Netgear - WGR614L Open Source Wireless-G Router - WGR614L-100NAS
NETGEAR Open Source Wireless-G Router

I've been a loyal user of dd-wrt loaded on an old Linksys WRT54G. When I learned about Netgear's open source router and their site for the router (myopenrouter.com), I thought it would be a good next step. I was wrong. The myopenrouter website has poorly documented links to firmware that will turn this router into a paperweight and the only option you will have to recover it is to buy a $30 serial cable and solder it into this router. This router requires proprietary .chk firmware image files. The open source firmware community produces their images in .bin files. I found the myopenrouter community to be very thin - there were three individuals who provided the responses on their forum boards. The community just doesn't seem to be growing around supporting this platform. There are three open source branded loads available on the myopenrouter site. I downloaded the most popular of these, dd-wrt, and the link off the main page for myopenrouter was to a bad load of dd-wrt which prevents any future upgrades to the router. As of the day I'm writing this, there is NO WARNING on the myopenrouter posted about this particular version of DD-WRT. I posted my complaints about this load and what it did to my router, and two other users immediately replied saying the same thing had occrred to them. I don't understand Netgear's strategy in releasing an "open source" product and introducing a website with the intent of fostering an open source community while also choosing not to support the common .bin format. With most other open source routers, if you get a bad load on the device, you can easily TFTP a new, working image back on the device. While this router supports TFTP, it does not work. As I mentioned earlier, the only option for reloading the firmware to the device is to buy a $30 JTAG serial cable and try your hand at soldering. This is not for me. Buying this router seemed like a fun way to play with opensource router firmware, but I'm going back to my old Linksys.
 
Was this review helpful?    

The opensource router from Netgear has finally been launched. This is broadcom based router supporting most of the third party open source firmware like DD-WRT, Open-WRT, Tomato. Good forum support at my openrouter.com. From normal user point of view, A great product which is stable enough to work with. Bothers little during set up. Easy to use and mentain. and above all a lot cheaper than the linksys family router.
 
Was this review helpful?    

Computers > Shop by Brand > NETGEAR > Wireless