Re: RAX40 Firmware 1.0.3.80 Crash/Bug Log

regghk · ‎2020-10-03

common, you'd read the entire thread to see various problem, no new fireware out yet to solve this.

itsmehuey · ‎2020-10-04

quite pathetic I say. Netgear have released new firmwares for other RAX devices to try fix the similar issues on those but noticed that issues are still occuring. And with no resolution in site for us RAX40 users.

benoit_fr · ‎2020-10-05

This is my last message here.

Full refund of my router this weekend...

Happy man ! 😉

Good luck to all of you !

kvik369 · ‎2020-10-05

good luck to you too - mine is sitting in the corner getting ready to go kin the garage/garbage using an older Tp-Link

itsmehuey · ‎2020-10-05

@benoit_fr wrote:
This is my last message here.
Full refund of my router this weekend...
Happy man ! 😉
Good luck to all of you !

Netgear should take back these routers and refund everyone.. this is such a criminal act to sell a product with faulty firmware and then expect people to pay for a support/service plan for them to do anything about it.

Eagle-Two · ‎2020-10-05

I had my first issue with firmware version 1.0.3.62. On my Wifi-6 Galaxy phone, the internet began to run choppy then sites failed to load. Finally I lost connection to the router and the phone would no longer reconnect to the router over 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz getting a unable to obtain IP address error. All of my other Wifi devices are not Wifi-6 and didn't have any connection issues. I decided to disable AX on the router and reboot. Now my phone connects to router once again but not using Wifi-6. I also had similar issues with AX when I was using firmware version 1.0.3.80.

itsmehuey · ‎2020-10-05

@Eagle-Two wrote:
I had my first issue with firmware version 1.0.3.62. On my Wifi-6 Galaxy phone, the internet began to run choppy then sites failed to load. Finally I lost connection to the router and the phone would no longer reconnect to the router over 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz getting a unable to obtain IP address error. All of my other Wifi devices are not Wifi-6 and didn't have any connection issues. I decided to disable AX on the router and reboot. Now my phone connects to router once again but not using Wifi-6. I also had similar issues with AX when I was using firmware version 1.0.3.80.

ridiculous that you'd need to be disabling a feature which was touted by the marketing of the router in order for it to provide even the basic level of networking capabilities....

pbulteel · ‎2020-10-06

At this point in time after the time we've been waiting - this would look like a candidate for a class action lawsuit. The device doesn't do what it was advertised to do. Wifi-6, etc don't work. They clearly are NOT fixing the issue as the firmware they push out is garbage, and people have been waiting for the features they promised for over a year.

Maybe this will perk their ears up.

Either fix the issue or refund ALL the people that have had these routers which do NOT work as advertised.

itsmehuey · ‎2020-10-06

Don't know how to go about it, but how do we get some sort of petition going lol

itsmehuey · ‎2020-10-07

OK folks as mentioned in another thread, but to keep everyone updated, we may be getting somewhere. I just got off the phone with a L2 support rep as my case was esclated by Christian_R. I was provided with an updated beta firmware (RAX40-V1.0.3.83_1.0.6) which I'll be testing over the next day or so. All seems OK at the moment but it's still too far to tell. I currently have AX disabled, but I will be enabling it soon to see if it works on this firmware version.

Also, I no longer have issues with my TP-Link KASA KP303 smart power strips crashing my router whenever it tries to establish a connection.

Fingers crossed this beta will be good to go to be released as an official build.

TheRealChris · ‎2020-10-08

My RAX40 came with firmware version .64 initially. I upgraded it to .80 shortly after it was released. I was running it without Smart Connect enabled. It ran fine for a few months until we had a brief power brown-out of about 1-second, after which no Wifi devices could connect. It indicated in the admin GUI that everything was fine, but refused to allow Wifi or WAN access. Connecting to the cable modem directly with a laptop proved the WAN modem was working fine.

Several reboots, power-cycles later, and finally had Wifi access but no WAN access, even though its GUI status showed everything was fine for the WAN access. Cleary, it was NOT fine.

A factory reset later, and things started working again. Briefly. After everything was reconnected and working, I connected the printer to it over Wifi successfully, but the router mass-disconnected every Wifi device (including the printer), before allowing them all to reconnect about a minute later. Bad omen.

Again it ran fine until we needed the printer again, and, as suspected, the router booted everything offline again. So the problems are not just related to Smart Connect as I was not running it when my problems began, and yet the problems still happened afterwards with it enabled during the next outage problem.

Clearly this is a firmware problem and releasing a firmware update that fixes these problems should be a priority for Netgear.

I have rolled back to the .64 firmware for now. For the sake of simplicity in setting up the network I enabled Smart Connect for now as I had a video conference interview to attend that same day. I am likely to disable Smart Connect whenever I have the house to myself for long enough to reconfigure all of the devices again, I want my main PC on the 5GHz band but Smart Connect forces it onto the 2.4GHz band because it thinks it is the better band for it, which it is not.

If it crashes again, I will be shutting it down and rolling back to my old D-Link DIR-862L, which was perfectly stable though quite old, and as such it was having challenges handling all the bandwidth and devices we had connected to it. But I would rather have performance challenges than complete outages, given the choice.

itsmehuey · ‎2020-10-08

update: I've just gotten off the phone with L2 tech expert for follow up on my case.. was on the phone for a good hour working with them to collect logs, configuration backup file, screenshots of various things, and other data to try facilitate escalation of this ridiculous issue. They said I'd hear back from them within 3-7 days... I'm still not very hopeful.

I'll be sticking to this beta firmware until then and monitoring any further drops in WIFI. The internal 500 error when accessing the router's admin console / debug page is an odd one too.

itsmehuey · ‎2020-10-12

Update on beta firmware: it's been about 4 full days now that my router has been up and no WIFI drops. I am also still able to access the router admin and debug consoles (no longer running into Internal Error 500 issues). This may be because I am no longer writing debug logs to the router itself, but rather to my connected USB drive. Maybe the writing of debug logs to the system memory of the router caused it to be overloaded which intuirn caused the Internal 500 Error. Who knows? I may switch back to writing to system memory to see if I encounter the issue again.

Eagle-Two · ‎2020-10-12

It has been over a week since I downgraded my RAX35 from 1.0.3.80 to 1.0.3.62 and the router has been stable after disabling AX. When I had AX enabled, my Wifi-6 phone disconnected after a day and wouldn't reconnect to the router until the router was rebooted. I then disabled AX on the router and after 7 days I haven't seen any disconnects or freezes. I bought the RAX35 for Wifi-6 but my Galaxy phone seems to have connections issues after a few days when its enabled.

itsmehuey · ‎2020-10-12

@Eagle-Two wrote:
It has been over a week since I downgraded my RAX35 from 1.0.3.80 to 1.0.3.62 and the router has been stable after disabling AX. When I had AX enabled, my Wifi-6 phone disconnected after a day and wouldn't reconnect to the router until the router was rebooted. I then disabled AX on the router and after 7 days I haven't seen any disconnects or freezes. I bought the RAX35 for Wifi-6 but my Galaxy phone seems to have connections issues after a few days when its enabled.

that's good to hear that you're having less disconnections but yes disabling a feature which is meant to work is not a plausible or acceptible solution in order to not encounter disconnections or drops.. Netgear, I'm looking at you here.

From my side, I have enabled AX on the beta firmware for my RAX40 and I have not had any drops in WIFI nor any disconnections from my WIFI6 enabled devices connected (both my iPhone 11 Pro Max and my wife's Samsung Galaxy S10). 4.5 days now connected without any interruptions. I'm hoping it doesn't suddenly drop out connection later this week whilst I'm doing my proctored AWS exam at home.

itsmehuey · ‎2020-10-12

@Eagle-Two

I'd recommend you to get in contact with the support team and ask them for the latest beta firmware for your RAX35. Whatever they did for the RAX40 beta firmware has drastically improved connectivity and reduced dropouts/disconnections. I've only encountered one drop when I initially installed the firmware and since then I have had no drops.

regghk · ‎2020-10-13

There is no refund policy here in Hong Kong.

Sorry to say Netgear seems had given up this product, over 4 mths of fustration there is nothing had been done from Netgear that visible to the end-client, not even release a solution to rollback the last firmware release. No proactive communication to end-client, no apologies at all.

Good luck Netgear, you had become infamous here in the market.

CLBTuco · ‎2020-10-13

Thanks for the update, you are giving me some hope. For the most part my router has been stable after backing out to .64 but I've started looking into getting a different router. Hopefully your testing continues to be positive and we can just update to a firmware that fixes the issues. Thanks again!

itsmehuey · ‎2020-10-13

@CLBTuco wrote:
Thanks for the update, you are giving me some hope. For the most part my router has been stable after backing out to .64 but I've started looking into getting a different router. Hopefully your testing continues to be positive and we can just update to a firmware that fixes the issues. Thanks again!

You're welcome. Yep, .64 is much more stable than .80, but I did not find it an acceptable "solution" to the faulty .80 firmware hence why I took matters into my own hands due to the lack of proactive communication or support from Netgear on the matter.

It's been almost 5 days now that the router has been up and running with no drops, so I'm positive there is something that was done right with this version of the firmware. Even with AX on I have had no issues. I do not use smart connect however, so I cannot comment on that.

ahenderson_04 · ‎2020-10-15

Started a couple nights ago we lost internet connection. Last night tried everything you could think of rebooting and a factory reset and still nothing. Found out our password had changed somehow and our network had changed as well with no notification. Even with those changes we still couldn’t get on, it kept saying unsecured network. Called Spectrum this morning and they told me the last few days between 12 am and 3 am the router shuts our modem off for about 3 hours and ends up doing a factory restart. This is getting ridiculous.

itsmehuey · ‎2020-10-15

@ahenderson_04 wrote:
Started a couple nights ago we lost internet connection. Last night tried everything you could think of rebooting and a factory reset and still nothing. Found out our password had changed somehow and our network had changed as well with no notification. Even with those changes we still couldn’t get on, it kept saying unsecured network. Called Spectrum this morning and they told me the last few days between 12 am and 3 am the router shuts our modem off for about 3 hours and ends up doing a factory restart. This is getting ridiculous.

haven't encountered that kind of issue with the rax40 yet - my internet connection has always been up even during the times that wifi dropped. have you gotten a chance to contact netgear support yet?

capruro · ‎2020-10-21

Worst experience ever!

I bough the router on Amazon Warehouse, the router was stuck and wasn't booting. Following differnt procedures I managed to reflash the firmware and make it work (if we can say so). First of all I am very deluded, I was expecting another product for this price point. The only thing that differenciate this product from the others is WiFi6, others doesn't have it but are solid and probably are based on linux.

Anyway, I'm experiencing the same problems described by all the people in this thread and after all this time passed without any fix, I just want to get rid of it.
It's frustrating that I also cannot sell it, I don't want to scam people.

Next router I will choose something else. Very sad.

@itsmehueyhow is going with the beta firmware?

itsmehuey · ‎2020-10-21

@capruro wrote:
Worst experience ever!

I bough the router on Amazon Warehouse, the router was stuck and wasn't booting. Following differnt procedures I managed to reflash the firmware and make it work (if we can say so). First of all I am very deluded, I was expecting another product for this price point. The only thing that differenciate this product from the others is WiFi6, others doesn't have it but are solid and probably are based on linux.

Anyway, I'm experiencing the same problems described by all the people in this thread and after all this time passed without any fix, I just want to get rid of it.
It's frustrating that I also cannot sell it, I don't want to scam people.

Next router I will choose something else. Very sad.

@itsmehueyhow is going with the beta firmware?

any way you can return the router? if you can, do it. honestly it will save you so much headache.

the beta is surprisingly going strong. as mentioned, I only encountered one initial wifi drop on the first day that I installed it, but since then, 2 weeks after, I haven't had any drops and have AX enabled. All my wifi6 devices connect fine and are working well.

capruro · ‎2020-10-22

Thak you @itsmehuey !

Unfortunately I can't return it back, the window is expired. How ever I'm wondering, how much does it take to boot? I'm currently running Firmware Version V1.0.3.64_1.0.1 and it take an avg of 4 minutes to complete the boot (red light stop flashing and become green). With the V1.0.3.80_1.0.1 was not that much faster.

itsmehuey · ‎2020-10-22

Yeah that sucks man. I wish I had returned mine whilst I still could. Now I’m stuck with it.

Boot up time takes 4-5 minutes sometimes. I think on beta it’s about 3 minutes. When I first got it the initial boot up took like 7 minutes!!! So not optimised at all.