Yesterday I upgraded the router to the latest firmware available online (R6700-V1.0.2.16_10.0.57). There was an internet outage in our neighborhood. When service finally returned the 5ghz band didn't come online for an hour. A spectrum tech told us that over the past week they have had several complaints about the nighthawk 3 antenna router having 5ghz band issues. The issue Spectrum had received was exactly what we witnessed: that the 5ghz band took about an hour to appear on any device while the 2.4ghz band was visible and had an internet connection.
I don't know who to advise other than the forum... how do we advise Netgear about potential firmware issues.
I have had this firmware version running since September and its been the best version so far. Previous versions would freeze and need a reboot about every two weeks or so, presumably because of a memory leak. I don't remember rebooting this version. They did remove some features in the last two versions, but I didn't use any of them.
That the ISPs blame user's equipment is a fare statement. And thank you for sharing the post-outage boot sequence. I have no doubt that will be useful.
In the previous firmware versions I used to have to reboot the routers about twice a week too. I'm glad that seems to have been resolved.
My concern was that other Spectrum customers had similar issues to mine. If we assume that the tech wasn't lying about the emails (the tech also called a colleague to confirm the emails were about the 3 antenna nighthawk routers), then there is something troubling about what I experienced. The 5ghz band wasn't visible to devices even though the router web page said everything was fine and despite that the 2.4ghz band was visible and had a viable connection to the internet. The 5ghz band eventually came online... after about an hour. And that was exactly what the Spectrum tech said other customers had complained about.
