So I realized that Netgear outsources all of the firmware builds, which explains why they use the worst developed version of OpenWRT on their devices, I think they all come with Chaos Calmer (CC for short).
I also realized that they disabled the telnet, but the daemon is still listening for the magic packet to enable telnet, but they have not updated their own open source telnet enable to reflect the recent changes of using a non-standard blowfish encryption. I know they did this to mitigate the CVE that used the old method to gain access to an internal device, but it severely hampers 3rd party development.
I know they don't get this, but open source is supposed to open so people can publish fixes and work arounds, by them using a 3rd party firmware developer DNI? based in TW, it means that when they do release the OSrc it is usually stripped of anything that is useful or meaningful or they binary blob bits that they legally do not have to in an attempt to prevent development outside their own outdated system.
At this time 03/2022 the device I am talking about is not even listed in their web support drop down, so you can't even select it for similar tagging.
I have most of the LTE modem documentation from Quectel now and I see how easy it is to edit, add, or delete APN for a connection, and you can monitor LTE aggregation and get errors or statistics for debugging, in other words, it is extremely helpful to your end user. So what do they do? They take it out or hide it... LoL!
So the part I don't understand is why lock it down and obfuscate it?
Obfuscation does not equal security, that statement will always be true, even decades from this post entering your eye sockets or ear holes.
Orginally I was thinking that they could just copy the code from the MR1100 and just rebuild the firmware, but now I realize the entire support system is non-existant, as it is all low level people forwarding comments to low level people that decide if it is important enough to send to a developer, and that chain is quite long. It has kind of turned me off to NG products now, as they don't even have an in house dev team to see these problems for themselves, they rely on people to complain about problems and neatly pick out bits to send further to developers.
If they included an administration tab that allowed you to enable telnet/ssh, development debug, and direct access to the LTE moden for diagnostics, I don't think there would be a problem with that, but their dev team seems to think security through obscurity is better for the public.
And I do have a lot of Netgear products, so I was never really biased in any way.
