NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
Solved
Quick way to re-enter your IP reservations after factory reset
Many of us hesitate much to go for factory reset mainly because of the load of repetitive work you need to do to restore your IP reservations especially if you have many such reservations.
An easier way that I found to restore the IP reservations is by printing them using telnet, modify the printouts into config commands and then copy and paste the config commands in telnet which takes much less time than manually entering them using the GUI.
Here is what I do:
1. Use telnet to print the following command:
nvram show | grep reservation[0-999]
This will give you a printout like:
.......
reservation39=192.168.1.193 C8:02:10:62:C7:55 LG Music Flow Balcony
reservation20=192.168.1.76 C8:69:CD:58:26:F4 ATV Living Room Wifi
reservation21=192.168.1.77 AC:CA:54:01:CA:25 Telldus Controller
reservation22=192.168.1.80 00:0b:e6:0b:c8:06 Wii
reservation23=192.168.1.81 54:88:0E:12:6E:7E Samsung Blu Ray Wireless
reservation24=192.168.1.83 B4:07:F9:3F:87:62 Samsung TV
reservation25=192.168.1.82 10:08:C1:CD:94:74 LG Smart TV
reservation26=192.168.1.85 80:C2:1D:15:83:B7 Chromecast Living Room
reservation27=192.168.1.86 20:CF:B9:5C:B1:0C Google Home Guest Room
reservation28=192.168.1.87 44:07:0B:B0:CF:A6 Google Home Kitchen
reservation29=192.168.1.88 20:CF:B9:8E:0C:17 Google Home Living Room
2. Convert each line above as follows (you can use an editor to find and replace):
......
config set reservation39="192.168.1.193 C8:02:10:62:C7:55 LG Music Flow Balcony"
config set reservation20="192.168.1.76 C8:69:CD:58:26:F4 ATV Living Room Wifi"
config set reservation21="192.168.1.77 AC:CA:54:01:CA:25 Telldus Controller"
config set reservation22="192.168.1.80 00:0b:e6:0b:c8:06 Wii"
config set reservation23="192.168.1.81 54:88:0E:12:6E:7E Samsung Blu Ray Wireless"
config set reservation24="192.168.1.83 B4:07:F9:3F:87:62 Samsung TV"
config set reservation25="192.168.1.82 10:08:C1:CD:94:74 LG Smart TV"
config set reservation26="192.168.1.85 80:C2:1D:15:83:B7 Chromecast Living Room"
config set reservation27="192.168.1.86 20:CF:B9:5C:B1:0C Google Home Guest Room"
config set reservation28="192.168.1.87 44:07:0B:B0:CF:A6 Google Home Kitchen"
config set reservation29="192.168.1.88 20:CF:B9:8E:0C:17 Google Home Living Room"
Don't forget the quotations after the = signs and at the end of the lines. Make sure that your text editor will not suppress the return after each line
3. Copy and paste the config commands to the telnet prompt, and you are done!
If you go to your GUI under >>ADVANCED>>Setup>>LAN Setup>> you will find all your reservations listed, you just need to click Apply to make them in use.
CrimpOn wrote:
......... I am not confident that "saving configuration" would be of much use in my situation, because the ways that my Orbi is disappointing me have appeared since an automatic firmware upgrade and I have continued to enter new device reservations. At this point, I suspect that "something is amiss" that only a reset to factory would address, and I have avoided doing that because of the prospect of typing in all those MAC addresses.
......
Completely agree. usually why I choose to do a factory reset is that I suspect a data corruption somewere and a backup/restore will just get me back to where I was.
CrimpOn wrote:
.....
In addition to device reservations, the NVRAM dump also includes lines like this:
orbi_dev_name12=24:92:0E:31:52:FA Dicks New Tablet
The numbers do not match the "reservation" numbers. Any idea if this is something that could be entered with Telnet commands, or will it propogate automatically?
.......
The entry orbi_dev_name12=24:92:0E:31:52:FA Dicks New Tablet is the "Device Name" that you can edit in the "Attached Devices" list below (in the blue box):
You will also find another entry with the same MAC address like this
orbi_dev_name_ntgr9=24:92:0E:31:52:FA Samsung Tablet that corresponds to the device type (the red box) in the snapshot above.
The numbers do not match. The system uses only the MAC address to match the different entries with each other.
CrimpOn wrote:
........
And.... I presume that changing the device reservations to be in order by IP address would not cause a problem, since the "factory reset" creates a totally empty table. (This is one of my other disappointments with Orbi firmware: that we cannot sort displays by column. This would not help the "attached devices" display, but it would at least cause the reservation table to be in IP order for a little while.
Yes, you can edit the commands as you wish, everything should have been wiped after a factory reset. You can also use the telnet commands to change an existing setting, so if you enter the config command for the same variable twice like this:
config set reservation3="192.168.1.20 A0:99:9B:0B:3F:5B Dicks Macbook"
config set reservation3="192.168.1.20 A0:99:9B:0B:3F:5B The new Macbook"
Then the second command will override the first one.
21 Replies
Another way to save settings and reservations on a router would be to do a back up of the configruation to file soon after getting the router fully setup. Save this file for safe keeping later on. Re-apply after doing a factory reset. Saves time. Easier for the less advanced user.
Interesting idea about using Telnet to enter configurations. I am not confident that "saving configuration" would be of much use in my situation, because the ways that my Orbi is disappointing me have appeared since an automatic firmware upgrade and I have continued to enter new device reservations. At this point, I suspect that "something is amiss" that only a reset to factory would address, and I have avoided doing that because of the prospect of typing in all those MAC addresses.
In addition to device reservations, the NVRAM dump also includes lines like this:
orbi_dev_name12=24:92:0E:31:52:FA Dicks New Tablet
The numbers do not match the "reservation" numbers. Any idea if this is something that could be entered with Telnet commands, or will it propogate automatically?
And.... I presume that changing the device reservations to be in order by IP address would not cause a problem, since the "factory reset" creates a totally empty table. (This is one of my other disappointments with Orbi firmware: that we cannot sort displays by column. This would not help the "attached devices" display, but it would at least cause the reservation table to be in IP order for a little while.
CrimpOn wrote:
......... I am not confident that "saving configuration" would be of much use in my situation, because the ways that my Orbi is disappointing me have appeared since an automatic firmware upgrade and I have continued to enter new device reservations. At this point, I suspect that "something is amiss" that only a reset to factory would address, and I have avoided doing that because of the prospect of typing in all those MAC addresses.
......
Completely agree. usually why I choose to do a factory reset is that I suspect a data corruption somewere and a backup/restore will just get me back to where I was.
CrimpOn wrote:
.....
In addition to device reservations, the NVRAM dump also includes lines like this:
orbi_dev_name12=24:92:0E:31:52:FA Dicks New Tablet
The numbers do not match the "reservation" numbers. Any idea if this is something that could be entered with Telnet commands, or will it propogate automatically?
.......
The entry orbi_dev_name12=24:92:0E:31:52:FA Dicks New Tablet is the "Device Name" that you can edit in the "Attached Devices" list below (in the blue box):
You will also find another entry with the same MAC address like this
orbi_dev_name_ntgr9=24:92:0E:31:52:FA Samsung Tablet that corresponds to the device type (the red box) in the snapshot above.
The numbers do not match. The system uses only the MAC address to match the different entries with each other.
CrimpOn wrote:
........
And.... I presume that changing the device reservations to be in order by IP address would not cause a problem, since the "factory reset" creates a totally empty table. (This is one of my other disappointments with Orbi firmware: that we cannot sort displays by column. This would not help the "attached devices" display, but it would at least cause the reservation table to be in IP order for a little while.
Yes, you can edit the commands as you wish, everything should have been wiped after a factory reset. You can also use the telnet commands to change an existing setting, so if you enter the config command for the same variable twice like this:
config set reservation3="192.168.1.20 A0:99:9B:0B:3F:5B Dicks Macbook"
config set reservation3="192.168.1.20 A0:99:9B:0B:3F:5B The new Macbook"
Then the second command will override the first one.
Sort of reminds me how you can save/restore configurations to Cisco switches and routers, except that was even easier than this. Just have it show the config, copy/paste to a text file, and then paste back in later to restore. Didn't even have to modifty the output at all before using it as an input.
I agree completely. Saving to a text or XML file makes analysis a lot more convenient than this binary dump from the Orbi. My hex editor doesn't even find any text strings in the CFG file.
