One year anniversary

[Jackal235]

It's been one year since netduma luke  stated about brand new firmwares for nighthawks as below.

So my congrats on the anniversary.

 

 

Hi everyone,

This is an update for you guys on where we are with DumaOS and specifically, the XR/NPG routers which is why we have posted it in this subforum. 
First of all, here’s the current status for each XR router, including links to where you can get the latest firmware for those of you who don’t already have it installed:

• XR300 – V1.0.3.68 (DumaOS 2.0)
• XR450/XR500 – V2.3.2.130 (DumaOS 3.0)
• XR700 – V1.0.1.46 (DumaOS 3.0 Beta)
• XR1000 – V1.0.0.58 (DumaOS 3.0)

Now to address the problem: the speed at which XR users have been getting new firmwares. We realise it has been far too slow.
Here’s how the firmware building process typically works:

• Every few months a new DumaOS firmware is completed
• This first must pass our internal testing
• Then it moves over to NETGEAR where it must pass their testing, including all the non-DumaOS side of the firmware
• Then it goes into closed beta testing
• Eventually, if all has gone well, it will be released

The big problem we have is that if there is an issue at any point, the entire process needs to start again. Considering all the different XR routers DumaOS is on combined with the fact all of them have very large user bases (meaning disaster if a serious bug gets through) and you begin to see the problem.

So, what can we do about this? We asked ourselves the same question at the beginning of the year and we have been working on a solution ever since. We’ll be putting a blog and video together to explain in more detail what we have done, but here is a summary.

We have created a brand new ‘build system’ which will drastically speed up how quickly we can build and test firmware. 

One part of this system involved writing hundreds and hundreds of automatic tests which allow a bunch of computers to test DumaOS without any human involvement. 

Another part is to allow us to trigger new internal firmware builds every night. The purpose of this is to gather all the latest changes our developers have made during the day, build a new firmware and then kick off the automated tests. This means we can catch bugs before human testers ever get their hands on the firmware. 
The end result of all of this is we can make stable and well tested DumaOS much, much faster than ever before.

We’ve been working on this build system for some time and last week, we released a new R2 firmware. It was our very first full firmware built using the new build system, so it’s a bit of a landmark moment for us.

Our plan is to now use this new system for all future DumaOS 3.0 firmwares, including XR routers, Telstra Game Optimiser, the R1 etc. It’ll take us a bit of time to tweak it to work with each router, but once done it will become very easy for us to prepare rock-solid firmwares to send to NETGEAR for their testing before then releasing them to you guys. 

There’s still one sticking point left: the XR300 community. We really do know how far behind you are, and it sucks. All I can say is we’ll do everything in our power to try and bring you up to the latest version using this new build system - I can’t promise it will work, but we’ll do our very best.

The last thing to say is we realise we’ve been pretty quiet over the past few months in terms of communication. Behind the scenes, we’ve never been busier. 

We’ve got some massive features coming out in 2022. Honestly, it’s going to be the biggest leap forward we’ve ever made in our technology and is the culmination of several years of R&D. We’ve also doubled the size of our team over the past 18 months. We know it’s been a long wait, but the payoff will be worth it. 

Thank you for all the patience on this. We know we’ve got a brilliant user community, we feel very blessed and fortunate to have you. We think you’ll love what’s coming out next and we’ll begin to share more details with you on what we have been up to, so stay tuned.

The Netduma Team

[Netduma Fraser]

You can keep up to date with all firmware progress here: https://support.netduma.com/en/support/solutions/articles/16000132677-dumaos-firmware-progress

[Harley]

On 11/24/2022 at 2:53 PM, Jackal235 said:

It's been one year since netduma luke  stated about brand new firmwares for nighthawks as below.

So my congrats on the anniversary.

 

 

.
We have created a brand new ‘build system’ which will drastically speed up how quickly we can build and test firmware. 

 

 

The only problem with automated systems is they themselves need to be updated and tested all the time. It's fine when you are just debugging but if you change the functionality of the product in any way then the test system needs to be changed and then itself retested. If a product has a larger number of spec changes then It's not practical for a small company to implement because it costs more money and time than manually retesting everything. Anyway, we have no idea what goes on inside the company so we can't really say. Having said that, it has been a very long time since a status changed on the progress page! I have pretty much given up hope of there being new releases this year. *sighs*

[Jackal235]

Is there a beta firmware available for XR1000?

[Netduma Fraser]

11 hours ago, Jackal235 said:

Is there a beta firmware available for XR1000?

No there isn't, NG don't generally do betas, we did push for 3.0 to go into beta but this time around we're quite confident once the remaining issues are sorted that it can go out without a beta - if we think a beta is helpful we will push for it.