Netgear Nighthawk D7000 on Fibre - easy to setup?

[#1]

A quick update: I have just spent approx 1hr on phone to Netgear Technical Support, luckily the chap I spoke to was helpful, friendly and knowledgable. Then again he was Level 2 Support with actual technical knowledge and not just a Level 1 Gatekeeper. He has kindly agreed to ship me an alternative D7000 to test. The idea being all being well I'll RMA the faulty unit back to them. Whilst trying to dig a little for dirt with the Support Rep he did not confirm (or deny) any specific / known issues with this particular model or the Latest Firmware V1.0.0.38_1.0.1. I'm hoping I've just been unlucky with a faulty unit... only time will tell and I should be able to provide an update in approx 5 - 7 days time.

[#2]

So, where did you get yours from originally? Was the retailer no help?

PS love the profile pic. I showed my 10yr old some Botp episodes I found on line. He was impressed. Started wearing my Mi band and doing the g-force bit

[#3]

I got mine from Currys / PC World (Basingstoke), to be honest I haven't bothered with them. Not 100% why... I guess it stems from my own (B2B) Product Management / Technical Support Background selling IT Hardware / Software to Retailers / Etailers working for IT Distributors.

I'm well chuffed you recognised my BOTP Avatar! LOL, I must look again for the UK Versions of the Episodes on BluRay of something, though the original footage was hardly HD! It T'was my favourite! BAAA BAAA BAA BA BA BA BAAA! 

[#4]

BOTP was one of my faves when I was younger. I am pretty sure I even had a crush for a while on the female team member - Princess...

[#5]

@harryw66 it seems that you are getting there with your Netgear Nighthawk.

I currently have a Draytek 2820 which lets you name reserved IP/MAC addresses (with a short tag). I'm looking at getting the newer Draytek 2860 which is similar but supports VDSL as well as ADSL.

The Draytek has all the features I need and (possibly because it was a mature product when I got it) has been very stable and reliable.

The Draytek 2860 range isn't cheap however.

[#6]

So far so good - has been stable for the past few days. No complaints from my family so far.

I normally have hidden SSID - but I have left it visible for now. Next step will be to hide it and see if it continues to work.

The Draytek looks good but the VDSL is almost double the £120 I paid on Amazon Prime Day....

[#7]

Time to draw this saga to an end.

After a lot of wasted time and energy communicating with both my ISP Plusnet and Netgear I'm happy to report the replacement D7000 from Netgear is stable and so far the connection has be up for over 184 hours. It seems I had combination of a faulty D7000 and also my IP (bRAS) Profiles were set too low and / or stuck. Quite possibly these Profiles had been directly affected by the faulty D7000.

Word of Warning: If your with Plusnet (part of BT) then there are 2x sets of IP Profiles, one on BT Openreach Network and one on Plusnet's Network. They BOTH need to be reset at the same time.