Setup- Web Browser

As with other NETGEAR products, and most contemporary networking hardware released recently, there are multiple options when it comes to setting up the Nighthawk XR500 router. I suspect most will go the browser route, and that is what I ended up going with myself. Start off by navigating to 192.168.1.1 in the browser of your choice, and you will be greeted with a terms of service page right away. Once you have read through it all, as I am sure everyone does, and agreed to the terms, the actual setup process begins.


I am showing, as a GIF, the various steps involved in the initial setup of the router via the browser. Assuming you have a stable Internet connection from the modem to the router's WAN port, the process will automatically determine the connection and even run a quick speed test to ensure everything is working as expected. At this point, you are provided a page for admin account settings to be able to access the browser utility again, and then you can set the Wi-Fi credentials for the 2.4 GHz wireless-N and 5 GHz wireless-AC networks. This completes the initial router configuration, but there are still a few more steps to go through.


Immediately after initial configuration, the same process continues and contacts NETGEAR's servers to see if the router has had a firmware update made available since it was packaged for retail shipment. In this case, there was indeed one such update available, and it was a straightforward process involving three simple steps to bring the Nighthawk XR500 up to date even before any monitoring utility was made available.


At this point, you are finally given a glimpse at the monitoring utility, DumaOS, which begins with a quick tutorial that walks you through the various components before prompting you to register the device to your NETGEAR account, which you can also create at this point if you do not have one. I recommend this as it ties the device to you, and thus registers the warranty associated with the router as well in case you need to RMA it for any reason or just get technical support that is complimentary for the first three months after purchase. Finally, you get taken to a browser page that confirms that router setup is complete, and there are also links here that go over some of the salient features available in DumaOS. We will explore these in more detail on the next page, and note that there is also a video from NETGEAR that goes through the setup process in case you wanted more clarification.