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Saturday 11 December 2004

Netgear Routers [lurks]

One of the benefits of my job is that when some equipment doesn't function as it should, I find that placing a call through the firms media PR agency actually starts to yield results. I recently resorted to that concerning my Netgear FR114P firewall router. This router has a denial of service feature whereby it decides that something is a DoS attack and then chokes off that IP address for a time. Good eh?
Good apart from the fact that the numpties at Netgear A) decided to have this DoS feature apply to outgoing traffic from the LAN and B) decide that an outgoing UDP storm from a game server scanner such as Gamespy or All Seeing Eye, should be classified as a DoS attack. Do you see where I'm headed with this?
In essence anyone that has this router, regardless of firmware revision, will get unceremoniously dumped off the Internet when running a game browser scan. Then some 10 seconds later, it lets you back on. There's absolutely no firmware control over this. There probably would have been had Netgear kept the old telnet interface to their routers but since the new millennium, in keeping with the culture of rounded corners and flaming logos, no such feature exists via the spartan web interface.
Oh, of course the router's DNS relay is randomly broken as I have seen on a number of other Netgear products also but I'll ignore that for now.
I went to Netgear support and logged a ticket. Zero response. I look around the web. I'm not alone. No one else is getting a response.
So I went via Netgear's PR agency in the UK and bingo, I have a nice man at Netgear UK who I've had to coach through repeating the problem. He's now replicated the problem and now kicked it up to the engineers in the US and will keep me informed.
Meanwhile... I bought a cheap D-Link 604 off eBay and I can't log into the router, it wont reset and the bloke that sold it to me claims it has no password and that he had reset it in the past. It looks duff and I'm going to have to give the guy negative feedback and cop some in return, most likely.
I only bought one off eBay because I happened to have money in my PalPal account - bleh, you win some and you lose some. Oh, Mr Netgear Man also managed to reproduce the problem on one other model of ADSL router with a firewall in it. I forget which one, a DG* type thing. Has anyone else seen this problem?

21 comments:

  1. I have a Netgear WGR614 Router and I haven't noticed any problems with it yet. :)
    Oh it seemed to randomly reset its basestation once in a while, but I think I sorted that by setting it to just do 802.11b instead of the bi b/g mode.

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  2. I have the 824 with a firewall, and haven't had the problem.

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  3. What's the 834, an 802.11g version or something? The Netgear man made it happen with that one, he reckoned. Although he was a bit of a 'tard it must be said...

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  4. Yes the wireless one. I run plenty of ase and in game scans, never had it throw me off.

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  5. Sure, I believe you. I'm just saying this bloke reckons he's made the DG834 do it too but I reckon he monged that. He was doing a console ping to a web site and if it said no response, he took that to mean that the net con was down. Could well be he just lagged his DSL out to the point where it timed out.
    I didn't notice anyone on newsgroups saying this problem existed on any of the DG8** units, but then I wasn't using that as a search term either.

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  6. DG834g here, no problems using ASE, although if you use the filters correctly, you end up pinging far less servers than gamespy.

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  7. I have the MR814v2. I am having problems running Visual Basic programs that access online services. I contacted Netgear and they suggested I make my network a DMZ. Not only does this defeat the purpose of running a router, it also did not work. Netgear could not resolve the problem. So their crappy customer service folk (Indians I can hardly understand) started hassling me about when I bought it, and wanting the serial number etc, claiming they can only help registered users. Although I can qualify and can provide this info, I thought this was a cheap way of trying to get out of an issue they could not resolve. Netgear stinks poop in my book. I will go buy another D-link.

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  8. I bought a dsl modem at a car boot sale once. When I got home it didn't work with protocol 492, revision B. I called their "TECH SUPPORT" phone number, it was on the back on the modem. Then some guy asked me to provide proof of purchase, I told him to fuck off. He said he couldn't help me if I don't give him the serial number. I fired an aerosol foghorn down the phoneline. I hope the fucker goes deaf.

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  9. I've come to the conclusion that you're a total fucknut.

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  10. Was it a long time coming?

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  11. Well forgive me, but you want support for something you bought from a car boot sale and wouldn't give the techie a serial number? And then you fired an aerosol foghorn down the phoneline? I mean what sort of imbecile are you?

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  12. Julius - if you're not already an aliaising member of Electric Death then you, sir, just bought yourself a free invite to the clan :)

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  13. Although I am highly suspicious of a member of the general public using the word fucknut :)

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  14. Muwhahahahaaaaa :)

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  15. I'll try not to make my bullshit stories so realistic next time, maybe I should have said I was trying to get flooglejabber protocol working :)

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  16. Making jokes about being an idiot to idiots carries an inherant risk of being taken seriously

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  17. Acting like a cunt on a forum where everyone thinks you're a cunt carries the inherant risk of making you look like a cunt.

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  18. lmfao @ this thread!!!!%£$^$%&*^

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  19. I have an ADSL firewall dg834 and because of the fucking firewall it wont let me play any game with GameGuard running on it. i have unlocked all nessicary Ports in the firewall rules and still nothing, i cant play MU online, or Lineage 2.I cant get hold of Netgear because you need to register before contactingb them, and with great help the registration button on there web site doesnt work or (which is vrey funny) my netgear router is blocking that page as it blocks the login page on the Barclays website. happy days ;(.any one with simmilar problems??¬¬!? am i alone... My ISP is AOL andi got Windows XP. *P.S. Fucknut... nice*

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  20. I think I've narrowed down your problem: you know fuck all about anything.

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