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?

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

[schnikies79]

I would rather wait till they finalize the spec.

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

[zolf13]

The problem is how to use the same "free" radio frequency (2.4 GHz) both for "b/g" and "n" without interferencing each other.

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

[LordEq]

The problem is how to use the same "free" radio frequency (2.4 GHz) both for "b/g" and "n" without interferencing

* SLAP *

Don't do that.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Let him say what he wants.

Stop interferencing.

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

[devjj]

802.11n operates on 5Ghz as well.

It's time to start ditching backward compatibility. Every refresh of the 802.11 spec does not have to have backward compatibility. Backward compatibility here just serves to increase the distance between theoretical maximums and actual observed speeds.

I run a dual-router setup on my home network. I've got a Linksys WRT54Gv4 running Tomato alongside an Apple Airport Extreme. The WRT fills the job of router as well as 802.11g (802.11b is turned off) access point, while the AEBN is configured to work as an 802.11n wireless bridge on the 5Ghz band. Actual throughput is far faster on this setup than on a single device serving everything.

I know there are practical reasons for backward compatibility, but we need to get off our love affair with it. Keep it in enterprise hardware, but for consumers, make a clean break. There's no reason why we can't have an abundance of cheap 802.11b/g devices and a separate class of devices for 802.11n. There's no reason one can't run both if one needs both. The convenience offered by a single package just makes it worse for everyone in the long run.

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

[Workaphobia]

Cromulence abounds.

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

[Tumbleweed]

I provide the WiFi in hotels.

Oh, YOU'RE the guy.

Don't let me find you.

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.

Re:Losing Marketshare to Linksys

[Fallen Kell]

Dude, Linksys routers were SHIPPED with linux originally back in 2002. Yes, the "L" version came out in 2005, the only reason there is an "L" version is because after v3 of the WRT54G, Linksys removed 1/2 the memory and switched to a proprietary firemware and not open source because they were threatened with lawsuits due to the original versions and not fully complying at first with release of the source code. They felt they had given up too many secrets of how their hardware worked when they had to release the source code in compliance with the GPL, and also wanted to cut production costs. The "L" version was really just a WRT54G version 3 hardware, which they then priced a lot higher...

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.

Buffalo anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hasn't Buffalo been shipping routers running DD-WRT for the longest time? Shouldn't we be supporting the people who were doing it the longest?

Re:no USB?

[Daimanta]

And no monitor included? No printer function either?

I'm not going to buy this piece of shit.

Re:I think they already tried this once...

[bobbozzo]

My dad has a Netgear that looks like that; it constantly overheats and completely drops wifi connections (ethernet works fine).

Ventilating it and adding some aluminum fins onto the main chip helped only somewhat.

I wonder, is this new one any better?

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

[viking80]

Tomato is not really open source. It is open source except for the UI.
DD-WRT is just a branch of OpenWRT that costs money. It is free for home use however.

Use OpenWRt; It is open and free. If you want simplicity, use X-wrt, which is basically OpenWRT with a web based UI. It does not use the latest version of OpenWRT, but is very stable. It includes a smörgåsbord of modules to add with a simple mouse click.

Netgear is correcting their screwup

[Hanzie]

Apparently a number of the new WGR614L router boxes got WGR614v9 routers instead.

This page:

WGR614L really a WG614v9?

talks about it.

May 16, 2008 3:36 PM Sean, I am the Product Line Manager for Wireless Products at NETGEAR and I apologize. Please do send me your contact information and I will send you a WGR614L version out immediately. There had been an issue with one of our distributors and a few V9 versions was shipped out by mistake. We have recalled, but I guess you were one of the unfortunate ones to get a V9. Again, I apologize. My email address is **DELETED** Please do send me your address. Regards -Som Pal Choudhury Senior Product Line Manager, Advanced Wireless NETGEAR Inc.

I removed his contact numbers and email address. They're on the page I linked to, and he really doesn't need a slashdot post of his vitals, he's got enough problems right now.

Nice to see Netgear's on the ball.

Apparently Netgear's guy responsible is personally taking care of the problem.

hanzie

Re:Netgear is correcting their screwup

[Anonymous Coward]

My email address is som.choudhury@netgear.com. Please do send me your address.

Regards

-Som Pal Choudhury
Senior Product Line Manager, Advanced Wireless
NETGEAR Inc.
Off: 408-367-7884
Cell: 408-910-2936

Re:no USB?

[LarsG]

What the hell do you need USB for?

If it had 802.11n and a 4-port GigE switch I wouldn't complain, but the current hardware spec on this thing makes it just a clone of the good old wrt54gl. It is really nothing new or exciting at all, just a clone of a Linksys product.

Now, with some USB ports you can do all sorts of additional stuff. External harddisks. Printers. Scanners. NAS for your home network. uPnP media server. Network printer/scanner server. Look up all the things people have been using NSLU2s for and then imagine a device that has the capabilities of both the 54GL and the NSLU2.

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.

Re:no USB?

[Thrashing Rage]

Actually there is instructions on their website on how to solder a USB cable to the router. This is shown for recovery purposes.

http://www.myopenrouter.com/article/10341/Recover-Your-WGR614L-Using-a-Serial-Console-Windows/

Probably not exactly what you want but, its nice there is already instructions (in case) you brick it.

My Buffalo runs BSD

[Nick Driver]

I bought a Buffalo wifi router a couple years ago, when Worst Buy has them on clearance for $39. It runs stock firmware, which identifies itself as BSD based. The thing works flawlessly. I wish I had a couple more of them.

About time...

[hyc]

I think they're just acknowledging that they can't write firmware to save their lives. I had a WG602 that would always lock up after a few days of use; the lockups would happen sooner after big ftp/scp sessions. Basically the damn thing had a memory leak. Updating to the latest firmware didn't help; I finally replaced it with a Linksys.

(Oh yeah, and they also promised upgradability to 802.1x WPA when I bought it, and never released a firmware update with WPA support.) AFA I'm concerned, this is the smartest decision they could possibly make. Now they don't have to bother with fake promises of future firmware upgrades, they can just leave it to their customers to upgrade at will. And people buying these routers won't have to put up with buggy firmware without any recourse.

Of course I still think it's too late; I've completely sworn off ever buying Netgear again and have stuck to Linksys...

Re:no USB?

[afidel]

Hahahaha, you think a multi-hundred mhz cpu can't saturate a 100Mb line, I did it with a 66Mhz pentium. Also you save a TON on power by using a low power device like these as a low volume file server. I wouldn't hang an entire office off one, but they have more horesepower than most of the fileservers had when I started in the industry, and we made those work somehow =)