Where I live, firmly in the home counties, we have a pretty crap electricity supply. It is prone to cutting out unexpectedly. This afternoon was one such occasion, and when the power came back my router (a Netgear model, slightly old now) had bust. No amount of power cycling or hard resetting would bring it back to life.
So, it was off to PC World for a replacement. I plumped for a Netgear DGND3300 dual band router-modem. It was pretty trivial to set up with my ISP account. But no matter how hard I tried, I was unable to set up fixed IP addresses for the various bits of kit I attach to the router. A bit of googling led to the solution: it seems as though this problem is associated with the most up-to-date firmware for the router (which of course it had). I obtained an older version, downloaded it and flashed it to the router.
Problem solved.
Except how come my power supply company is so rubbish they let my power cut out so destructively? And how come Netgear can’t properly test their firmware? For the record, the latest firmware is 2.1.00.48 but the version that works is 2.1.00.42.
14th November 2011 at 6:02 am
In addition to wondering who at Netgear is responsible for firmware quality, I know wonder who thinks it’s sensible to have a set of huge blue LEDs arranged in a circle flickering and flashing. They are bright enough to illuminate the room the router is in. I think I will have to tape aluminium foil over it.
Ah. The manual says to tap the dome over the LEDs to turn them off. That doesn’t work: you need to tap and hold for exactly 2 secs. I read on a forum that pressing and holding for longer resets the router.