[plug] In the news: Netgear Debuts Open-Source Router

[Fred Janon]

<http://news.yahoo.com/s/zd/20080630/tc_zd/229225;_ylt=AqTR0PQE3cTZzPW8HLoBJtUjtBAF>

http://www.myopenrouter.com/

 On Monday, Netgear announced the WGR614L, what might be the world's
first native open-source consumer router. ADVERTISEMENT

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What this means isn't exactly clear; Netgear representatives couldn't
be reached for additional comment by press time. The 802.11g router is
available now within the U.S. at select retailers for $69. 



However, projects like Tomato have offered unauthorized means of replacing the firmware on Broadcom-based routers like the Linksys WRT54G
with code that allows the user to customize the router and even add
features such as more fine-grained security and a greater number of
simultaneous connections. 



Netgear, however, has launched a related open-source router Web site to encourage users to develop projects using the WGR614L. One new firmware project
added support for WPA2 as well as guest SSIDs, which allows guests of
the network to browse the Internet without being allowed onto the host
network. 


It's unclear whether or not the Netgear router is the first to be truly open source.XORP has offered an open-source software package
designed to replace the firmware found on most routers. Vyatta,
meanwhile, offers its own hardware along with its own software
platform, although the company's products are more geared toward the
SMB marketplace. 

Feature-wise, the WGR614L checks off most of the features common to
low-end routers: the 802.11g router includes a 10/100 Fast Ethernet
port, while security features include a VPN passthrough, static and
dynamic routing, (IPSec, L2TP), NAT, PPTP, PPPoE, DHCP (client and server), and BigPond. An SPI firewall is also included. WPA, WPA2-PSK, and WPS security features are included, plus support for up to 152-bit WEP encryption. 

Inside the router is a 240-MHz MIPS32 CPU core with 16 Kbytes of
instruction cache, 16 Kbytes of data cache, 1 KB of pre-fetch cache.
The router incorporates 4 Mbytes of flash memory and 16 Mbytes of RAM. 


>From a firmware standpoint, the router already supports Tomato and OpenWRT, Netgear said. 
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