Last night we had a brief power outage - for a couple of seconds. I lost internet connectivity and expected things to come back as normal after everything rebooted.
However - my RBR50 did not. The wireless network never came back up. After a while I noticed that *one* computer on the wired LAN had network connetivity, but none of the wireless devices could see my SSID. I also noticed that the IP address that computer had looked very much like the WAN addresss my ISP hands out. Not good.
I pulled out an old WiFI router and swapped that in - things worked perfectly. So it's not my ISP/cablemodm or any of the rest of my network infrastructure.
Anyway - since the ORBI app is useless in this situation, and the router is not accessible on either wired or wirelss interface, I decided that my only option was a factory reset.
I tried the usual reset .... 10 seconds ... power LED went from solid green to solid amber to flashing amber. Released reset. Boots up to soild green but with the same symptoms - namely no visible SSID (either my original, or the factory SSID on the router's label)
Tried this several times, with several variants (holding reset while powering on, leaving the router unplugged for a few minutes, etc) No difference.
Treid the supposedly "harder reset" of hold down resert; wait 30, power-off, wait 30; power-on; wait 30; release reset.
The power LEDs went through the same sequence as for a regular reset - twice. But the router still behaves the same
After it boots, it just has a slowly pulsing white ring for several minutes
Pulsing white. Your Orbi router and satellite are applying a configuration or updating their firmware.
Pulsing white. Your Orbi router is in factory default mode.
Then it goes solid magenta indicating no WAN connection
However it still advertises no SSID, it does not hand out an IP address on the wiired ports. The app obviously cannot find the router (since it doesn't have a wireless network)
I tried going down the 'TFTP'' route - but I have a Mac and couldn't get anything to behave as described in the various posts.
I also tried the nmrpflash utility from here: https://github.com/jclehner/nmrpflash It appears to see some kind of boot request but fails to update the flash. Verbose output jgives me:
I'm now at a total loss. This appears to be a very expensive brick, and my satellites are also now useless.
Netgear customer support won't respond since the router is (just) over 12 months old. (I am *SO* unimpressed by this experience, by the way, that I will never purchase another Netgear product)
I have 30 years experience working in computer systems and networtking, but all I can do is pray that somebody on this list may have a magic bullet!
