Netgear Launches Open Source-Friendly Wireless Router

An anonymous reader submits news of Netgear's release of the "open source Wireless-G Router (model WGR614L), enabling Linux developers and enthusiasts to create firmware for specialized applications, and supported by a dedicated open source community. The router supports the most popular open source firmware; Tomato and DD-WRT are available on WGR614L, making it easier for users to develop a wide variety of applications. The router is targeted at people who want custom firmware on their router without worrying about issues, and enjoy the benefits of having an open source wireless router."

Comments

What's the point of a new wireless-G one?

[mrchaotica]

Here in 2008, I'm only interested in Free Software-friendly 802.11 N routers. Anybody know of any?

Losing Marketshare to Linksys

[MBCook]

So they finally decided to stop handing the Linux tweakable router market to Linksys/Cisco, huh? Let's see, how long did that take?

According to Wikipedia, Linksys cut hardware back on their routers and released the hackable WRT54GL in 2005. So they've done nothing but ignore this market for nearly 4 years.

Took someone else long enough.

Older hardware is cheaper, its on the shelf

[gelfling]

Netgear doesn't make money on firmware. They make money selling routers. So if this sells more routers, then fine. But don't look to them to start cannibalizing their sales of Super-G, MiMo or N routers to sell more older on the shelf gear. 614 routers are themselves, fairly old probably as old internally as Linksys open routers. All they did was tweak the gear slightly in light of cheaper hardware now vs 3 years ago.

BTW, I LOVED my 624v3 Super-G Netgear router, for the 12 months it lasted. Then last month the wireless piece of it conked out. I replaced it with an 824v2 with all internal diversity antennas so the fact that Netgear cheaped out and never built replaceable antenna couplings is moot.

Re:Older hardware is cheaper, its on the shelf

[gelfling]

Yeah but with routers it's a straight trade off between RAM and ROM size and manufacturing cost. I bet Netgear and Linksys have or had warehouses full of these older G routers or, they had very long job contracts with Solectron and similar spec manufacturing companies. They have to use the inventory or the production runs and it's probably cheaper to tweak the hardware a little bit to accommodate Tomato etc than it is to write off the bulk of it. And, if all goes well they instill a little goodwill with the hobby community and get a peak into some of the requested features they don' deliver.

Hell, if they play their cards right, commodity routers could all be sold w/o any firmware at all and Netgear and Linksys could save dollars (or Yuan) not having to develop it or support it all. I've often wondered why they would even bother creating v1, v2, v3 and so on of what is essentially the same hardware with the same features and performance if they didn't have to worry about hardware requirements versioning.

Re:Tomato and DD-WRT is not open nor free;use open

[mpoulton]

MOD PARENT UP. I wish I had points. I used to be a rabid fan of DD-WRT, and I still believe it is the best firmware out there for the WRT series routers. However, the project leader (Brainslayer) has recently started to close source certain parts of the project, and it seems he is working to make it unusable in open-source form (i.e. requires proprietary code to function at all). Basically, he's pulling a Sveasoft move here and screwing a great number of the people who donated time and money to make the system work in the first place.