Netgear / ZyXEL Help

Netgear / ZyXEL Help

You have a Netgear or ZyXEL router * and are having problems with:

*NOTE: This information applies to the following routers:

ZyXEL:         Prestige 310, Prestige 312, Prestige 314

NETGEAR: 

RT311 Router review

RT314 Router review

Updated 10/6/00 Setting up the router

The Prestige Network Commander (PNC) is a Windows application running on Win 95, 98, and NT4 that greatly simplfies setting up the router.  You can download PNC version 2.30 from this page.

Version 2.30 supports either the ZyXEL Prestige 310 / NetGear RT311 or ZyXEL Prestige 312 routers.  It does not support the ZyXEL Prestige 314 / Netgear RT314 by loading it for the P310.

Note that the ReadME also says that the PNC works with V2.51 firmware for the P310, but it should work with 3.20 also.

NOTE: NETGEAR and ZyXEL firmware is no longer reliably interchangeable between router brands. Just use the firmware for whichever product that you have.

Latest Firmware

NETGEAR

Firmware for Netgear routers can be downloaded from this page. Just enter the product’s model number in the keyword field.  (The Search results are not necessarily in chronological order, so you may need to scroll down the page to find the latest release.)

NOTE: We’ve had a few reports of bad browser display problems with the 3.24 firmware for the NETGEAR RT311/314 routers.  The firmware worked fine for us, although we did see an occasional frame refresh problem. All we did was hold down the SHIFT key while hitting the browser reload to force a full refresh and all was well.

Previous NETGEAR Release notes:

Updated 8/10/01 ZyXEL

Best place to look for ZyXEL firmware is on their FTP server
ftp://ftp.zyxel.com/public/prestige.  New firmware tends to appear there first.

Updated 8/3/00 Logging to a Mac

There is a shareware ($10 to register) syslog client available from:

 www.laffeycomputer.com/netlogger.html

that will let your Mac accept the RT311/314’s log files.

9/23/00 Problems w/ @Home

Go to this page for help.

Updated 1/4/01 Problems with on-line games

New BETA firmware has been posted on the NetGear site to fix the Half-Life server refresh problem.  The info below is from the Netgear site

RT311/RT314 Half Life fix test firmware

This firmware is a beta release for RT311/RT314 to fix a problem where the router will hang when the server list is refreshed playing the game Half Life.

If you have not a user of this game or you have not encountered this problem, you should NOT use this firmware.

Please note that we do not offer any support on beta softwares. You can upgrade at your own risk. Feedback on beta software is welcomed at the email address unsupported@netgear.com.

The upgrade instruction is included in the zip file as readme.pdf.

Download the file rt3half.zip from here.

Go to this page for other gaming help.

Updated 11/11/00 Getting IPsec to work

Moved to here.

9/23/00 Firmware Downgrade problems

RT314

Some users have tried to use firmware versions for the RT311 earlier than 3.20 in the RT314.

Note that there is no previous firmware for the RT314. The first version is v3.20.

The earlier versions on the Netgear Web site are for the RT311, and are labelled as such. There are minor differences between the two products, and these differences are not accommodated by the old RT311-only software.

RT311

If you have problems downgrading to previous firmware from Version 3.20, it may be due to configuration data.  Do the following:

1) First copy down your existing configuration information.

2) Clear the router using the blank config file from the current 3.20 revision (romfile0)

3) Load the older firmware.

4) Load the blank V2.x config file from the older software to clear the V3.20 configuration data.

5) Re-enter your configuration information

9/23/00 Enabling the “watchdog”.

Reader Boris Bakchiev sent us this note about the routers’ “watchdog” capabilities:

Just a note to say that most Netgear / ZyXEL routers have a “watchdog” built-in into the router.  I have not seen it on any other low price router.

If you telnet to the router and user menu 24.8 to get to command prompt you can than execute following command:

sys wdog switch on

You can also edit autoexec.net file with “sys edit autoexec.net” to append this command to the file and make the router switch the watchdog on, on boot-up

10/17/00 Losing your WAN connection.

Reader Edward Cheung has created a nice little Windows app that will check your WAN connection and reconnect it for you if it drops:

GearMinder is a small standalone application that remedies this problem. It needs no installation, and can be run from
the ‘Startup’ menu. It regularly connects to web servers (port 80), to verify that all is ok. After a configurable number of consecutive failures, it telnets into the Netgear router to drop and renew the dynamic IP. This should fix the problem.
An optional feature is the sending of an automated email so you have a record of the occurence, and so you are notified
of the new IP address of the router. This is useful if you want to telnet into your system and have not signed up with
DynDNS, or if the service is down for some reason.

Go here to get it!

11/20/00 Finding things on the new Netgear site.

The new Netgear support site that went up in mid November 2000 is database driven and not very easy to browse.  Fortunately, you can at least browse the downloads list from this page.

Remember that you can also use the ZyXEL info and downloads with the Netgear products.  Here’s a list of helpful ZyXEL suppport pages:

• Firmware and software download page

• Support Note index
  (applications notes are available via a link from specific Support Note pages)

• User guides

11/20/00 Getting a PPTP server to work

Use this ZyXEL article to help you set this up.

3/19/01 Help with Filters

Check the Filters section on this site.

12/2/00 Resetting to Factory Defaults

This involves uploading a file to the router.  This file and instructions for use are usually included in the firmware update download file.  To give you some idea of what’s involved, here’s the instructions for a ZyXEL P314.

Be sure to use the romfile for your current firmware! The process has changed from older firmware revisions and if you use the wrong file you could end up having to contact Netgear or ZyXEL support.