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by ramesh31 1098 days ago
This is happening with routers, too. Just recently had someone give me a new Netgear Nighthawk for free, and I was stoked until it wanted me to download an app and create an account to manage my network. Straight to the garbage.
4 comments
perrylaj 1098 days ago
Decent consumer hardware, in the future I'd suggest trying out something like OpenWRT rather than binning it.

https://openwrt.org/toh/netgear/r7000

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ramesh31 1098 days ago
Yeah I didn't realize they could be flashed with OpenWRT. Might give that shot.
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dangus 1098 days ago
Were you using the phone app-based installation, or visiting the local network address from a desktop computer?

Most products like this have some kind of "harder way" to set up without an account, while the smartphone way uses an account. For a router usually means that if you want the old-fashioned manual way you need to visit the router's gateway IP and set it up from there.

Sometimes "the smartphone way" even has a way around having to make an account, it's just that it's hard to find or discouraged. E.g., I set up my HP printer without an account or any ink subscriptions (and I even think it's a great printer, shocking, I know).

(I had a Nighthawk device relatively recently and it had no need for an account, but I don't actually know if this has changed recently)

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yumraj 1098 days ago
Effing Xfinity cable modem wants an app for a couple of things including service activation and such, via bluetooth access. I don't think there's a way around that.

Once that is done you can use the browser for a few things, but for WiFi password and all I think app is still needed. Couldn't find a way to do it other way.

Worst thing is that this stupid Xfinity app eats phone battery like crazy. So I had to disable background activity and bluetooth permissions once I was done with the activation and initial setup.

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sliken 1098 days ago
The way around that is to use your own cable modem. It's also way cheaper to buy than pay the monthly rental fee.
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bell-cot 1098 days ago
"Oh, you want fixed IP #'s? Sorry, we only support that via our $240-per-year-forever rented cablemodems."

- my most recent Comcast/Xfinity experience

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kevin_thibedeau 1098 days ago
Plus you don't have bandwidth lost to the Xfinity wifi.
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tapper 1098 days ago
Well that was a dumb thing to do! You could of flashed it with OpenWrt and had a dam good router.
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