The tape over the connectors and holding the wires in place needs to be removed. The connectors each have a number stenciled onto the PCB, so it's easy to figure out where all the wires plug back in afterwards. All the antenna wires are labelled with the numbers of the corresponding surface-mount SMA connectors. The circuit board and antenna wires are then visible. Once the screws are removed, the bottom cover slides up a little bit toward the antennae and can then be removed. The other 4 are under the small rubber feet in the four corners. On the bottom of the router, there are 6 screws. This means opening the case, and creating a cable to connect to the board. To interact with CFE, there is a serial communication port on the circuit board of the router. This piece of software can perform diagnostics on the hardware, and allows the device to be programmed or started up. When the computer (a microcontroller) first starts, there is a software called CFE that starts up. CFE is an open source bootloader for Broadcom devices.

In essence, Netgear routers have a computer running a linux operating system, and a boot loader called CFE (Common Firmware Environment). Sounded like fun to see if I could get it going again.Ī great resource was this forum page on 'How to Set Up a Serial Console for NETGEAR R8000'. After reading reviews and comments on the netgear forum, I realized that the issue was likely a firmware problem. A quick check showed the power brick output was correct (19.5 volts!).

My initial thought was that maybe the power supply was faulty, since it was constantly rebooting (the power indicator would turn amber, flash a bit, then go back to amber, then the unit would reboot. I was curious whether I might be able to bring it back to life. Michael Geisen (February 9, 2018) Getting started I came home from work and it had fallen victim to the 'continuous reboot loop' that a vast amount of others have encountered with this product. This router worked great for about two hours and then the endless boot loop started Julio O. This router has been the bane of my existence since I bought it. On Amazon 22% of the 1,844 reviews for this model are 1 star! Some Amazon review highlights Based on reviews this router appears to have really poor longevity, and a lot of them seem to have failed in service after a short period of time. It's disappointing that for a 620$ router, Netgear only offered a 1 year hardware warranty with 90 days of support. The same reviews were pretty harsh (3/5 stars) because upfront this was an incredibly expensive router (it was originally 620$), though now the price has dropped to 130$. It has some pretty impressive specifications (dual-core 1.4GHz processor, 512 MB RAM, and a bunch of wireless connections), with reviews positively highlighting its capabilities. A friend recently gave me a 2 year old Netgear router that had failed.

R8500 dd-wrt