As always, caveat emptor

So, early last year I mentioned Comcast's bandwidth caps and measuring bandwidth usage... specifically, what their newly-released tool reported versus what my router reported. No, this isn't another anti-Comcast screed... the target of my ire (erm, mild disgust?) this time is the router manufacturer, Netgear.

You see, in order to get the bandwidth monitoring features I needed, I had to buy their then-top-of-the-line consumer router, the WNDR3700. It promised all sorts of bells and whistles beyond what I actually needed (wireless-N networking, expanded range wireless-G networking, and the ability to plug in a USB drive to serve up audio and video content on the network, to name a few). It worked... mostly. Sure, the bandwidth statistics collection wasn't bulletproof, and the USB connection was flaky, and you might need to reboot the router if the DHCP server locked up, but I figured all of that might be fixable in firmware.

Time passed, there was a firmware update or two, and things got better... but they never got right. Finally, once Comcast got their own metering solution in place, I went back to my old wireless-G router (another Netgear model, but version 9 of that product line... pretty well bulletproof). I figured I could check occasionally for a new firmware for the high-end router, and give it another go when that day came.

It's been roughly a year since that time. I saw a brief reference to an updated firmware file in my Google search, and started digging a little deeper. The Netgear website doesn't have any available firmware to download for my version of the WNDR3700, but does have for the next version up... the first time I've ever seen a router manufacturer pull that particular trick. Further searches on the Internet provided tales of tech-support woe, links to briefly-released beta firmwares, that sort of thing... in effect, it appears that Netgear has decided to abandon my router, while continuing to build and sell routers with the same model number, and hope nobody notices.

So, I'm not nearly so torqued with Netgear as I have been with the likes of Sony... they sold a product in seeming good faith that didn't live up to expectations. A better company might have issued a recall, or a trade-in program of some sort, but that sort of company is few and far between these days, especially in the realm of consumer electronics. I'm not blacklisting Netgear for future purchases... however, you can be certain that I'll be carefully weighing the pros and cons of buying any gear of theirs in the future before putting money down, supposing there isn't an equivalently priced/available piece of gear from a reputable competitor.