After putting this issue to Orcon tech support, I received the condescending response "Are you sure that's not just as a result of the factory reset...? Because you'll need to set up the WiFi network again." Duh! Like I didn't know that! Grrr!

I have set the wifi up several different ways, including with the SSID hidden (as it was before the reset); with the SSID being broadcast; with the same SSID as previous; with a different SSID; with WEP instead of WPA; and even with no encryption. Each time, my client machines cannot see or connect to the wifi any more since the factory reset.

I have only recently joined Orcon, and installed my Genius Lite VoIP router. In fact, at the time of writing this post, I have been connected for two days. Yesterday, after connecting the Genius Lite for the first time, I searched for a firmware update, as I like to run the latest firmware. I could only find a link for the iiNet BoB Lite, but I assumed the firmware would be different for the New Zealand version. Instead I contacted Orcon tech support, who told me it would need to be flashed remotely from their side. I asked the support tech to do so, and my box was upgraded from firmware GeniusLite1100 to GeniusLite1201.

As soon as it was done, I asked the support tech if I would need to do a factory reset, assuming from past experience with other such devices that this would be necessary after a firmware upgrade. The tech told me it would NOT be necessary. However, after numerous timeouts while browsing, and another call to Orcon tech support, a different support tech told me that I WOULD need to do a factory reset, as I had expected.

After the factory reset, I had to set everything back up, including the wifi. As normal, I connected to the Genius Lite box with the ethernet cable at first, in order to set the configuration back up.

One thing I do with my home wifi normally is to set up MAC address filtering. The Genius Lite has a very nice way of handling this, by populating a drop-down box from the DHCP server and then allowing me to automatically populate the MAC filter table from this drop-down. Nice! However, after the factory reset I noticed that this feature was no longer working. It wasn't until my wife complained that her Kindle was no longer connecting to the wifi that I realized the problems were larger than that though.

This was when I went through all the steps mentioned above, trying to get the wifi working again, to no avail. Another call to Orcon's tech support revealed that this issue would need to be escalated to their second-tier support, and could take a day or two to resolve.

Fortunately, I had an ace up my sleeve. Orcon had inadvertently sent me out a second Genius Lite box when I signed up with them. Hehe. I held on to it just in case I needed it during the "settling in" phase. It seems that was a good idea! Rather than waiting for the second-tier support to get back to me, I replaced the faulty Genius Lite with the second one, which was still running firmware v1100. This resolved all my problems, and I got back on with configuring the rest of the features of this marvelous device, such as WebDAV, FTP, web server, and file server functionality.

Today, during the configuring of the file server, I inadvertently deleted the default user "anyone" for the file server, not thinking it would be doing anything other than allowing unsecured access to my files. Instead, it broke the file server entirely, even though I had other users set up before I deleted the default user. As there appeared to be no way to recover the default user or to create one with the same credentials, I figured another factory reset was in order. Lo and behold, the default user was restored with the factory reset, but now the wifi is dead again, the same as it was the last time I did a factory reset on the other box. Gah!

So, I'm thinking that this has nothing to do with the firmware upgrade, but is more to do with the act of factory resetting the device. I understand there has been an issue in the past with doing a factory reset on these things, which changes the encapsulation to LLC instead of VC-MUX. I wonder if the factory reset now also breaks other things, like the wifi.

This has happened to two different Orcon Genius Lite boxes now, within two days of each other. Has anyone else encountered something like this? Is there a way to fix it myself?

If not, I still have a variety of other wifi routers at home that I can plug in to an ethernet port on the Genius, and use one of them for wifi instead, keeping the Genius for VoIP only. I like the "all-in-one" solution though.