Slashdot Mirror
Netgear WNR3500L Open Source Router Announced
MyOpenRouter writes "Netgear has announced the WNR3500L, a brand new, open source, wireless-N gigabit router customizable with third party firmwares. MyOpenRouter is the dedicated source for Netgear open source routers, with the full scoop including a review with screenshots, how-to's, tutorials, firmware downloads, etc. Here's a review and the downloads page." The router can run popular open source firmware including DD-WRT, OpenWRT. and Tomato. It will list for $140.
What can I do with this that I can't do with a dozen other dd-wrt routers?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
....shame on you. But you're not going to fool me again, certainly to for $140. I have a Netgear "open source" 802.11g router sitting in a closet somewhere. It never worked worth a damn. Netgear replaced it with another similarly-named model (with a completely different design). OpenWRT doesn't support the old one fully, and DD-WRT has some things I don't particularly like (and I'm not sure support is there, either).
I'd just assume get an Airport if I was going to use a commercial router. Am currently using an old notebook running Debian, which does everything I need with a lot less pain.
802.11n?
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Apart from it being an N router (not sure what Linksys has in the way of N offerings, I'm still using a trusty WRT54G), this thing also has a USB port that you can hook up a USB drive to and use it like a NAS, which is kind of cool.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
with the popularity of DD-WRT and others, i'm surprised it took wifi companies this long to try to make money on it. linksys made the WRT-54GL a long time ago but didn't try to promote custom firmwares.
My WRT54G is $100 less than runs custom DD-WRT just fine. If I had gigabit network cards and wireless N i might upgrade, but for a home network not doing much filesharing locally I don't see the point. I think they're just trying to capitalize on the face the code is open-source. And forcing people to pay a premium for it. The WRT310N is $70 new, has practically the same specs, and can be flashed. So what's the benefit?
$140 is damn expensive for a $30 hunk of plastic easily gotten from the local S-Mart. It'll sell like submarine screen doors!
I paid $40 for my WRT54G, and since I (or *anyone* I know) don't have any equipment that speaks 802.11n, I'm not going to lay down $140 for a new router when my current one finally dies. I'll go out and get another of the exact same.
This product is pretty much doomed to fail, which seriously sucks because this is something us GNU folks have been clamoring for since wifi was wifi.
If you're going to drop that much on a router, you're better off getting your own board and a custom radio. More configureable, better hardware. I'm using Ubiquity's routerstation right now with openwrt on it. Really a nice setup for essentially the same price. If you don't want to spend that much though, just get a WRT54GL and drop openwrt/ddwrt/tomato on it. You'll get essentially the same performance minus the wireless N support.
It's great if "open source" is seen by a company like Netgear as a positive marketing tool. However, it's a bit of a stretch to list DD-WRT, OpenWRT. and Tomato as all being open-source. Tomato has a nonproprietary back end plus a proprietary web interface. DD-WRT has a history of GPL violations, and tries to charge people more money for a version with more functionality. If you take "open source" totally literally, then yeah, maybe these are open source, in the sense that you probably are allowed to read the source code freely. But I don't think that's what most people in the open-source world really mean by open source. OpenWRT is the only one on this list that is really totally free and nonproprietary. I run OpenWRT on my router, with a web-based front-end called Gargoyle, which is also (really) open source. Gargoyle is pretty bare bones, but it is good enough for a lot of quick, simple stuff. It would be nice if the developer could include just a tad more functionality in it, though, because I do end up having to ssh in and do certain things from the command line.
What I would really like is a cheap router that wouldn't crash and hang up all the time. For my home network, I picked up a wrt54g v.4 on ebay, because it has more memory than the current models, and is reputed to be more stable. I also bought a (cheap) UPS, because a lot of people say it's power surges that tend to cause routers to lock up. Well, I still have to reboot the router fairly frequently. It doesn't seem to be correlated with what firmware and software I run, either. I don't understand why I should have to reboot such a simple, single-purpose device more than once a year. The netgear box referred to in TFA is $130. I might consider paying that much for a router for my home network if I had some reason to believe it would need less frequent rebooting. The problem is that I have never seen reliable data that measured frequency of lockups in routers and correlated it with specific variables that I have control over. I'm perfectly willing to believe that a $1000 router designed for medium-sized businesses would not lock up. I just don't want to pay $1000.
Find free books.
Yum USB, 64-megs RAM, 8 megs flash. Now if only their WiFi driver is OPEN SOURCE and working reliably in all modes. This is my complaint with most Broadcom and Atheros-based products right now, the WiFi driver blobs are a PITA.
What's innovative here is they seem to be letting partners develop software packages to run on it... an iPhone-style "App store" for home router software addons, anyone (?)
Does this mean the warranty isn't void if you flash it with custom firmware?
Are they providing cool things like serial ports for debugging, and an external JTAG header, so you can easily fix it if your custom patched firmware breaks or something (?)
How about a fully vlan-able switch, POE capabilities, and enough RAM to run some minor computing loads ? :)
What can I do with this that I can't do with a dozen other dd-wrt routers?
For starters, find it in a store. When my old 802.11g AP died, I had a hell of a time trying to do a JOIN between "StoreShelf" and "open source firmware compatibility list." I wanted to just go to the store, not order online. 95% of the stuff on the lists for DD-WRT, Tomato-whatever, and OpenWRT hasn't been sold in at least a year, or can only be found in one or two countries.
Second, it's well equipped: you get N radios, a decent amount of RAM (64MB is top of the market, many devices have 8-16) and a full set of gigabit ports; I didn't notice whether or not they're handled by the CPU or an actual switch chip (the latter is better, if I remember correctly.) The list of 802.11n routers supported by the open source firmwares is pretty small. It becomes scarce when you limit yourself to gigabit ports and more than 16MB of ram. The only shame I see with this is that there's only 8MB of flash; that's stingy, but not the end of the world, as they include USB and DD-WRT and company are capable of using external storage for the OS. USB flashkeys, and 30MB/sec ones at that, are pretty damn cheap these days.
Then: have it work, without spending an hour reading through scattered documentation, wikis, FAQs, and forum pages trying to figure out if you'll brick the device you just spent $50-100 on.
Then: have it continue to work, without crappy performance, randomly rebooting itself, freezing, or slowly grinding to a halt over the course of a day or so. All of which I have had repeated problems with. On my N router, I could only get about 8MB/sec with DDWRT; on the stock firmware, I got 12.
I love DD-WRT, it's amazingly, amazingly configurable- but finding supported N hardware that works reliably is a royal pita. I'm pleased to see that someone is going to release hardware that plays nice with the open source community and has a better chance of working properly. It's an extra bonus that it is pretty decently spec'd out.
Please help metamoderate.
These router makers have been constantly resisting people "hacking" into their routers to make them do much more than they did "off the shelf." Why? Why do they care? Why did they ever care? Is it because they think their Linux based router OS is in need of protection? Are they believing that the software is really the "product" that people are interested in? I never really understood it. The people who do the modifications just wanted the router for the conveniently arranged hardware.
Linksys put out their "L" series routers already, but they are slightly more expensive and in limited supply everywhere I have looked.
This approach from Netgear seems to appeal exactly where these users live -- getting a device they can work with, collaborate on and grow. And by doing this, they are actually building a a fan-base rather than restricting their user-base.
A full blown mini mainboard with serial, parallel, video, audio and usb ports, much more RAM and processing power, compact flash, mini-pci and pci slots, etc. plus a powerful wifi mini-pci card. It's not N, for now, but who cares? The day you need N it will just be a matter of shelling out 20-40$ to get a new mini-pci card that supports it.
Call me when these open routers' prices drop to $25. Today everything above $50 is a complete ripoff.
Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated in any way with that shop. I just have been a very happy customer in the past when my company needed some embedded boards and after a good search on the net we ended up purchasing some of their their old WRAP systems to develop wireless stuff and firewalls.
Wireless N and gigabit Ethernet aren't cheap like b/g with 100Mb Ethernet, also the one you linked is a refurb. The ones where they allow you to load on your own firmware are usually a bit more expensive because the throw in more memory and a few other things.
OpenWRT is a great project, but unfortunately unusable in its current state.
I have tried to use it on the Linksys WRT54GL, which is the default box, (hence 'WRT' in the name)
It is stable, feature rich, and *unusable*. I have for example not been able to configure the box as a client. It will work just fine as an AP
Looking for a solution, I installed an older version of OpenWRT, and this would only work as a client, not as an AP.
Expect the default setup to not rout packets at all. You have to configure the router carefully before it will work at all.
I have set up wireless networks with many configurations using other boxes and software, and never had this kind of trouble. It can certainly not be used by an average user.
It appears all resources are beeing spend to making it run on your casio wrist watch and other exotic targets while the old focus is lost. Seems like the 99%vs1% rule backwards:
Target 99% of development resources to resolve issues faces by 1% of the users.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Grammar check, people! "Firmware" is a collective noun, like "clothing." You have one piece of clothing, two pieces of clothing. In this case, it is used in the collective sense, so it should be: customizable with third party firmware.
So did the last 'open source' router I bought from Netgear - then I found out it could ONLY be configured with IE6. I think I'll hold off on buying any more 'open source' netgear equipment until I can confirm they aren't still confused about this 'open source' stuff.
Yes, but for $140 there are plenty of solutions with dual radios and USB but generally less RAM then this unit. Personally I'm waiting for the dual radio n device with USB which supports open firmware for ~$100. I figure it will be available by late November.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
This device uses a Broadcom chipset, and needs a Linux 2.4 kernel with a binary blob to work properly.
Linux 2.6 was released in 2003. That's *six years* ago. What kind of bizarro-world are we living in where modern hardware still requires 2.4?
If this Netgear is like other modern era Netgears, don't worry: it will be in full supply on all the refub channels in about six months, and for probably $29.
Netgear used to make great stuff. The WGR614 is nice and cheap and just plain works, aside from being B/G only and missing some modern stuff. Some of the more advanced Netgear stuff is great out of the box but there is a spectacular failure rate on the hardware after six months or so.
For example, check out the Netgear WNR854T reviews on Amazon or Newegg. Amazon: 169 reviews, 106 give it one star. Newgegg 232 reviews, 68% of them were one or two eggs.
Scary stuff. The local Frys store will happily sell you a refub'd one for very few bucks. It'll work for six months and then die.
After being a Netgear loyalist for years, I got the linux version of the WRT54GL and it at least works. Not a fan of Linksys though.
Sig for hire.
Yeah, I know! Tell me about it. I'm forever moving country and carrying my network infrastructure with me. I mean, this 32U rack is killing me, good job it doesn't require to be plugged in though.
Interestingly, these routers (specifically the WNR854T) when they die are not completely dead.
The symptom I have seen on both of the units I had is loss of functionality, followed by "dim" blinking lights.
This is caused in my case by the on-PCB 5v supply failing - It outputs about 4v. Since the 3.3v is derived from the 5v line, the CPU is also affected. It appears to be the SMPSU chip itsself that fails - Paralleling a working 5v supply onto the 5v line works.
Yeah, like others I bought one of these based on Slashdot hype the last time around. And got burned.
In a nutshell:
- That router used a proprietary firmware format, and there were no obvious tools or shell scripts posted that would convert, say, current Tomato source to a package that would install on the Netgear.
- There wasn't even a freekin' howto!!!
- Community support is "provided" by the commercial MyOpenRouter site, which doesn't seem to be affiliated with, sponsored by, or in any other way connected to Netgear. It's some kind of back-alley licensing deal.
The result was that I found myself relying on untrusted third parties with no accountability to compile firmware for my router, and the firmware they offered was six months out of date and missing important fixes.
That's not support for Open Source, it's a twisted perversion of it. It smacks of carelessness and greed on Netgear's part, and a foolish attempt to stay relevant while their high-end sales are devoured by Linkysys and their excellent WRT-54GLS.
Before you buy one of these, take a look at the MyOpenRouter site and see if they've provided decent documentation, tools, and up-to-date firmware since last year.