NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Orbi Router doesn't Connect to Internet Out of the Box - Firmware update NEEDED!
I bought my orbi router and had trouble getting it to connect to the internet. I called the cable company and they even said "we can see information passing from the router to the modem, I don't know why it's not working". I knew the problem was the router because the router I was replacing still worked just fine. I tried to find a clue as to what I was doing wrong online but it never occured to me that the firmware would be the issue, I thought even the very basic firmware should be able to connect to the internet so it can run an auto-update. I was wrong. I did the firmware update manually and I connected to the internet immediately. This brings me to the reason that I'm writing this post since I don't need help anymore. I had a hard time finding ideas of what might be wrong, people talking about resetting the modem (duh) and AP mode even Netgear.com was no help (did I mention reset the modem...?). Until I saw the firmware update tab in the router settings and thought its worth a try before calling netgear, and as I said it worked like a charm. But I figure there are some people out there who don't even know what firmware is let-alone how to download and manually update it. I want netgear to give a more comprehesive guide with the 'documentation' they send out which consists of essentially "unplug your modem and plug it back in" and then "connect your router". Not really helpful if it doesn't work, no mention of if you have trouble connecting to the internet update the firmware manually. Those people who are pulling there hair out trying different unplug and plug-in sequences have no chance, and it makes the so called 'easy setup' seem useless. All they need to provide is a web address for the firmware update, all the instructions are there online and I could have avoided hours (actually days I'm embarrassed to say) of deep contempt for netgear. I'm sure this has been covered elsewhere so I apologize if you've already written on the subject but I wanted to add my 2 cents.