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You have a massive loss of confidence brewing here, and a potential loss of many customers for years. You might also start to get bad press in public soon. I have some ideas to help you resolve this. Please escalate this appropriately within Netgear, or you may lose millions of dollars in sales due to mishandling of this issue. If you are reading this and work at Netgear, and your feel you must follow an internal process that will cause this issue to remain unsolved for weeks or months, I suggest you step outside that process. You may end up being a company hero.
Do you understand the root cause of the issue yet? If so, please update the forum to instill confidence and prevent people from wasting their time guessing and trying random firmware fixes, ones that potentially expose them to security flaws you worked so hard to fix in the past.
If you do not understand the root cause, consider: some people's issues apparently are resolved by restoring older firmware, and some people's are not. Ensure your lead engineers in charge of this issue ARE AWARE OF THIS. Then, please answer: what aspects of a router's operation might remain by going from firmware A, to firmware B, then back to A again? What is different at the end of this process that might reveal a bug, that was not present when Firmware A was in operation for weeks or months? Is there a secondary memory somewhere in the router beyond the chip that stores the firmware? If so, it is in that memory's interaction with the firmware that you'll find a bug.
If not, is there a date coded into your recent firmware?
If one of the above answers are "yes", your problem will be found there. If the answer is "no", then your problem is environmental. You should be asking for dozens of logs from your users to seeing what is going on, on a global scale, that is causing the issues. I imagine it should also be quite easy to replicate this in your lab or among any of your employees who have Nighthawk routers, since this issue is so widespread. With a little effort, you might not even need your paying customers' help or logs at all to fix the issue.
There are no other alternative explanations for what people are observing. Or, if there are, please let us know so we can provide information that may help confirm or eliminate potential sources of the problem.
Above all, please start communicating, or this may destroy your company's reputation for many years.
I'd like to add another "me too" to the group with a bit more information about my setup, as it has been working for the last 24 hours without issue. Since the last update, I would be lucky to go 4 hours without having a Wireless issue.
Having updated the firmware a couple of days ago, I remember reading a post about turning QoS on and off (with a reboot between changes) to clear the database. I had to do this earlier in the year as well when the Router kept dropping wired connections. After that, I did a complete reset of the Router by holding down the reset button in the back for 10 seconds. I then entered all the wireless information again (separate 2.4 and 5GHz SSIDs and Guest networked turned on for each band as well). I did this twice, as the first time, I did it, I was running an older version of the f/w. I also went out and bought an ASUS RT-AC86U as a backup in case things don't improve.
The wireless is working today, and fingers crossed it will continue to work. If not, then it's goodbye to Netgear, and I'll take my chances with Asus. I'll update this post if the problem comes back.
Model: R7000|Nighthawk AC1900 Dual Band WiFi Router
Looks like this update fixed my problem. There is a known 'feature' of Android struggling to switch between wifi radios. My Nighthawk seemed to also struggle with this. I've been monitoring all morning. Steady as a rock. No drops, No T4 or T5 errors.
I've been tweaking my router for months to solve this issue. FYI: I'm not a Pro, but fairly knowledgeable. I know IP, but not hardware.
What did you do? I read the release notes, but they were a marketing consumable.
Also, my signal strength went up 14% and I haven't touched a thing.
Model: R7000|Nighthawk AC1900 Dual Band WiFi Router
Looks like this update fixed my problem. There is a known 'feature' of Android struggling to switch between wifi radios. My Nighthawk seemed to also struggle with this. I've been monitoring all morning. Steady as a rock. No drops, No T4 or T5 errors.
I've been tweaking my router for months to solve this issue. FYI: I'm not a Pro, but fairly knowledgeable. I know IP, but not hardware.
What did you do? I read the release notes, but they were a marketing consumable.
Also, my signal strength went up 14% and I haven't touched a thing.
What problem was fixed for you? Most here are posting about loss of device connectivity on the 2.4GHz radio, an issue which often doesn't show up for over 24 hours. Many, including I, have confirmed that this update did not fix the issue.
I have the exact same config as you. I had the same symptoms you described. This release fixed the problem for me. I'm not sure this is important, but I did power off or soft reset all my devices and let them rediscover after the update. The reason I mention this is my network discovery happened really fast and DHCP work perfectly for once. p.s. most of my devices are static or reserved IPs.
Model: R7000|Nighthawk AC1900 Dual Band WiFi Router
That is exactly what got fixed for me. Android has a known flaw that I believe is the root cause of my problem. The Nighthawk did help. Now it lets devices switch radios with delay. I've been working on this for months. BTW most of my devices are static or reserved IPs
Model: R7000|Nighthawk AC1900 Dual Band WiFi Router
That is exactly what got fixed for me. Android has a known flaw that I believe is the root cause of my problem. The Nighthawk did help. Now it lets devices switch radios with delay. I've been working on this for months. BTW most of my devices are static or reserved IPs
I believe we're miscommunicating. The issue most here are experiencing occurs for ALL devices on the 2.4GHz radio, at once, Android or not. They lose connectivity, and once lost they cannot fix themselves, until the router band is cycled on/off. To clarify, this includes client devices that don't even have a 5GHz radio to switch to or from. This issue may not occur for over 24 hours after the radio is cycled off/on, but might occur as early as a few minutes afterwards. Consequently, testing any fix takes a minimum of a day or two before one can get some confidence it worked.
Just to add my me too, didn't understand what was going on until I read these posts. Having the same issues with 2.4mhz. Had to switch to an old router until this is resolved.
Model: R7000|Nighthawk AC1900 Dual Band WiFi Router
Looks like I spoke too soon. My 5GHz network dropped after about 28 hours. I temporarily switched some of my devices over to 2.4Ghz , which is working at the moment.
It looks like it's time to switch to a new Asus router. I may come back later to see if this is resolved, but I just can't afford the downtime in my personal and professional life. This is my 2nd Netgear Router that I've had to abandon after the WNDR3700 had wireless issues a few years ago as well. As much as I believed in the old Bay Networks/Nortel company, I just can't support being a Beta tester for a production router for a company that has this clear lack of understanding of customer care and support.
I'd like to add another "me too" to the group with a bit more information about my setup, as it has been working for the last 24 hours without issue. Since the last update, I would be lucky to go 4 hours without having a Wireless issue.
Having updated the firmware a couple of days ago, I remember reading a post about turning QoS on and off (with a reboot between changes) to clear the database. I had to do this earlier in the year as well when the Router kept dropping wired connections. After that, I did a complete reset of the Router by holding down the reset button in the back for 10 seconds. I then entered all the wireless information again (separate 2.4 and 5GHz SSIDs and Guest networked turned on for each band as well). I did this twice, as the first time, I did it, I was running an older version of the f/w. I also went out and bought an ASUS RT-AC86U as a backup in case things don't improve.
The wireless is working today, and fingers crossed it will continue to work. If not, then it's goodbye to Netgear, and I'll take my chances with Asus. I'll update this post if the problem comes back.
Model: R7000|Nighthawk AC1900 Dual Band WiFi Router
I just did an update tonight. It said to wait about 2 minuntes. Nothing ever happened. The screen is frozen and the light on the router flashes white and looks like red sometimes. Any ideas?
Model: R7000|Nighthawk AC1900 Dual Band WiFi Router
I wonder if you guys are doing anything with the feedback you're receiving. While your customers are left in the dark, with failing networks (personal and professional), I get the feeling you don't take this issue very seriously. At the moment your users are frustrated and disappointed, for the way Netgear is handeling this. That can't be the mission of Netgear, I guess.
Bugs can comeup anytime, that's something we all have to accept, but the way a manufacturer reacts on it, is what defines its reputation. And let me say... the way Netgear reacts on this issue, that affects alot of users, is very (very, very, very!) frustrating.
Please make this issue a priority and release a bugfix, because this is not the way to go!
Are other people seeing the "DoS attack: Smurf" in the router log when the 2.4Ghz band devices drop off like mrobbeloth reported? Just wondering if there is anything in the log that points to the problem for more than one person here...
No difference with F/W 18 for me. Worked for about 20hrs and then all connections dropped off - attached devices page on router showed no 2.4 or 5G connections. Going into Wireless setup page and pressing apply to restart wifi cures the issue. Tried multiple channels and all seem to have the same problem
Looks like going to have to buy a new router.
Model: R7000|Nighthawk AC1900 Dual Band WiFi Router
Update to my previous posts about 18...its been about 35 hours since i downloaded and installed 18. So far everything is still connected. I havent gone this long without disconnecting for quite some time. I am waiting for disaster to strike. The problem is i havent done anything different than most of you guys. One thing i didnt do was factory reset. If the connection stays solid, i will try to help out here, if i could.
I'm probably not expert enough to describe my situation correctly. Android has a known issue switching between 5G and 2.4G when it looks for the optimum path. The fix is to force its wifi connection to the 2.4G radio only. I forced all my android devices to either wired or LTE and my R7000 worked as expected. no drops. no packet errors. The latest 2 versions of Android removed the ability to force the wifi radio frequency. This severely destabilized my home wifi network based on a single R7000.
I've been dealing with this for a year or more. That is why I thought Android was the root cause, but the Nighthawk was adding to the problem by not being able to adapt to my device causing more problems. I "FEEL" like when my devices switch radios the Nighthawk loses its mind. It is almost as if the IP still shows up on both radios and I have an IP conflict. The Nighthawk either took a lot of time to discover this and resolve, dropped the device entirely, or generated enough packet loss to make the wifi throughput unusable.
So if the Nighthawk struggles with IPs moving around in the router table, that could easily be a non-android issue.
Raw data
My problems have been 100% wireless. My wired connections through the Nighthawk has been perfect. I have all Netgear ProSafe switches in my ecosystem.
I turned QoS off a long time ago. I saw almost no benefit and it seemed to create a ton of problems. (observed, not measured).
I am running Smart Connect on the R7000. I don't trust it, but it seems to be work fine. Android support kept pointing me here, but I have the exact same symptoms with or without Smart Connect enabled.
I'm still running stable over 24 hours.
Also, I use flash-based network monitoring tools which are notoriously inaccurate. I use them to simply see if things are getting better or worse so I'm comfortable with them.
Swapping the R7000 for the R8000 router has fixed all issues I was having. The network has been rock solid (wireless and wired) and my Android smartphones are even getting the full ISP supported speeds now that I didn't see on the R7000 (I was getting 35 down on a 100 Mbps down ISP package; now I get 110 Mbps on a 100 Mbps). Given I am away from home occassionally and most of my securty cameras only work on 2.4 Ghz, I need to have the entire wireless network stable. I really did not like having to spend nearly $300 to fix this problem.
Michael Robbeloth
Model: R7000|Nighthawk AC1900 Dual Band WiFi Router
Thanks so much for the info. 139.00 with prime shipping. Not bad. BUT...it only has a 90 day warranty and someone commented that they got a dead one. This is a buyer beware kind of thing. I love the price, but things break...as we all know.
Currently running V1.0.9.18_1.2.27. Having same problem with 2.4G. Devices can't connect to the 2.4G. Connecting to the 5G is fine.
After a reboot connecting to the 2.4G is working fine, after some time the connection is gone and reconnecting doesn't work anymore...until another reboot.
Pretty anoying.
All worked fine with older firmware version.
Model: R7000|Nighthawk AC1900 Dual Band WiFi Router
