Netgear L2 Support is inept

[microchip]

Sadly, you are probably right . I have two R7500v2 units however.

When I bought my R7000 and virtually instantly discovered some issues, I contacted NETGEAR support. Honestly, they were very helpful. That's not really the problem. The problem is that engineering doesn't want to fix reported issues and does whatever it pleases. The only thing support can do is tell you they've passed it on to engineering and that's it. I'm still waiting on the fix for the crashing dhcp6s server whenever my Linux desktop renews its lease and of course, the infamous ICMPv6 filtering that engineering has been very stubborn in fixing as from their POV it's a "security vulnerability", yet it is required for proper functioning

 

[sfx2000]

Sorry to hear about things... as this is not typical in my experience - I've only had to contact Netgear a couple of times, but this was with their ProSafe line, and never had a problem...

 

[RogerSC]

I've found Netgear support/engineering to be helpful most of the time. There was a particular problem with the R7000 and Comcast IPv6 out of the gate, where if I rebooted/power-cycled the R7000 with IPv6 enabled I'd lose my internet connection when the router came back up. I needed to remove the WAN cable for about 15 seconds or so, and when I plugged it back in that restored my internet connection. They eventually fixed that one. I worked with Netgear support and test with several debug betas before they got it right, but they did get there over time. There was some of that, support not reading what I sent them carefully, but they continued to make progress on the problems until they fixed them. So I see this as a net positive experience with Netgear support/engineering.

On the other hand, they've never fixed the problem the R7000 has with handling ICMPv6 packet filtering. I've heard from others that they consider fixing this to be a security problem despite the RFC that's publicly available that specifies the correct behavior. I haven't heard that directly from Netgear, so I can't personally say that's the reason that they won't fix it, but I could see that happening in a marginally dysfunctional engineering group.

The R7800, though, is a different story...they apparently have learned from the R7000 experience, and IPv6 has been solid for me since I first starting using it. The ICMPv6 packet filtering bug is still there, though, and that bothers me. I like the fact that the major firmware problems that I had with the R7000 when it was put on the market are fixed with the R7800 coming out of the gate. They apparently do regression testing, a good thing. I haven't felt that I've had to report any issues with the R7800 at this point, and I can wait for third party firmware to develop. For the R7000 I couldn't wait, and jumped on dd-wrt as it developed. Dd-wrt firmware was a lifesaver for the R7000 for me. As it stands now, all the third-party firmware versions for the R7000 implement ICMPv6 packet filtering correctly, it's only Netgear that refuses to follow the RFC.

 

[mediatrek]

While it did take many, many (I really could add a 3rd "many") months, the only resolution Netgear saw to the case was to replace my two R7500v2 units with R7800 units as firmware development for the R7500v2 was "not going to happen." I got my 2 replacement routers this week via FedEx.

 

[Khanh Tran]

While it did take many, many (I really could add a 3rd "many") months, the only resolution Netgear saw to the case was to replace my two R7500v2 units with R7800 units as firmware development for the R7500v2 was "not going to happen." I got my 2 replacement routers this week via FedEx.

Used to have r7500v2 and had issues with both radios. Really liked its hw but had to return it while I could. R7500 really scared me a lot. Got ASUS RT AC68U as the replacement and it's been great with Merline FW.