Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I'm a highly advanced user; my home network is entirely Linux based or embedded systems, I've been the CIO of a major corporation, and I understand the ins and outs of software development and networking. My setup at home requires I extend the range of my wifi network to cover my house. It's too large for one router to reach, so I picked up this unit for its small size and supposed ease of use. Getting the unit initially up and running was fine - it was a no-brainer to add it to my existing WiFi network, provided by a DLink (DIR-655) router. So far, so good - setup really _is_ easy. I then moved the unit to a suitable location where there's adequate signal from the router and also where it can adequately cover the expanded space. Unfortunately, the easy setup was the only positive feature of this unit. The primary issue is that the WN3000RP locks up all the time and fails to route packets. After running for anywhere from 8 hours to a couple of days, it fails to maintain connectivity between the primary wireless network ("A") and its extended network ("B"). I can associate to the network "B" with a device, but it will not pass any traffic off to A. It's like the device has a memory leak or crash in the routing app internally that causes it to lock up and stop passing packets back and forth. It seems relatively traffic dependent - streaming videos through the device will induce it sooner than just background network traffic (mDNS advertisements, SAMBA notifications, pings, etc). The only fix is to unplug the WN3000RP and plug it back in, which gets it working for another couple of hours or days. Obviously, this is unacceptable... If, at the same time, I connect another device to my primary network, "A", that device has zero connectivity problems. That network's been up and stable for months at a time! The other issue I have with this box is that it also does the stupidest thing I've ever seen - modify the MAC address of devices passing through the unit onto my primary network! Who thought that was a good idea? Not only does this produce MAC addresses that don't conform to the proper vendor ID range selection (since the first portion of the MAC address should identify the vendor of the network hardware), it makes it virtually impossible for me to provided reserved IP allocations properly for devices in my house that roam between the two networks, A and B. If you have _any_ kind of sophistication with networking or computers, or if you are just a guy who likes to stream content (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime movies, etc), stay away until they fix the firmware in this device. NETGEAR clearly rushed this to market with no quality assurance testing and a ton of poor engineering choices along the way.