New - RBR750 / RBS750 Firmware Version 4.6.8.2 Released

[Jimbo84]

Performed my factory reset earlier and just finished setting everything back up.  I've noted the date / time / current up time and will see if any further random reboots occur this week. 👍  Fingers crossed all is well now.

Thanks.

[FURRYe38]

The 7 series only supports 1Gb connection rates on the WAN side. So technically you should only use the 1Gb port on the modem. The 2.5Gb port would not be needed. 

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@Timothy88 wrote:
I can.
Is netgear going to offer compensation for out testing efforts and problems as they created this with the automatic update?

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[FURRYe38]

Keep us posted, 

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@Jimbo84 wrote:

Performed my factory reset earlier and just finished setting everything back up.  I've noted the date / time / current up time and will see if any further random reboots occur this week. 👍  Fingers crossed all is well now.

Thanks.

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[cooldude4u]

Yesterday evening, noticed my Orbi base router flash the white lights. After that tried connecting to it via the Orbi app on my Iphone and it is not longer connecting. I tried going to 192.168.1.1 and am getting ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED. Tried on a separate laptop after connecting over ethernet and still having the same issue. Seems I have gotten an automatic firmware upgrade that others are mentioning and this has caused this regression. This kind of auto-upgrade is completely unacceptable. Netgear needs to fix this issue and also make upgrades opt-in. Several folks are having the same issue as me as can be seen at - https://www.reddit.com/r/orbi/comments/ukmdhw/orbi_providing_wifi_and_connecting_to_internet/

I unfortunately do not have a recent backup of my configuration and hence I am not executing a full reset yet hoping that Netgear is paying attention to this forum and issuing a fix.

[FURRYe38]

I saw reboots with my 8 series on a 2.5Gb connection with my CAX80 and CM2000. I didn't see reboots when I moved the 8 series to a 1Gb connection. Also tracking information with 2.5Gb connection rates seen on some modems, if CAT# LAN cables should be using CAT6A STP vs CAT6 UTP. 

If your RBR only supports 1Gb WAN port speed, then technically and honestly, you should use the 1Gb WAN port on the modem. Would not be gaining anything on the modem by using its 2.5Gb WAN port with a router that only supports 1Gb. 

Ya I agree FW is messed up. Not much we can do than to let NG fix this. Just here to see if I can help aleviate some problems. 

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@Timothy88 wrote:

Still should not cause any issues as it should negotiate the proper speed.  Also, not an issue before this release.  So why are you and others seeing reboots, you on your 8 series which does support 2.5GB? Oh yeah I forgot its not a Netgear issue it has to be user configuration.  

So with your logic then no one should ever connect a 100Mbs adapter to a 1GB capable network or a 1GB network adapter to 2.5GB capable network, all hardware and speeds must match.

Can you point out in Netgear's documentation where is says that you need to connect to a 1 GB port or that port speeds need to match?

And if it is an issue it's a BUG that was forced on me.

Technically Netgear shouldn't release buggy firmware.

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[FURRYe38]

FR was meantioned at the head of this thread if problems are seen. 

Let us know if the reset and setup from scratch and applying config file gains you access to the routers web page. 

NG has been made aware of users issues. 

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@cooldude4u wrote:

Yesterday evening, noticed my Orbi base router flash the white lights. After that tried connecting to it via the Orbi app on my Iphone and it is not longer connecting. I tried going to 192.168.1.1 and am getting ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED. Tried on a separate laptop after connecting over ethernet and still having the same issue. Seems I have gotten an automatic firmware upgrade that others are mentioning and this has caused this regression. This kind of auto-upgrade is completely unacceptable. Netgear needs to fix this issue and also make upgrades opt-in. Several folks are having the same issue as me as can be seen at - https://www.reddit.com/r/orbi/comments/ukmdhw/orbi_providing_wifi_and_connecting_to_internet/

I unfortunately do not have a recent backup of my configuration and hence I am not executing a full reset yet hoping that Netgear is paying attention to this forum and issuing a fix.

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[cooldude4u]

As I mentioned earlier - I do not have a backup of my config. And now without access to the router’s admin portal I am unable to save the config so that I can restore it after a reset. NG has messed this up big time. Forcing users to reset to fix their buggy firmware release is just a huge pain. Is NG planning a emergent fix to restore access to the console?

[dkalichak]

Same problem here, automatically upgraded to  4.6.8.2 and now cannot access the router admin page from the browser, and the mobile app is no longer connecting either. Wifi is working fine, but I need to go in and do some router config. Is NetGear going to be able to fix this via another automatic push update? I really want to avoid doing a reset if I can help it.

[CrimpOn]

While I am confident that Netgear is aware of the issue and that a fix is in the "to do list", my guess is the first anyone will know of a fix is when it happens.  Netgear is not in the habit of sharing the progress of development work.  I would be encouraged to see a note that Netgear has reproduced the problem in the lab.

The A Plus solution would be for you guys to wake up one morning soon and find, "it's fixed. Magic!"  Configuration intact. App access restored. Until then, your kids are doing whatever they want on the Internet and there's nothing you can do about it.

It is also a bit distressing to see conflicting reports on web access in posts about this topic. One message seemed to indicate that the regular (http: port 80) interface did not respond, but that the https (443) port did and once the web browser was told to ignore the self-signed SSL certificate, he was "in business again."

[FURRYe38]

@dkalichak @cooldude4u 

If users are having problems with there systems after a recent FW update and power off the ISP Modem and router for 1 minute then back ON nor doing a factory reset and setup from scratch resolves this, users will need to contact NG support:

https://my.netgear.com/support/contact.aspx

Good Luck.

[Omega007]

We have actually had  and seen much larger issues with this latest firmware update. The routers internal switch on the LAN side actually loses connection after about 30s then about 40s later will reconnect - this process was discovered after encountering no access to router after automatic firmware update. The issue started a little over week ago when the automatic firmware update went through. I had to go to the clients house reset the entire network update the satellites- update the router - reset the router- reset up the network. Seemed? To work for about a week - then got call from client - couldn’t connect to anything?

went back over to the clients house looked at the issue again did firmware update to the satellites- router - reset router three times. We noticed no matter what lan port we used out of main switch on the project it would blink for about 20s then blink out then about 40s later would come back so it was intermittent at best then we had nothing connected to the switch except for the lan port from the router to the switch still had the same issue. Tested with multiple switches , multiple ports, all router lan ports, same response. Wifi seemed to work durning this time but it was intermittent as well. Called Netgear support to report and see what could be done was told was out of warranty by 2 months and they would not even put me in touch with tier 2 tech support. Explained this has happened to 4 of our clients so far seemed to make no difference. Offer to pay for support - I got a  no go. Waiting for return call from supervisor since Friday afternoon…lol. Had a newer ax5400 or ax5700 with me that we wound up putting into system to reestablish actual connection for clients property. 
side note - woke up Saturday morning to see that 12 of my clients system show disconnected. 
would be nice to see Netgear acknowledge issue.

[Fruit]

Orbi should allow us to disable the auto-updates. I spent quite a bit of time to set up the previous firmware V4.6.7.5.13 so that the router worked well with Zoom and Skype on my PC. Prior to that there were lots of problems with voices being cut off or delayed in the middle of a sentence during real-time conferencing. 

With the auto-update to V4.6.8.2, the old problems with Zoom and Skype returned. Although today I rolled back to  V4.6.7.5.13,  I am afraid that Orbi will auto-update to V4.6.8.2 again the middle of the night. I will probably just give up if I have to do this manual rollback to V4.6.7.5.13  every morning and then a factory reset, etc.  The time is just not worth it. If this problem persists, I will get a router of a different brand. 

My 10-year old router (before switching to Orbi) did not have any problems with Zoom and Skype. Perhaps I will just roll back to my old router. 

Orbi is arrogant and presumptive not to let users control what firmware version suits their system best. 

[mcdan]

None of the common HTTP ports are open from what I can tell:

sudo nmap -O 192.168.1.1
Starting Nmap 7.92 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2022-05-07 19:48 EDT
Nmap scan report for 192.168.1.1
Host is up (0.0063s latency).
Not shown: 998 closed tcp ports (reset)
PORT     STATE SERVICE
53/tcp   open  domain
5000/tcp open  upnp
MAC Address: 08:36:C9:78:11:6F (Netgear)
Device type: WAP
Running: Linux 3.X|4.X
OS CPE: cpe:/o:linux:linux_kernel:3.18 cpe:/o:linux:linux_kernel:4.1
OS details: OpenWrt Chaos Calmer 15.05 (Linux 3.18) or Designated Driver (Linux 4.1 or 4.4)
Network Distance: 1 hop

[Fruit]

Today, Orbi auto-updated me back  to V4.6.8.2 after I previously rolled back to the older firmware. This is rather frustrating. There is no way you can easily roll back to use the older version of the firmware (Telnet trick is not available now). 

Anyway, a factory reset after the auto-update to V4.6.8.2 does not work. Skype and Zoom quality remains poor.

Basically, the Auto-Update process is buggy. Each time you see an Auto-Update, you really need to "Manually" re-install the same firmware and do a factory reset after that. Ignore the warning by NG's administration webpage that you should not manually re-install  to avoid problems (Yeah, count on their Auto-update).   The truth is that customers should be warned about their unreliable Auto-Update.  Don't believe what they tell you. 

Each manual update, factory resetting, and restoring the  backup.cfg took me close to one hour of work.  I figure that is the price you have to pay to use NG products -- be their tester for free. I suppose in the future, whenever there is an Auto-Update, I have to redo this clunky Manual operation again. Is Orbi supposed to be a "consumer product"?

I would strongly recommend people not to avoid the hassle. It is not worthwhile and not intellectual at all to have to learn all these tricks to circumvent NG's debacles. 

[xaustie]

I consider my Orbi router/satellites an appliance. A fancy toaster. It is not in the same class as my high-end TV with all the bells and whistles. I expect it to just work silently and robustly in the background.

Which leads me to one of my favorite sayings, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it.". That seems even more apropos for an appliance. But wait, Netgear has taken that option away from me. Snap.

My router was "automatically" upgraded over the weekend with no notice of any kind to me. The only reason I knew something was amiss was because I could not login to the admin panel (orbilogin.com). Well it had been months since the router was power cycled so I thought it was time. Power cycle - still can't login. Network is OK but cannot login to router.

Time to go to the Netgear Community forums. Yep - others seeing the same problem. I reluctantly factory reset/uploaded saved config and all is back. Everything is good except my opinion of Netgear. I purchased my Orbi mesh in Nov 2021. It has worked flawlessly since then (appliance, remember?). I was even preparing to post a "super happy Netgear customer" message to these forums to counter what I perceive as a lot of negativity towards Netgear. I now cannot recommend Netgear to anyone. I had the wherewithal to have saved my configuration and come to these forums to figure out what was happening. Remember, this bad behavior persisted over power cycles. I will keep my Netgear but will begin the process of researching a better solution in case the next time I cannot recover. I shudder to think how many less tech savvy customers are or will be fuming and throwing their routers into the dumpster.

Netgear - what possible reason is there to not allow me to disable automatic firmware updates? I suppose you are paranoid that a security issue will arise and leave users exposed without an update. I get that. How about you make the automatic upgrade choice default to "on" and offer dire warnings to the user if they select "off". If you are going to persist in making this a non-option then for the love of God QA your upgrades. It is not like this was some subtle little corner-case. I could not log in. Really. Really?

[Fruit]

For the benefit of other users, I just want to supplement that for my Skype and Zoom problem, only one of the following procedures work (so far):

1) Auto-update. No factory reset (Does not work)

2) Auto-update. Factory reset (Does not Work)

3) Manual-update. No factory reset (Does not work)

4) Manual-update . Factory reset (Work so far).

NG contact got back to me with technical advice that is not useful to my case -- I already did all that they asked me to do, like disabling SIP SLG, etc. 

It is the Auto-Update that is problematic. Also, manual update without factory reset is problematic (Orbi user manual does not tell you to factory reset after manual update; but this is a necessary step). 

[FURRYe38]

Glad the Manual FW update and Facotry reset helped. 

Thats something I post in the very first post in this thread. 

Be sure to save off a back up configuration to file for safe keeping. Saves time if a reset is needed.
https://kb.netgear.com/000062080/How-do-I-back-up-the-configuration-settings-on-my-Orbi-WiFi-System

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@Fruit wrote:

For the benefit of other users, I just want to supplement that for my Skype and Zoom problem, only one of the following procedures work (so far):

1) Auto-update. No factory reset (Does not work)

2) Auto-update. Factory reset (Does not Work)

3) Manual-update. No factory reset (Does not work)

4) Manual-update . Factory reset (Work so far).

NG contact got back to me with technical advice that is not useful to my case -- I already did all that they asked me to do, like disabling SIP SLG, etc. 

It is the Auto-Update that is problematic. Also, manual update without factory reset is problematic (Orbi user manual does not tell you to factory reset after manual update; but this is a necessary step). 

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[neknek]

Agreed this is unacceptable. I rely on the web interface as 90% of the time the Orbi app refuses to connect.  To remove the web interface without fixing the problem with the app is just arrogant, as well as the fact that as far as I have found, the app is not compatible with the Orbi when in AP mode.  My RBR750 and two satellites are completely inaccessible to me, Netgear wants me to pay them money to fix the screwed up code they pushed to my devices yesterday morning.  Nope.

I won't have time to completely reset and rebuild everything for weeks and just hope everything stays up until then.  

[FURRYe38]

I presume there fix would be a reset anyways. Another user already contacted support and that was given to the user. 

Seen other users already post that a factory reset and setup from scratch helps gain access to the RBRs web page at least using a wired PC and web browser. 

Orbi app is known to have issues and NG IS aware of it. 

If you can't do any resets soon, let the system be until such time that you can or check back here in the forums for any updates on information. 

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@neknek wrote:

Agreed this is unacceptable. I rely on the web interface as 90% of the time the Orbi app refuses to connect.  To remove the web interface without fixing the problem with the app is just arrogant, as well as the fact that as far as I have found, the app is not compatible with the Orbi when in AP mode.  My RBR750 and two satellites are completely inaccessible to me, Netgear wants me to pay them money to fix the screwed up code they pushed to my devices yesterday morning.  Nope.

I won't have time to completely reset and rebuild everything for weeks and just hope everything stays up until then.  

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[Fruit]

Do people know how often (on average) NG forces the buggy auto-update of new firmware on their Orbi products?  I figure that if I want to keep using Orbi, I just have to spend two hours to overwrite the auto-update with the manual update, factory reset, etc. each time they force the auto-update on me.

They are like doctors who force you to take medication that causes all sorts of health problems.  I only see the harmful effects of the medicine and none of its benefits. 

I can probably tolerate manual fixing the problem once every three months (4 times a year, say). But if it is more often than that, I will just have to take loss, ditch my Orbi, and switch to a more reliable brand. 

Prior to Orbi, my experience with my previous  Linksys router  was a lot more pleasant (used it for more than 10 years with occasional power-off cycles only).

[CrimpOn]

I am not aware of any statistics on Netgear firmware updates.  Sometimes a year goes by.  Sometimes less time.  Also varies by product.

It will be a good idea to keep a current backup of the configuration. Doing a Factory Reset is nearly "pain free" when the previous configuration can be loaded from a file.

Another alternative is to block automatic firmware updates, as this user did. See message 10 in this post:

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/Disabling-Auto-Update-Force-Update-firmware-version-2-7-3-22-f... 

[Fruit]

@CrimpOn. Thanks for the pointer. I took a look. The whole strategy centers around trying to block the sites where the auto-update virus resides. 

The way to deal with virus, there are two groups of strategies: 1) avoid getting the virus; 2) try to wipe out the virus after you gets it. 

Most of the discussion and solutions offered in this forum belong to strategy 2. Manual update, factory reset, is a way to wipe out the auto-update virus launched by the NG team. So far, 2 has worked for me in the recent few firmware-update  iterations. But the clever auto-update virus team at NG may decide later to remove the manual-update option in their admin tool -- who knows. Infecting the Orbi community with their auto-update virus seems to be their mission, and giving the community no way to evade the virus seems to their mission. 

As for strategy 1, I actually found  a number strategies that have been closed out by the auto-update virus team at NG. I suppose the team at NG mutates the auto-update  to circumvent these strategies also. 

Maybe the long-term solution is to surrender and move to routers of another brand. 

[jordand]

For anyone wanting to block automatic upgrades from Netgear, it's fairly simple if you have the right tools to do it. Note that the following guide only applies for people like myself who have an ISP router without the capability to block websites. You could always follow these instructions on your ISP router if it works for you.

Simply use a DNS blocker like pihole on a Raspberry Pi, or a service like NextDNS.io. Set your DNS under the Internet configuration to either the Pihole or NextDNS. You can use the no-ip functionality to ensure NextDNS always has the right IP address of your home to identify your traffic.

Add the following wildcard addresses to your blocklist. This will stop the router from communicating with the update server(s).

For added peace of mind, you could also use Netgear's parental blocking feature to block http.fw.updates1.netgear.com as well. You can never be too sure!

My system has not automatically updated since I've done this. I'm on v3, though!

[FURRYe38]

Trying to help reproduce this no router web page log in problem. I reverted FW back to v.13 on my 750 last nite. Didn't factory reset. Just downgraded. Left it to see if it would update. I found this morning that it updated to v.2 around 1am this morning. I was able to log into the RBRs web page just fine. Even the debug page using MS Edge. Not sure what is happening with AU. 

For anyone seeing this, I recommend you manually download FW and apply updates. Then factory reset and setup from scratch. 

Seem to work better for some:

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi-WiFi-6-AX-and-WiFi-6E-AXE/New-RBR750-RBS750-Firmware-Version-4...

[neknek]

Please detail how we are supposed to manually update the router with no access to it either via IP address or app.