I am absolutley ruing the day that I purchased a RAX200. It's hand's down the worst router I've purchased and what's adding insult to injury is the customer support I paid for on top of it. I've had my RAX less than 2 weeks and it's consumed at least 15 hours of troubleshooting.
The RAX200 needs to be rebooted multiple times a day. It just freezes and stops routing traffic when there's traffic from a number of both wired and wireless devices. I invested hours attaching debug logs and config files and still support keeps kicking me back to L0 because each time I get to the L2 queue, I get disconnected.
Here are the sequence of events that happens with my RAX200
- While browsing suddenly pages will stop resolving on all devices.
- I attempt to get into the admin interface but it will not allow me to access from a WIRED device
- I check the LED indicators and they're all white
- The Nighthawk app also won't connect from my wireless device.
- I must manually turn off and reboot the device and suddenly all internet traffic is as normal as before.
- QoS is not turned on. I am using SmartConnect.
- No VPNs, no VLANs
- I've flashed the firmware 3x
- I've reset to factory settings 2x
Nothing seems to work and each time I try to speak to L2 support I get dropped from the queue. I'm really trying not to give up on this router and Netgear as a brand but as it stands, this has been a nightmare experience.
I completely understand how you feel. I regret ever buying a netgear router. This will be the final time I spend money on their horrible devices. I can’t wait to go back to Asus rog routers. They are phenomenal, superb customer service, and outstanding quality.
So I ultimately had to RMA this device. The support process was incredibly complex. You need an act of God to speak to an L2 tech. Netgear has the industry’s worst support despite paying a premium price. The new device seems to be working okay but it’s only been a week. Time will tell. Still there are reasons why I will never buy another Netgear:
1) Nighthawk App is a joke. You really can’t use it to manage your router outside of turning basic functions on and off. Need to change a chatty WiFi channel? Need to change the security setting? Forget it. That all must be done from a PC or browser. Why create such a limited app that’s only used during setup? I don’t need some widget to tell me “a spam attempt was blocked” - who cares. 2) Granular control over things like DNS aren’t available with DHCP clients. That’s right- a $600 router doesn’t let you set DNS servers for DHCP clients. Whoever missed that in product development should be fired. 3) WiFi Channel analysis - want to stay off chatty WiFi channel in your area? You’d think a $600 router would recommend first without automatically changing to a channel with no notification. Nope. Imagine purchasing a $2K laptop or PC with four options for configuring it and told to “trust us” to find the best configuration. 4)Support - Need support? Forget about that even if you have a support contract. L1 techs are nothing more than script-readers from either India or the Philippines, not that there’s anything wrong with that rather Netgear support policies completely reduce these folks to just call center answering nodes with no expertise other than what they CANT support.
