It's both really. How old are these routers when they go EOS? If it's like ~5 years then honestly it's probably worth it to replace anyway just to stay current. It's a good marketing move by Netgear... I am sure that is really their motivation. But I don't have any problem with that. In fact I'd rather my customers have an up to date customer owned router versus a 10 year old one. It also makes the case that our managed wifi routers really are a better value if they need to replace that $150 Netgear router every few years.
On Fri, Apr 24, 2026 at 3:38 PM Ken Hohhof <[email protected]> wrote: > > For maybe as much as a year now, I’ve had customers calling because they got > an email from Netgear saying their router is going end-of-support. (customer > provided router, not leased from us) I’m guessing Netgear had their contact > information because Netgear pushes pretty hard for you to create an online > account during setup. > > > > On the one hand, this seems like a good thing, warn people they will no > longer get firmware updates and tell them to replace their router. > > > > On the other hand, people seem to almost universally do what the email says, > including the recommended new Netgear router to buy, and it feels like just > good marketing on Netgear’s part. Also, I wonder what percentage of these > people ever updated their router firmware even once, or turned on automatic > updates. What good are firmware updates if you never do them? > > > > So what do you think? Public service by Netgear, or just a revenue > opportunity for them? > > > > > > -- > AF mailing list > [email protected] > http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
