Reinstall Netgear N900 firmware with a Mac

diy

In the fierce wind storm last night, we had an intermittent blackout, and I found the router, the Netgear N900, aka WNDR4500, stopped being functional. According to the manual, the power LED blinking slowly with amber light indicated that the firmware was corrupted, that left me the only option: reinstall the firmware.

First, download the latest firmware from the product page, R4500_V1.0.0.4_1.0.3.chk for the time being this post is written.

The KB article only shows the instruction on Windows, but it hints that the firmware reinstall is essentially done by the tftp. Here are the steps to do it with a Mac, assume your router binds to 192.168.1.1:

  1. Turn off the router off for 10 seconds.
  2. Connect your Mac and the router with ethernet cable, and configure you Mac IP address manually as 192.168.1.55.
  3. Turn of the router, run ping 192.168.1.1, and wait for the acknowledge.
  4. Reinstall the firmware as:
tftp << EOF
connect 192.168.1.1
mode binary
put R4500_V1.0.0.4_1.0.3.chk
quit
EOF
  1. Wait till the power light turn steady green, done.