Netgear's WGR614L Wireless-G router openly plays nice with Tomato / DD-WRT
By Darren Murph 
posted Jun 30th 2008 5:54PM
posted Jun 30th 2008 5:54PM
posted Jun 30th 2008 5:54PM
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For an open source router, theres certainly an absolute dearth of information on the actual hardware inside the router.
I mentioned this on the absolutely laughable "Hardware Specification" page on the myopenrouter site (it had gems like "firewall"... yes very hardware) and now the page is gone altogether.
down mod please, i am wrong, i just cant find the navigation to the page any more. the page still exists, its at:
http://www.myopenrouter.com/article/10066/WGR614L-Hardware-Specifications
Buffalo has already started working with DD-WRT and offers cheaper yet more powerful and reliable routers than Netgear. It's a nice attempt but it's a bit too late.
@Justin
I love my easily modded Buffalo router. It was only 25 bucks and has been running Tomato firmware for 2 years. The only problem is Buffalo can no longer sell routers in the US due to a patent issue from another company. Until that settlement can be reversed Buffalo can't sell any more routers. Outside the US, they're still being sold and still a great product if you can get it.
However, this Netgear router is joke for it selling point and price. It has neither wireless N or a gigabit lan connection. Yeah, it can modded, but so can the Linksys WRT54GL which can be had for between 50-60 bucks. Its only 200mhz, but I doubt that will make a serious difference in the performance of the router. Sorry Netgear, you're going to need to try harder to win over people
honestly most of the open source routers are 100bt and .11g. linux 802.11n support is pretty weak, and most of the chipsets that have gigabit ethernet onboard are not supported by linux. most of the offerings, be it netgear linksys or buffallo, are pretty closely in line. there's really only 4-5 different chipsets, most of the difference is packaging. every now and then you'll have exceptional routers that'll have a usb port. NAS's that run linux are viable if you are interested in hooking up a disk drive.
"open source support" is one thing, but as I tried to state in the original post, "open source hardware documentation" is really the key element. its lack of documentation that keeps most modern wifi routers from being linux compatible, not lack of "support".
owned son
Only thing to regret is the lack of 1gigbit wired lan.
otherwise...*drool*
Also, no support for draft-N. I already have a few WRT54G routers, but have been looking for something that's hackable and supports 802.11n. I need something that supports N, allows bridging, and doesn't cost a lot of money. So far, I haven't found anything.
I applaud Netgear's effort, but I'm just not sure that the world needs more Wireless-G routers, hackable or not. Wireless-N is the future, and an open-source N router would be awesome.
Does this have a USB port? I don't think it does. I have the WGT634U which I would say is a better router than this, slower cpu but more memory. Granted you have to run OpenWRT Kamikaze on it. With a usb port you can do a lot of stuff like use it as a print server or NAS.
The downside is that without DMA support the USB2.0 port runs about the speed of a USB1.1 port. Similarly, transfering files between wireless and wired also goes through the CPU, and tops out at a couple MB/s. Having the USB port is really fun, you can hook up MPD and drives and remote controls, but the speed is far under what the CPU is capable of. All for want of some hardware documentation & drivers.
i saw this a while back, like a few months ago, maybe it wasn't released then, but im pretty sure it was on the dd-wrt website as supported hardware.
Call me when they have one that supports 802.11N My G router is 4 years old and has been running dd-wrt for over a year.. I need to upgrade, not move sideways, oh, and gigabit Ethernet too please.
nice to see netgear making advances in 802.11g while everyone else pumps out 802.11n routers. way to go netgear.
Are there any Wireless N or Gigabit routers out there that run Tomato or DD-WRT?
yes. http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Supported_Devices
The Internets are your friend.
hmm tomato + TOR = tasty internet?
TOR? If you ask me TOR suffers from a fatal problem - untrusted nodes. It's good to get around the corporate firewall/packet sniffer, and also good to get around a countries's firewall. But privacy? Forget it. Any entity interested in all that TOR data can just start their own TOR end node and before you know it all your secret data will flow through one of the NSAs own servers. Whoopie!
Tomato? Pure router bliss!
About TOR; It'll still be private even through NSA, as long as you don't transmit personally identifiable information the end node can't tell who's at the root, asuming you also take care of disabling flash/java/silverlight tricks that is, oh and never used any passworded service unless you are willing to have the password float around at such places as the NSA or foreign versions of such and of course the spammers and scammers and journalists 'exposing' the obvious.
Linksys WRT310N is gigabit and N and runs DD-WRT. Other routers with faster CPU's and more RAM and have been running DD-WRT or Tomato for ages, there's nothing special about Netgear's WGR614L.
this router is like as fast as the ps2. 240mhz vs 294mhz mips cpus
My D-Link GamerLounge G router has a 1.2 GHz CPU and 256Mb of RAM, and I got mine for only $40 more than this Netgear box.
You havent the foggiest idea what in the hay you are talking about. Not all mhz are create equal, this unit is orders of magnitudes slower. Internal bandwidth to memory and peripherials is miniscule, it probably has 1/4 the execution units of a ps2, and its pipeline is probably 4x worse. Just dont.
actually, im a computer engineer with a very good understanding of computer architecture, pipelining and the mips assembly language, so i will say what i want because i know what im talking about
this better come with Upside-downternets!
So I'd like some insight from you guys.
Does using a cheap router affect torrenting? Before I splurge $60 on a Linksys WRT54GL, I wanna know that it's worth the money. Can someone give me some links noting measurable differences in performance between your generic "cheapy" router and the upper-end consumer stuff that can be had in the $60-$80 range? Thanks.
And I'm not really into 802.11n right now, since it's not a true standard yet.
No wireless N? Meh.. better off with a linksys wrt
My WRT56GL + Tomato = incomprehensible amounts of win.
QoS, how I love thee.
I have three WRT54GL routers running Tomato. AWESOME firmware...and ROCK solid. I just wish that I had a draft N spec option. Pushing video to my Popcorn Hour A-100 NMT (via NFS) is really pushing the bounds of G. When I have that option, I'll buy three new routers. Until then, the WRT54GLs will do just fine thanks.
Netgear has fallen from grace when it comes to router hardware, really ever since they started putting everything in those sickening eggshell white cases.
Bring back the blue metal boxes (and the quality that resided therein!).
@mykie: You can still get Netgear routers in the blue metal cases - the white plastic stuff is just their low-end home range... (go to the Netgear site and click "Business Networking")
I haven't bought any white plastic Netgear product ever, I always go the business grade stuff.
I'm not sure I understand this, does all of this just mean it works on Linux?
All this means that Linux works on it.
Any router will work with a Linux box, but with this router, you can run Linux (or any other) firmware.
And the One Ring to rule them all is named Untangle:
http://www.untangle.com
Ill stick with my wrt600n . it fully supports dd-wrt now and is only missing 40mhz support. they got the gigabit switch problems fixed.
D link isnt all too great, but I will transform my roommates come this august now... MUAHAHAHHA.
How utterly sad and disgraceful that it has to come to the opensource world to make a product work as it should. What is wrong with companies today? They can't release a working product. Linksys is one of THE worst offenders for their factory firmware. Linksys lost me permanently as a customer for their wireless print server. Mine died, as most of them do, and they replaced it. With a dead one. I smashed it with a 3 pound sledge hammer to be sure it couldn't contaminate the hardware pool again.
By the way, I also owned two WRT55AG's... it kept causing all kinds of problems with my DSL modem. It got cement poisioning. Rapid deceleration trauma, if you will.
"Netgear's router openly plays nice with Tomato"
Does that mean my router will get salmonella?
We are trying to port OpenWRT on the Neuf Box 4, the DSL router / gateway from Neuf Cegetel, the second largest french ISP.
The Neuf Box 4 can be baught for 70 euros in France, has a 300 Mhz CPU, 32 MB of RAM, and 8 MB of flash, 2 USB ports,...
It is also based on Broadcom chips unfortunately.
Come and see us on http://www.neufbox4.org ;)
YES WILL SOMEONE HELP ME .I AM TRYING TO HOOKUP A NETGEAR WIRELESS-G ROUTER...#WGR614 v9.TO A XBOX360.AN ALL SO TO A PLAYSTATION3. THINK YOU VERY MUCH FOR ANY HELP YOU CAN GIVE.....CHARLES