A few days ago, I bought a Netgear R6250 router. Its 5G performance and coverage were quite impressive. After enjoying it for a few days, I couldn’t resist tinkering and flashed it with Merlin firmware[^netgear-merlin], and then, unfortunately… it bricked. It would start up with a blinking yellow light and automatically enter tftp mode, but transferring firmware via tftp had no effect, and pinging it always returned a ttl of 100 (a ttl=100 for a router indicates recovery mode, ttl=64 indicates normal operation). I’ve tinkered with quite a few routers, but this was the first time I bricked one. After scouring through forums, it seemed that using a tty was the only solution. After flashing, I realized its features were incredibly powerful, but its stability was not reliable. My mother had quite a few complaints, so I decided to revert to the original firmware, which turned out to be another challenge. I’m recording my experience here, hoping to help others in the future.
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