Found a router at the curb, neighbor's advice saved me some headaches

I pulled an old Netgear Nighthawk out of a pile on trash day last week. A neighbor walked over and said 'check if the firmware's been messed with, these get dumped for a reason.' Sure enough, it was bricked from a bad update. Has anyone else found a router that looked fine but had software issues?

3 comments

3 Comments

max_brown11d ago

Honestly I think that's a little too cautious. Routers get tossed all the time just because someone upgraded to wifi 6 or their ISP gave them a new one. Flashing a factory reset and checking for bad firmware updates is pretty standard maintenance, not some deep security risk. That neighbor freaking you out over nothing would've made me throw away a perfectly good router. Plenty of curb finds just need a hard reset and they work fine.

phoenix57310d ago

Exactly, people ditch routers for the dumbest reasons. My buddy scored a Netgear Nighthawk on bulk trash day just because the owner's kid spilled soda on it. A quick wipe with alcohol and a factory reset later, it worked like new for years. The real risk isn't the random curb router, it's the one from someone who actually knew what they were doing and loaded it with malware. Most people just toss them because they're lazy or got a free one from their cable company.

the_susan11d ago

Did you check if the previous owner flashed custom firmware or just the official update gone wrong?