EA2700 Firmware 1.1.40 Build 162751 Dropping Wireless Clients

Question

Hello, 
We have noticed on several EA2700 units that the recent 1.1.40 update has caused wireless clients to be disconnected en-masse periodically. 
It does not seem to be related to client devices, as we have one "All Apple" environment where iPhones are simultaneously disconnected (but wired computers are fine) and a separate environment where the same thing is happening with only Samsung tablets and handhelds. 
Rolling back to the previous firmware (1.1.39 Build 145204) is an option in the Troubleshooting section of the device, but in order for it to work properly you have to do the following:
  a) Login to the Connectivity section and turn-off the Auto-Update feature
  b) Login to the Troubleshooting section and use the rollback feature to previous firmware
  c) Using a paperclip for 30 seconds (all lights flash), reset to factory settings.  (192.168.1.1 on LAN port with Internet disconnected)
  d) Login and reconfigure your settings (Wireless SSID and Passwords)
If you do not perform the hard factory reset using the reset button on the bottom after downgrading the firmware, you will be able to see the SSID but not connect any devices.  We believe this is due to the new "wireless drivers" that were upgraded as per the changelog in the 1.1.40 firmware, and are probably also responsible for the bug with wireless devices disconnecting. 
We engaged with the live chat to give them a heads up on the issue but didn't seem to get anything but a script to solve typical wireless issues; Hopefully this post is helpful and catches the eyes of Linksys engineers.   We have a lot of these devices in use, and so far have rolled back about 10 of them so far.  Unfortunately when you only loose wireless for a few minutes every hour or so, people don't notice too quickly.   Those with multiple wireless devices and wired connections seem to figure it out. 
The fact that all devices seem to disconnect at once suggest the 1.1.40 is having resource issues (running out of memory causing WPA services to restart), or suffering from some sort of other kernel/device driver issue related to the upgrade.  Without debug logs we don't have a smoking gun, but the observations seem indicative of a problem. 
We chose the EA line for our customers because the autoupdate allows us to often upgrade out of bugs with certain wireless clients, but in this case we upgraded into a bug affecting all clients. 

Answer 1

Good news, 
Since we have a number of devices still under warranty, we have been able to engage Belkin/Linksys'sCustomer Assistance Team (CAT), the next level of support from the email/Chat/phone queues.
Following disclosure of a number of scenarios and additional problem description details we were engaged by the product Sustainment Engineering team.   We provided more details, reproduction steps and example configurations. 
Although we still don't have our hands on a 1.1.39 build to mitigate risk of not being able to roll-back if a 1.1.41 does not resolve the problem, it seems likely that the engineering team is going to have a closer look and get this resolved. 
One recommendation, that we have not yet tried that came out of all the discussions, was to manually apply the firmware from the website.  I don't expect much to change, as I am pretty sure they would employ a simple MD5SUM check.  
Although we have rolled back a number of these so far with 100% resolution (using the process described), it is only about 5-10% of the devices configured to auto-upgrade that have been reported as having a problem so far, so there is still a good chance that not every device is affected, though we have been able to reproduce this easily, and all of our devices share identical configurations except for SSID information. 
The EA2700 is good value when it works.  Lots of resources, 64MB RAM and 64MB FLASH,  decent Broadcom Gigabit PHY and Dual Spatial Radios on a very compatible Broadcom Wireless chipset make it a great little AP bridge for 700-1000 sq ft. MDUs where we provide 80 Mbps service which it can handle in that environment at 40Hz.