually says that you can choose a different subnet mask, and I specifically checked for that before buying this garbage.

Why do I do it? I hate when people do it in stackoverflow. It shouldn't matter, should it? But to answer your question, I have the postgres, webserver listeners and NFS exports already setup in this setting for years, and I don't want to change it. It's future proof and it works. I had to buy this useless piece of garbage for the mesh functionality.

[schumaku]

The better place (even if we all know it's a tough way to bypass all the L1 and L2 support hurdles and push the canned Q&As from the table) would be to file a file a ticket with Netgear support using the https://my.netgear.com/ portal or direct https://www.netgear.com/support/contact.aspx. so the obvious (or not so obvious) problem of destroying your valid config with the uncommon subnet mask can be troubleshooted and fixed. This is why Netgear does offer free support access for the time following the product initial product set-up.

Ranting and post (off-topic, even if the tri-band Nighthawk Mesh might have the same bug in place) do-not-buy does not help to make any progress at all, and it won't offload the high blood pressure. With your obvious strong tech background based on the described environment, you perfectly know that some 99.x+% of the home networks operate on the /24 subnet. 8-)

[spapanik]

@schumaku I have the Nighthawk mesh (https://smile.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01MTYPZ1K/), I don't understand why you say that I'm off-topic. 

About networks, it's crystal clear from RFC-1918, that 192.168 is a /24 subnet. Of course, I understand that most of the home networks will operate on the /24 subnet, but that doesn't mean that the router should randomly change the subnet, for no apparent reason. Also, I contacted them support and all I got was "Please update your firmware, OBVIOUSLY we support /16", even though my firmware was up to date. The support is atrocious, and if I knew that I would need to set up a different DHCP server, I wouldn't have bought it.