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@RichardGV Thank you so much for bringing this up! I’ve created a separate topic for this, in case someone else run into the same problem.

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@skydogtookmycash We just published the blog post. Any feedback is welcome!

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@mcpheex3 Update v1.21.2 is now available. We think we fixed the STEAM issue. Please check.

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John, Update v1.21.2 is now available. We think we fixed the Status page issue. Please check.

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@geekGirlFri The nohost return code means that dnsomatic cannot find the hostname passed in. Please check your dnsomatic.com page to see if you added the OpenDNS service and that it’s active. If the service is active, there’ll be a green thumb up button on the right of your OpenDNS service row.

FYI, here’s the dnsomatic API reference page: https://dnsomatic.com/wiki/api.

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John, thanks for the update. It turns out that the guest network feature might have introduced a bug in the Status page. We are fixing it now and you can expect an update in the next few days. Thanks!

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John, thank you very much for the feedback! Since there were no changes for the Status page in the last two updates, the page should not be broken (in theory). You are the first one who reported such problems, so please let us know a bit about your network. I.e., how you connect to the Internet and how the devices are connected to the router.

In the meanwhile, you can add new devices in the Network Settings page: in the “Hostnames and Static Leases” section, click the Add button. In the popup dialog, connected devices should appear under the Name dropdown. You can either identify the device by name or IP address.

You can either use tools provided by the OS to identify the IP address of a device (for example on Windows, open a command line window and enter “ipconfig”), or open a browser on the device and enter http://192.168.10.1/myip.html.

Once you identified the device, save the name by clicking OK in the popup dialog. Then click Save at the bottom of the Network Settings page. After that, you can manage the device in the parental control page.

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@MinZhou So the pcWRT router is working as expected. The problem lies in the Internet connection. Do you know what type of Internet connection Comcast provides? Is it DHCP or PPPoE? If it’s the latter, Comcast should have provided you a user name and password to log on. You can get the connection properties from the management console for your old router.

My past experience has been that the connection is DHCP. However, Comcast checks the MAC address on their end. So when you change router, you won’t be able to connect. And that’s why I suggested that you try cloning the MAC address before. I don’t know how you retrieved the MAC address for your old router. You might want to check your old router’s management console. The MAC address might have been cloned there so it doesn’t match what’s on the box.

You may also contact Comcast tech support and ask them for help.

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@MinZhou Because we are testing Internet connectivity, you don’t have to reset the router. Simply change the SSID, or turn off WiFi should work.

But since you’ve reset the router already, you’ll need to go back to the initial setup. You should be able to load the router console with 192.168.10.1.

To keep things simple, disconnect all wires from the pcWRT router. Then connect the power cable only, wait till it’s fully powered up. The SYS and WLAN LEDs should be solid on. Then connect your PC by Ethernet wire to a LAN port on the pcWRT. Load 192.168.10.1 to perform initial setup.

If the above step is successful, connect the pcWRT WAN port to a LAN port on your old router. Again, connect your PC to a LAN port on the pcWRT. Load 192.168.10.1 and look at the Status page. Is Internet up or down?

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@skydogtookmycash Very good questions. Unfortunately there are no clear answers. It might look simple at first glance, but in reality this is a very technical subject. Each family may have different needs and each vendor may approach the problem from a different angle. We are planning to write a blog post to explain some of the factors that have driven our decision making process. Hopefully it’ll help you out somewhat. Stay tuned!

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@abe Thanks for your patience! We are positive that we can work this out. If it turns out that there are bugs in our firmware, we’ll fix them. And yes, you have the right to return if it doesn’t work.

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@MinZhou Thanks for the update! We should be able to work this out.

First of all, let’s make sure that the pcWRT router is functioning properly. Please do this test:
1. Remove the MAC address override in the pcWRT router and save.
2. Connect your old router to the cable modem.
3. Connect the pcWRT router WAN port to a LAN port on your old router.
4. Log in the pcWRT router console and check the Status page. Is Internet on?

We’ll decide what to do next depending on the outcome of this test.

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@MinZhou By link light do you mean the ONLINE light (i.e., the globe)?

You might want to try copying the MAC address of your old router to the pcWRT router. Once you have the MAC address of your old router, go to the Internet Settings page of pcWRT. Paste the MAC address into the Override MAC address field, then click Save.

Let us know if you need help on how to find the MAC address of your old router. The process depends on the router model.

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@skydogtookmycash Thank you so much for your comments! Currently we only sell hardware with firmware preinstalled, since most users don’t know how to flash their routers and we won’t be able to support them if anything goes wrong. In worst case, they might end up bricking their routers in the process. That said, we do plan to support the firmware only option in the future as we expand and have better ways to deliver it.

Yes, we do plan to stay and won’t sell ourselves out (ha, even Skydog would have said that before they sold themselves out!). But seriously, we are proud of what we built, enjoy what we are doing, and do want the product to stay. Therefore, since the very beginning we made choices that would minimize the impact to our customers in case something out of our control drowns us. Such as using services such as OpenDNS to provide content filtering instead of building our own, and building it as a standalone router instead of a cloud based router.

We know that people want Skydog-like cloud based control, so we are currently building it (as an option, not a requirement). Features like email notification when router goes offline will be available once that’s done.

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Thank you very much for the update! As it turned out, there is a bug in time control for apps like STEAM. Please give us a few days to fix this issue. We’ll release an update as soon as the fix is ready.

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