Custom firmware for RBR350

[yancha67]

Is there any custom firmware for the Orbi RBR350? Or any way to enable telnet or ssh?

So many products have just little config options missing that you occasionally need and without digging through every manual and looking at web interfaces its annoying to check until you actually get the thing, and then they update firmware and it's gone!

I'm in Australia and just want a modem/router/ap that can use something like openwrt, but due to the dsl requirement support, its pretty much impossible and i need 2 device's or wait till my ISP upgrades to fibre and present Ethernet then i have many options.

[FURRYe38]

Something to look at in 3rd party FW sites.

Not officially supported here in the NG forums. 

NG removed telnet for security reasons back in 2020. 

[stevene_]

i would also like to know this question answer. can anyone point me to 3rd party sites? ive checked the major ones (openwrt ddwrt frtizbox) and none support this model.

[CrimpOn]

The only Orbi models that anyone has reported hacking are the original RBR50/RBS50 package and the LBR20 LTE router.  There is a Webpress blog from 2017 describing various hacks on the RBR50. I very much doubt that anyone has developed anything for the 350 series.

As far a enabling telnet, I have seen discussion of two different approaches:

1. There are programs and Python scripts on the internet which appear to enable telnet on certain Netgear routers.
   For example: https://github.com/bkerler/netgear_telnet 
   and https://github.com/MatthewTingum/Netgear-pu-telnetenable 
   I have no RBR350 to test these on. Either they work..... or they don't work. Doubt very much that trying them will harm anything.
2. Hack the Orbi debug page (http://orbilogin.net/debug.htm )
   I have seen discussions that claim that Netgear did not remove the code that enables telnet.  They simply made it "hidden".
   By "showing the code" it is supposed to be possible to make the debug option visible again and click on the option.  Not having a 350, I can't display the html code on the debug page and see if that situation still exists... or if someone finally removed the enable option rather than just 'hiding it'.

One problem with all of this is that anything done to the router using telnet disappears when the router reboots. (for any reason: deliberately, power failure, unplug it to tidy up cables... any reason)  Another problem is that Netgear appears to have reacted to early attempts to hack the Orbi by including code to watch for "stuff" and erase it.  i.e., suppose a user found a way to use telnet to make the 2.4G WiFi SSID different from the 5G WiFi SSID. (People were doing this back in 2018.)  Newer firmware appears to look at the SSIDs periodically and change them back to the same.